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You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. We're a member supported podcast network broadcasting over 35 weekly shows live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. This year we're celebrating 10 years of food radio. For the past decade, we've been taking you behind the scenes of farms, restaurants, breweries, school cafeterias, and more. It's been 10 years, and we're just getting started.
Find us on Heritage Radio Network.org. Hello, welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from you know. From a burden of speech are in Bushwick Brooklyn! Not with this Dossier the Hammer Lopez, who was here but left because she thought I was gonna be even later.
Suck it! Also joined in the studio with Jack Shram. What were you? The nail? The nail.
Jack the Nail Shram, head bartender of existing conditions. We are waiting on, and this is because the airplane was late, not because he himself was late. Uh James Schroeder from Chicago has a new book out on uh Mezcal, so we're gonna talk to him about all his MezCal stuff. Uh, we have cats in the network here. How are you doing?
Good, thanks. Yeah? We got Matt in the booth. Hello, hello. So when Nastasia gets back, and when James finally shows up, we're gonna have a full, full house.
In fact, we will have more humans than microphones. Um you have a caller that we could do. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, uh just had a quick question for you. Um I wanted your thoughts on what makes a good restaurant chef and what makes a good home cook.
Oh, yeah, that's good. They're two, they're two very very different things. This is a good question. Yeah. Uh very, very different things.
So a good restaurant chef, first of all, there are people who are great chefs. And great cooks. There, brother. They're not great chefs. There are people who are great chefs who aren't great cooks anymore.
Most of them at one time had some chops, right? You have to to get to that level. Right. But being a good chef, like nowadays, it also means being a poisonality, right? But that didn't used to be what it was.
It used to be and still is, you have the ability to run a kitchen that makes money, right? So you have to be able to uh choose dishes uh that satisfy whatever market it is you're aiming at. Most of us think of either high-end chefs or people doing funky things, but like you choose something, right, that you want to do, you hit that market, you can get your food costs down, and you can like crank out a consistent product day after day, and you can convince your staff to show up, not call out and like in general care about the food that they're making. And you are a great, you are a great chef. That is what a great chef is.
Yeah, step one, be a good leader. Yeah, you have to be a good leader. Now, it used to be, uh, I mean, there's some various, you know, kind of, you know, do you lead through fear? Do you lead through love? In fact, like a lot of it used to be very, and and I again, this is some not somewhat, this is toxic, but it used to just be uh very kind of like animal pheromone-based.
So like a chef would have to come in like an alpha ape, like and then like, you know, like walk up to like uh a lion cook station and just outperform them. What's up? And just have to outperform them, and that's how you'd prove you were a good chef. I don't think that works anymore. What the hell?
We got also Jackie Molecules in the studio. A reunion! Oh my god, Jackie Molecules. Uh whereas a home cook really uh, you know, you can spend any amount of money you want. Uh you just have to make food that's delicious.
And part of being a home cook also depends on who you are. There are home cooks that like people. Uh and well, I mean, every every every cook likes people enough to cook them food without poisoning them, right? But I mean, what I mean is is that like I'm one of those home cooks that I like being in the kitchen maybe rather than being seated with everybody. You know what I mean?
Just because it means that I don't really I can just cook. You know what I mean? And that's how some people express social uh social behavior. Yeah, you come and go from the social engagement as you please because you gotta be watching the food. That's why it's important.
That's why Jack, Jack, would you rather be behind the bar or on the floor? I would prefer to be behind the bar with just enough social interaction. There you go. Uh so anywho, uh, you know, I think like they're very they're very, very different problems. And I think a lot of people who are excellent home cooks, right?
You know, first of all, they just would not enjoy busting down that like 12th box of chicken for the day. You know what I mean? They just wouldn't enjoy it. Like, yeah, they don't get into that weird, like, you know, like you're you're totally zoned out, but also very zoned in, just the catharsis of just the same action over and over again. Yeah, here let me feel good.
Let me get let me give you a hint uh on the difference. First of all, most people who are professional chefs don't uh they don't cook that much at home because they're freaking sick of it by the time they get home. But uh invite a chef over to your house, right? And then say something, like just do something fun like this. Just have a bunch of carrots in your fridge.
Have a bunch of extra carrots in your fridge, and then tell the chef, the chef's going to like depends on the chefs. Some chefs are like, I ain't doing I ain't doing squat. I'm just gonna sit and drink wine. Crap on you. And like, you know what I mean?
Or some some will be like, can I help? You know what I mean? And when they and when they say, can I help, right? What you want to do is say this to them. Um yeah, you could uh you could peel and and uh cut up some car how you want the carrots.
Uh I don't know, like diced. And then when you you're gonna you're gonna they're gonna walk away, and then if you look back at them and every carrot in your fridge has been converted into a dice, you're dealing with a chef. Because they're just gonna be like, the amount you need is the amount you got, and we're gonna do this, we're gonna use carrots all week, so I'm dicing them! You know what I mean? And they dice all the carrots.
You know what I'm saying? Stas, you know what I'm talking about. This is like you and the long duck in or the the turduccin. What do you mean? At the holiday party, when we we cook the turduccin and we and you said, I'm not touching that thing, and then like 30 minutes later you were over there slicing it up.
It's because no one stepped up. I hate carving in public because I just don't like doing it. You know why? Everybody has something to say about the way something is carved. Everybody has something to say about the way something is carved.
So I just don't, I don't get near it. And the wrongest voices are the loudest. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Generally, always. Most of the time, most of the time, if you have something to say, you should not.
Yeah. Like in general, I think in life. Uh so I'm gonna save this. By the way, Nastasia, Nastasia and I, Nastassian now is a Connecticut home, she has not a homeowner, but a home person. Oh, okay.
Well, what is that? Well, Nastasia is now has achieved one of her life goals, which is to be able to at will go to a place on the water. Oh, that's great. Would you say it's accurate? Yes.
That's accurate. Whereas uh I'm losing my brain space. Someone made an offer on our Connecticut place, which means I have a lot of fireworks to light off real stuff. Yeah, when are we going up there? The weather's perfect.
I don't know. Like, I gotta figure it out. There's gotta be some place when I mean I've promised Bobby, our beverage manager, beverage director, uh, that he could go up. So we just need to figure it out a time. Uh and in similar stories, where I have a place in Connecticut is called Chester, and there's a very good restaurant in Chester called Grano Arso, and uh Joel and uh Lonnie, his wife, uh, were in listeners of the show, and you should go to that restaurant.
In fact, on the way over here, I started mentally composing a jingle to it. And let me see, let me see if yeah, let me see. Uh I'm gonna put on my jingle, my jingle face. I don't remember what the tune was though. I'll just make it up.
Just shout. If through Chester, you should junt, go to Grano Arso's rest. That's very pithy. That's kind of like yeah, wow. It's real quick.
It's a good nice start. Wait, how does it go again? Slow down. Yeah, I wasn't recording. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No. Now what do you mean? If Joel comes back on. I forgot the first line. If they're Chester, you should jump.
Do it. Just do it. Just do it. Go, go, go, go, go, sing, sing, sing. We'll do it next week.
We'll do it next week if someone asks for it. Come on, come on. We'll do a standing commercial for grano Arcell and we'll add verses to the to the Diddy. If anyone comes up with some more jingle material. You have to harmonize it, is what has to happen.
Well, you know, Jackie Molecules, you're right here. You're Mr. Music. You can go for it. Grano Arsaurist.
Alright. My poem for I I'm gonna sing my poem. I sing it. I'm gonna say my poem for uh James Schroeder. So James Schroeder, he's on his way.
James Schroeder's on his way here, rattle mics. Uh he's on his way here. He wrote a book on Mezcal, and he's anti, and we can think about this. By the way, call in your mezcal questions too. 7184972128.
That's 7184972128. Was that even right? Of course it was. Okay. Come on.
Anyway, so he goes on early and he hates people. I believe it was him, because I read that first chapter a while ago. He hates people calling things smoky for mezcal. What do you think about that? Yeah, I'm with him.
I've heard you call it smoky Jack Bird. So here's my poem. And we can talk about this movie here. Poems and songs this show become. Well, as I was on the subway and it was taking a long time, and I have my iPad on, so I was like, I could type.
Alright. Mezcal mezcal tastes real good. Mezcal mezcal needs no wood. And if you say it tastes like smoke, James Schroeder thinks you're a Jamok. Wow, wow.
How are you gonna light the fire in the pit to roast the agave? No, no, it needs no wood to age in. Doesn't need to be aged. Yeah, but most of the fermenting containers are made of the city. Yeah, that doesn't do squat.
I know it doesn't do any, but it needs no wood for it. And first of all, wood, what kind of jamoke are you? Do that in the earth, in clay or in freaking like, you know, animal skins. You and your fancy wood. I don't own trees.
Jerk. Anyway. Uh while we're waiting, let's say for the next question. You do own trees. Question on the phone.
Alright, question. What do we got? Oh, come on. Is that mean? Yeah.
Oh, hey Dave. Uh, this is uh Brandon Byrd calling in from Winstonville, North Carolina. How you doing? Doing well, hope you are. I'm glad to have uh big crew in the booth today.
Glad to have Jackie Molecules back and uh Nastasia, well, I mean it's full house. Oh yeah. Uh almost you know, James is not here yet, but yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, close. So I got a spirit question for you.
Um and I'm gonna preface it with a bit of an anecdote, and I hope uh Nastasia will forgive me. She won't. I just got back from a uh a trip down to the Golden Isles off the coast of Georgia, the barrier islands down there. Cool. Uh and on Cumberland Island, I had the opportunity to visit a Carnegie Family Ice House, which was a pretty cool uh building where the Carnegie family they had mansions on the island and they used to cart down ice from the Great Lakes and keep it there.
Did they impoverish a bunch of people but then build a library? Uh precisely, yes. Absolutely. Uh uh and another uh interesting ice-related thing that I saw there on the island, which I wasn't expecting to find, is that in the basement of uh the plum mansion, which is another Carnegie family mansion there on the property, there was a really ancient ice machine that they had imported from a monastery in Europe. I don't know what monastery it was, but it has the uh initials AS.
And that ice machine ended up destroying the need for the ice house. So uh once they brought that ice machine back over from Europe, that became no longer necessary for them to uh you know bring it down from the Great Lakes. First of all, first of all, may I say that that's the only time in history that an American has bought an ice product from a freaking European? Because Europe is like Europe is like the swamp uh like the like the malarial hellhole of ice machines, and their water, the pond water that they serve you, even there's it's like like viciously warm and without ice unless you ask for it, and whatever. I'm just saying, like well, apparently this was uh this was a Trappist monastery, and they were using the ice to chill bottles of their beer, so they were not consuming the ice, just using it for for killing.
Okay. At least that was a story I got. Okay. Uh but anyway, while I was there in the mansion, they had a cocktail recipe on display for champagne punch from the Pittsburgh Club. Um, and it's a pretty standard champagne punch.
It starts out with uh some lemon ice and then some uh champagne that they fortify with brandy and benedictine. But uh the recipe calls for a pint of white rock, and no one there knew what white rock was, and they were like, if you know, then it's probably white rock sugar, yeah, like loaf sugar. Like low sugar sugar mix, and now that you said benedictine, you have Benny and the Jets going through my head. That's not cool. Sorry.
That's not even me. Ben eh come on. Anyway, I like the thing is like here's the like uh it's got it's gotta be uh white white sugar, like rock rock sugar would be like recrystallized sugar of a very high purity. So like it's probably like a high purity. That's my guess because anything and rock is like unless you mean a rock of ice, like like ro like rock and rye is rock sugar and and rye.
So I'm guessing that's I'm guessing that's what you're looking at there. By the way, I just say this no offense, Europe. You know, yeah, no offense. But yeah, that's what it is. It's sugar.
And since unless you're adding more Benny than you'd actually, by the way, we call Benedictine Benny at the bar. But like if you if you uh unless you're adding a boat ton, it's not going to be sweet enough without some additional uh sugar. So I'm gonna go ahead and move that from a possibility to an absolute certainty. Well, good to know. Thank you very much.
I'm going to let the caretaker know. Uh actually, when he showed us the um ice machine, he was like, Does anyone know what this is? And I I guess that it was some sort of generator because there was a belt hooked up to it and it kind of had that look about it. He was like, Oh, that's the one that's gonna sizzle old slugworth. It makes everlasting gobstoppers.
And I knew that guy was like, Yeah, you should have just said, I don't know, garbage. I I I like machines, so I'm sure I would have loved it. Very, very uh although you're a you would have loved it. I thought of you. Yeah.
All right. Well, anyway, uh tell us how the recipe sh uh turns out. Talk to the caretaker. All right, cool. I bet.
Uh okay. The previous caller called back just to say that you at one point compared your voice to Bobby Womac, but he says you sound more like Michael McDonald when you sing. Well, it's wow. Well, you know what? It's compliment.
That's a freaking compliment. I wasn't channeling Womac for the uh what's it called? I have different mental voices. Like that was more of my, I mean, like I'm now I'm thinking of like maybe we'll come back and we'll think of what Bobby Womack jingle would have sounded like. And I wish I sounded like Bobby Womack.
I probably sound like he does now that he's dead. Oh man. 123. Alright, uh, okay, carbonated water with coffee. I have a carbonated water related question.
Uh last year we put a carbonated line at the ice cream shop so we could do sodas and ice cream floats. Well, most of our sodas have been great. Coffee soda floats have been a miss. When we tried to do unsweetened coffee soda float with vanilla ice cream, something happened that just don't work. We did a coffee concentrate, which was fine with the soda water.
It was also great with the ice cream. However, when the three elements were combined, something just was not right. Uh the mixed result was muted coffee flavor. Whenever I see just not right, REM comes to my mind. What the hell is going on with my brain today?
It's gotta be springtime. Yeah. Music's in the air. Let me tell you something about springtime. I haven't even spoken to Nastasia today because we try not to speak to each other.
But uh eat. I thought that was yesterday. This is totally a lie. You guys talk every morning. I try not to, anyway.
At least I try to forget, as I just said. But this is the absolute worst time of year for Nastasia and myself because the freaks show up in New York when the weather is like this as surely as those weird desert fish pop out of the cracks in the freaking mud. It's not that they show up, it's that they exit their winter their winter husk. Yeah. They crawl out of themselves.
Like locusts. What do you think I'm doing here, man? Yay! We're actually escaping the warm weather. Jackie Molecules coming up from DC.
So what do you got going for me, Jackie Molecules? Well, I got I'm just passing through, man. Um, I'm I was driving through New York, I looked at my clock, I was like, it's cooking issues time. Family show, don't forget. Oh, oh.
Man, speaking of I did it two weeks ago, don't worry about it. Speaking of, uh at this very moment, if you're listening live, I have a dear friend of many of us here that needs some good vibes. So if you have any extra good vibes, send them out. I'm not talking about person blowing stuff up on air. Um, okay, so back to the coffee uh related question.
Now, you liked the you liked the soda water with the coffee, and you like the soda water with the ice cream. I'm thinking it's maybe just look, it everyone knows that ice cream and coffee is everyone knows that ice cream and Nastasia is like it's like a three year old she's reaching for my iPad like a dad in a three year old you start with the first question this is the very first question from last week that you told me to freaking do Nastasia Lopez says to me you never answer the old questions and then what I do when I literally start to answer the first question I didn't answer from last week she reaches for my iPad like a three year old so that I have to like sit there and give what kind of hand is this Jackie Molecules that's the hammer right there the hammer hand the slicing hand the guillotine hand. You're the slicer. Yeah so listen uh I just think that you I don't know you very well or at all so I'm just saying that maybe you maybe you drink black coffee like I do and when you have coffee and milk together you're like nah I don't really like this very much also coffee kills bubbles and uh ice cream kills bubbles so maybe the double bubble trouble is causing you some uh issue but uh get back to holy studio is just filling up somebody was saying that tonic water is the tonic is the answer to that that it's better with coffee what is it with you and the tonic Jackie Mom means whoa that tastes good I'm just passing it on the internet's oh god do you want to what do you want to skip here? Okay okay he's no longer in his optimal chair also and Nastasi doesn't have a microphone not that she needs one because she never likes to talk she can share uh she can share the microphone with you don't even you don't even like look at your microphone to see whether or not Nastasia's microphone people maybe the reason she never talks is that her microphone's like a speed bag it's like it like rattles around like a good like 15 inches when you touch it.
She's like an ambient voice on the show, too, you know. Ambient like the music? Yeah. Yeah, she's a distant in the back. An ambient voice.
I don't know. You know what the thing I don't like about this microphone is that you can't, you have to be antisocial towards somebody in the anyway, whatever. Alright, should I rip through some more questions? Nastasi wants me to go to the first question from this week. Uh Mike from Brooklyn writes in.
Hey Dave, what do you think of this? And then Mike sent me a link to a Canadian dude. Uh, this is Vice Munchies, a Canadian dude who did some grave robbing. And then uh after robbing the graves, took the bones and boiled them to make bone broth, but wasn't caught because of the bone broth, was caught because he was taste testing the bones in the graveyard, and someone saw him licking the bones, right? And he was doing it.
And then Vice Munchies uh did a tag to when they opened up this Egyptian sarcophagus last year, there was a bunch of swampy death water in the sarcophagus. It smelled like the Egyptian authorities said, like sewage. And then there was a guy in England who wanted to make an energy drink out of said sewage. And I want to say, all you guys are stupid jokers, because for many hundreds of years, Europeans have gone and consumed uh mummy powder. This was a known medicine.
It was a mistranslation of uh an Arabic word uh that uh this for this uh kind of pitch that came out of the ground that was non-mummy related, but had a uh sound that was very similar to mummy that was used in medicine in both uh in both Arab-speaking places and also Aravedic medicine. That was then, then people picked up on that medicine, mummia, and thought they think it they it must be made for mummies. And so then, whenever they found all these mummies, they would grind them up and they would do two things with these ground up mummies. One, they would make paint, so there is actually a paint color called mummy, and it is kind of mummy colored. It's kind of like that kind of brownish.
I've been dead a long, long time color. And they would grind it into uh mummy powder for consumption. I don't know why, like everlasting life, although it didn't seem to work for the people with the mummies. Uh the you can buy the actual powder that was confused for ground up Egyptian mummies. It's called uh shajolit, I believe.
Although it's been many years since I looked it up. I used it in the very first Mofad dinner that Nastasi and I threw, which Nastasia still says is the best event that's ever been thrown in the history of events. And we did it just the two of us. Now that song's going through my mind. Is it delicious?
What does it taste like? Nah, it's nasty. Okay. Uh okay. Nastasia loved it.
No, she hated it like she hates everything. Was that your drink? It wasn't a drink. It was, it was, it was the amouse douche. Amoose douche, you can say in a family show.
Oh, look at it. Full house. You hear all that? That's the sound of a thousand people in the studio. All right, Jay, spin up a mic.
And Lou is on the phone as well, so we got our bike. Lou, what do you got for me? Okay, here's what I got for you. I've got a question. Got it.
So you so with all of this cooking, right? You're dealing with bacterial issues, correct? Uh well, sometimes. I mean, we cook things. Yeah, we don't have we we we cook things all the time that don't have bacterial problems like carrots.
But but you're familiar with bacterial issues. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a subset of cooking issues, yes. I would describe Dave as familiar with bacterial issues. So, okay, so given that, let me ask you, Dave.
Do you uh do you wash your feet on a daily basis? Yes. Everybody else in the studio wash their feet on a daily basis. Yes. This is Lou Bank's number one at this point, by the way.
Yes, this is Lou Bang's. Hang on a second. Are you so like everybody uses a washcloth and washes their feet every day? Yes. It's the last thing I wash with the washcloth before I rinse the washcloth and wring it out.
This is a lot of information to give people. Thoroughly, every day. Where do you get that, Lou? I don't wash my feet ever. My theory is, let's get back to the bacteria, right?
My theory is soapy water on my feet. I don't need to rinse. I don't need to rub, it's clean. By the way, soapy water on my feet is the beginning of a song. I don't know what it is yet, but soapy water.
Soapy water. Soapy water on my feet is the beginning. It's a country song, I think. Very likely. Yeah, yeah, country soap.
Ooh. Ooh, I gotta get a new kind of beat. We gotta get Jackie Molecules back in and give us some sort of like nouveau ex Brooklyn hipster hip hop beat for it. Hmm. Anyway, yes.
So yes, I do wash my feet. But how is this relating to cooking, or is it just a foot issue? Well, it's a J issue. This is one of the things we talk about in the car all the time. So this is one of the things that you talk about in the car all the time, Lou.
I just play along with it. No, it's no, that's fair enough. But it strikes me that it is a cooking issue because you're killing bacteria with the soap. You don't need to rub. I don't use bacteria sidal soap.
I just use like soap. I don't I don't I don't believe in coating everything in the house in bacteria sidal things. Irish spring, right? Oh, I wish I did. Man, Irish Spring, remember that?
Remember that commercial? No, don't do they even make Irish Spring anymore. Yeah. And the person shows up with a knife and cuts the little piece off of it. It's got green and white stripes in it.
We still talk about the same Irish Spring? Yeah. Does anyone else you use this chat? No. Let me tell you something.
Generally aware. This is another piece of too much information for anybody here. I have a visceral distaste for bar soap. I use liquid soap. Huh.
I do not like bar soaps. Agree. Hard agree. Really? I'm on the I'm on the bar soap train.
I always happen. I, you know, this is a very lot of information, but like I like the fact that like you have to like thoroughly rinse the soap, or there might be a possibility of a hair on the soap that stays there. Hard no. Yeah. Hard soap hair is a real issue.
This has gone off the rails. You can see it though. It's not like you're gonna mysteriously come across one. Well, but do you even want to see it? You don't want to see somebody else's hair on your soap?
No. Whoa. Who said anything about anybody else's hair? The only time I'll use the- Who is sharing a bar? The only time I'll use bar soaps.
First of all, it in in a hotel, I use the I use the bottled mini shampoos, and if they have a bath gel, I'll use that one. But if I do use that miniature rancid little bar of soap, I will use it once and pitch it right the heck out. And the soap's just sitting there and it's it in its own like soap. I've heard many people say, soap, it washes itself. Get it?
It's soap, but I just don't like it. It's a mental thing. Same way that I don't like public restrooms. Somebody suggested to me that nobody uses washcloths anymore. And I'm like, I use two washcloths every time.
I don't understand. Like, look, there there's like if unless you have like super mega, super mega uh water pressure, right? Like a a some form of wiping device is like necessary to abrasively remove the film of filth that gets on you from living in a real city. You know what I mean? Or even like let's say you don't, then you like you know live somewhere where there's a lot of dust around.
Like, you know, Jackie Molecules was here, he's from uh Washington, DC, which is just a large dust cloud. You know what I mean? Uh when it's not being a slump, you know. Uh and uh you ever been to the mall in the summertime, people? Yeah.
It's like being in a freaking rodeo. It's like dust everywhere. It's nightmare. That's true. Well, but legs are but if you're but if you're using the washcloth, how do you get your hair on the soap?
No, I don't. I don't use bar soap. I I guess you're right. I could I look, I guess you're right. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I this is so much information.
Whatever. I just I feel like I'm giving issues now? Well, I feel like the bathing issues is getting is this gonna loop back to cooking somewhere? You know that uh it used to be many years ago, I'm sure the science is a lot better, but in the 80s they did a study of San Francisco sourdough uh sourdough starters and found that one of the bacteria is mostly from human gums. Ooh, huh?
There you go. Wait, but Lou, can you talk about what you're doing uh with us and Jay later this week? Uh clearly not cleaning our feet. So what we're gonna be doing on Friday evening, it's is it six o'clock? 6 30.
6 30. At 6 30 is we're gonna be tasting through five agave spirits, airlumagave spirits. Um not certified as mascot, just agave spirits, uh, as a fundraiser for uh Heritage Radio. Woo. Okay, so let me get let me let me get this.
So you are you are very much for disallowing things to be called just agave spirits and crushing the small farmers that don't fit into the uh denominations, right? I'm just kidding. I just messing with you. No, I think that's Lou is big Mezcal only. He is on a big Mescal train.
In a really weird way, yes, he is. And it's in a kind of like a rising tide lifts all ships sort of way. I think that's Lou's. But don't you think they speak for you? Don't you think it's ridiculous that we have like I mean, isn't isn't like something like Ricea just mezcal from Jalisco?
I mean, like, really? And honestly, isn't it? Well, it depends on how you're defining Mescal. See, like, oh man, you're gonna get me all police. Isn't sparkling wine from California champagne?
I mean, no, you're being ridiculous. No, no. Uh oh, no, no, that is the biggest load of horse hockey I've ever heard in my entire life, Jack, because the category is a swoop down fart a name onto stuff that already existed anyway. Unlike champagne, which is a region, uh, find the place called like I am mezcal, and then like, you know, we can go to it. But it's already spread all over the freaking map anyway, and it was pooped on to something that already existed.
Yeah, yeah, this was a word that was stolen. It was stolen by uh the Mexican government from the people, and it makes me nuts. So is is Ricea just mezcal from Jalisco? It used to be until the Mexican government stole the word. Unfortunately, you I mean you can say it, but it's inaccurate now because it can't be Mescal because it's not certified as Mescal, right?
This is the whole point is the Mexican government stole that word. And it's and it's cutting out, it's cutting out people who really did build the reputation of what is uh considered Mescal. Okay. Okay, okay. All right.
By the way, is one of those that you're tasting the one that you sent me in the mail? I've got a bottle that's sitting right outside the studio right now. And I've got a related product, something very stylistically similar from a town a couple towns over in MitroCon, but it's also kind of different. Do you want to make that stuff magically appear in the case? I brought Copetas.
I I can definitely make this materialize. Alright, right, all right, all right. Let's do this. Uh, and then I'm also gonna read you my uh poem. And so I can get your reaction to it.
James, you ready for the poem? I'm here ready for the poem. All right. Mezcal mezcal tastes real good. Mezcal mezcal needs no wood, i.e.
for for. And if you say it tastes like smoke, James Schroeder thinks you're a Jamok. That I think all that's very accurate. Yeah, yeah. Okay, now sing them the jingle for granular so.
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My name is Diane Stemple. And I'm Elena Santigade, and we're the hosts of Cutting the Curd here on Heritage Radio Network. Featuring interviews with makers and mongers and everybody in between, this show is a downright funky look at the world of artisan cheese. You can find cutting the curd wherever you listen to podcasts and on heritageradio network.org. So why do you dislike that as you think it's just because it simplifies it too much?
I think I think there's no way to not simplify this stuff. When we're looking at agave spirits in general, you've got this giant gradient of traditions and different names and different techniques. And even there's no clean way to divide this at all. Even just the idea of agave distillates. There's people doing weird stuff out there.
There's things that aren't made from agave that fit within the family of agave distillates. It's its own thing, but it works and functions very much the same way. So there's no way to divvy this stuff up and except on like a micro-micro level. Like the smaller you focus in, you can make similarities. There's similarities between these two products that brought it because they're made a couple times over by people who use really similar techniques.
I noticed you didn't cover Sotol in your book. Is it because you did you're like, I have to draw the line somewhere and there's just so much? Pretty much, yeah. I mean, it it almost everything in there is applicable towards Sotol. There's some specific concerns with the plants uh that go into it.
They grow a little different. Um but yeah, just try to make it a little tighter scope. Also, if any of you uh if any of you folks out there are like uh wildcrafter only kind of folk, you should call in and talk to James about his beliefs on uh the future of cultivated quote unquote wild varieties. Because it's kind of an I think it's gonna be an interesting, it's gonna be an interesting thing uh going forward, uh how this how this plays out. But you're you have a very like wait and see but hopeful look about cultivating these things rather than just uh harvesting them out of existence, right?
Right, and it's happening. It's already all over Mexico. There's already people thinking about the future and planting. And you know, I think one of the things in traveling around a lot in Mexico, you just see an abundance of agave everywhere. As much as I'm worried about the wild ecology of it, there's a ton of plants in the ground that are just growing wherever they grow.
I was with Lou in Ixcatlan. My God, there's so many agave's growing around there. So it's, you know, I I think the shift over to cultivation is more like a smart economic move. Uh and kind of people plan it for their own futures a little bit. But it's gonna change how things taste, but in a way that I won't be able to predict, you know.
Now give us the 30, give us the 30 second plug on uh I know that you like you're kind of like over people only talking about agave varietals so you like push it towards the end of the book. But uh but give us the 30 seconds on the 30 seconds on the agave varietals. Just it's like especially say Madriquish a bunch. Madriquiche. Yeah yeah it's uh the agave varietals in general you're looking at uh like grapes to wine you know you're dealing with a set of flavors you start out with and then fermentation layers so much on top of that in such an ineffable way because you don't even know what critters are going on in the fermenter.
Um all spontaneous all wild fermentation across the board except for tequila it's kind of the stepchild yeah uh well if the stepchild were suddenly take over and crush the world is pretty is pretty darn successful but generally speaking no wild fermentation there but yeah you just I'm somebody's stepchild. Really? I'm two people's stepchild two separate people's stepschild are those two people happy about that we just gotta know. No I think so I think so. Alright so what are we tasting here?
Or I should say what are we not tasting? Not at all. Uh we've got this is the uh this is the guy that uh I brought out or I sent out originally so I I was not able to find this on the internet's Jose Inés Vieira's uh well I can't read, I can't read you right here. So Jose Ines Viera, uh, it's a Gabe Cupriada out of Mitroacan. Uh little little tiny town, town of about 30 people.
It's called El called uh El Agua Catito. Um super tiny little speck of a place. This guy makes really good stuff. Uh pretty high elevation, it's a little bit kind of lactic. Uh you get that kind of cheesy, kind of funky sort of thing going on.
Uh underground fermentation in wood uh distilled in copper pot stills. It's copper with a wood head on top of it. Oh, cool. Let's try it out. And while you're doing that, is my memory.
Uh I first met you years ago uh when you were um you know with the uh with the Rick Bayless Empire, and uh I I think he's he's a good guy. I like him. Absolutely. Yeah. Uh and uh I'm pretty sure I went to your house and you had a trained cat.
You went to my house, I had a trained cat, you commented on an analytical uh chemical engineering book that I had, textbook, and then we ate Red Hot Ranch shrimp and drank so tall on the patio of Red Hot Ranch at 4 a.m. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. I'm pretty sure that's what happened. I need to hear more about the cat.
Yeah, yeah. And this is Nastasi, by the way, claims that she can train a cat. Let's hear her say it. I can train a cat. To do what?
To be good. What the hell does that mean? I have seen Nastasia Lopez walk up to like what amounts to an alley cat, like a wild fair island cat, pick it up, and like just shake it, like shake it, and be like, come on, cat, and then like grab a tin and like and like I've never seen anyone freak out a cat. I mean, like a cat, you can freak out a cat and it's like meow! But she's like, she freaks out of cats because the cat's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So you you taught a cat to pee on toilet on the toilet I tried once, it was on the susceptible that starts small the seat that starts small.
I'm sorry, I have only the one toilet. It's it's the size of itself regular size toilet you know I read I read on the internet and oh it wasn't even the internet didn't exist in I had a book an ask the god book what it said that what you do is you know that old trick that you're supposed to do that doesn't really work where you put the plastic wrap over the toilet and then someone poops on it and the poops on their butt you familiar I am familiar with that's a definitely yeah it's a thing it's a thing uh don't do it I've never done it don't do it I thought it was so they pee in it splash I don't know I don't know definitely definitely never high tank me anyway if you want to bring up the something uh anyway so point being that the theory was is that to get your cat to do it you would plastic wrap your toilet seat and throw some kitty litter on the plastic to get it into the habit of jumping up and using the kitty litter that was on top of your toilet bowl and then eventually it would go be like I could eat it nostalgia's saying no no they have toilets where you just put seats where you just put this the larger seat with a smaller circle on your thing and then it starts because the disincentive to the cat is you bought the wrong toilet no and then you the comfort on a regular toilet situation. But like if a cat sees like if a cat sees a coffee cup they're like that's the right size and then they pee in it. No it's a training tool. You're a training tool for sure.
Alright now James what did you train this cat to do this by the way smells fantastic. Yeah it's uh it's excellent I think we should drink some of it uh I trained my cat to he can wave on command he can high five nice um I make him like wave for his food every day. He's very, very food motivated. This is Maverick. Shout out to Maverick.
Good name. It's excellent cat. Super old. He's like 14, 15 years old. I'm trying to think.
He does uh he'll like like play dead, basically. Like he'll lay back on his on his back and if you don't want a 14-year-old to be able to do that. Is that a trap dead? Is that a trap though where he wants you to rub his belly and then he attacks? Yes.
Cats. But it'll do it on command though now. Nice. Yeah, we need a fifth vessel. Don't worry, we can sh we can split.
So listen, so uh, ooh. That's nice. So explain uh no mouth noises, sorry, that was me. Uh so uh why don't you explain what's going on here? And by the way, all of you people who are listening to this, sorry, chumps, you can't taste it because I'm pretty sure this stuff's unavailable.
This is the mean thing to do to somebody. We're tasting something, we're tasting unobtainium. How much of the love of Mezcal is the unobtainium aspect? An awful lot of it. I think, you know, so many, there's like a collector's market, there's people who like bring stuff back in their suitcase, and you know, it's all super rarefied and all that.
But yeah, a lot of it's just the fact that it's ineffable. Even this, like batch to batch. We were tasting through this guy's stuff, and this particular batch was super, super dope. And there was some other stuff that he had that was good, but it's just different. So, you know, even within one single producer, we're just focusing on a moving target, you know?
Yes, that's me. Yeah, is this the guy who uh he was mixing the batches? Yeah, he was proofing like per small container and he didn't vat everything together. So all the kind of like these oddball like different cuts in each little thing, but they were all the same ABV. So from different like little micro segments of the distillation, and then he would just put some of the first one in this container and then proof it down with tails.
Okay, that one's good. So nothing ever got vatted together, so it was never consistent. So each individual container was totally different than other containers. Wow. Yeah, so so in fact, then uh uh Dave, you're wrong.
We can bring some of that to the tasting on Friday so that some people can taste it. There you go. Yes, please. And how do people get this? Uh how do people get to this tasting?
How does this happen for people? Uh we have like, I think literally about five tickets left. Go to heritage radio network.org/slash sacred and get them while they're going. Where is the tasting again? At El Cortez, uh, the corner of Ingerham and Bogart Street.
I know where Bogart is. What the heck's an Ingerham? Ingraham. It's like you know where our building is um down the corner? It's just right.
It's like two blocks from Roberta's. Is that a real neighborhood or is it like this? Ah ha ha it's the what? This is not a real neighborhood. Why do people like live here?
This is a warehouse district. If you're gonna live here, at least have the good sense to have a giant space and be an artist who needs to weld stuff all the time. That's me. I just I I'm welding every day. You should be welding every day.
Welding is amazing. So okay, so uh Jack, what are your thoughts on this product? It's excellent. Like the thing that drives. Oh my god.
The thing that draws me to mezcal is the the wild fermentation aspect of it and the hand of the maker aspect of it. Like it's not about the rarity, it's that like you can taste a person's hands and in it every time. You just nostasi just gave you the gross face. Taste the person's hands. Yeah.
Taste the hands. Cannot taste their feet. No. Nastasi, what do you think? I think it's good for Mesco.
Oh, that's cool. Not everything's for everybody. That's okay. It's controversial. Not everything's for everybody.
So what do you have you tried this uh South African uh agave from the transplant? Uh South African, it's called Four Rabbit or something like this. I have not. I've heard of it. I have not tried it.
Leon. So uh here's another uh thing I was curious about. Have you ever tried um Jerusalem artichoke distillate? No, I haven't. It's also Inulin-based, so it needs to be cooked for a long time the way Agave does, but I doubt it's gonna taste even remotely similar.
I looked it up. Uh agave, as you know, is uh a monocot, so it's like you know, more closely related to grass than it is to uh, let's say roses or a dandelion or something like this. Uh and Jerusalem artichokes are uh from the Aster family, so they're like they couldn't be they couldn't be more separated as flowering plants, practically. Uh but I don't know, I'm interested in trying, I'm interested in trying any sort of have to cook it a long time to get the sugar out of it to see kind of how much similarity. Also, I don't think Drusalom artichoke as fibrous.
Although Nastasia gave some much that we say fiber to her friends in the form of undercooked uh Jerusalem artichoke, knowing she would give them severe gastrointestinal distress. Ooh. That's cold. But delicious. You know, they're delicious raw.
I'll I'll take the damage. Do you know who really really really likes uh the uh undercooked Jerusalem artichoke is the bacteria in your intestine when they inflate it up to the size of a balloon? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yes. And then you put the plastic on your toilet seat.
Put the litter litter. Yeah. But you don't need to worry because someone's already put some uh in the actual toilet in the uh in the high tank there. They've uh they have upper deck. That little upper decker mixed savage upper decker.
Yeah, worst. Worst, worst. You have we have a mezgal question from the chat. Love it. What do you got?
It might be a bit blasphemous, but it always seems to me that the process used for making tequila, uh stainless steel cookers, would be better able to let the characteristics of specific types of agave come through in the final product. Why aren't people making a distillate from different types of agave, but using the tequila process? That's fair. I think that's a fair assessment. But what so uh my argument would be I think that this is all about the process.
You know, the the agave itself is bringing a good handful of flavors to it as a really uh aromatically rich source material for making spirits. Then you've got this crazy wild fermentation on the top of it. You're layering flavor on flavor on flavor on top of it, the roast, the slow caramelizing, and almost the kind of burning of the outside of the sugar on the agave pancas. Like that's I think that's so uh crux of what uh mezcal is in general. Like that is that is the category of mezcal.
You're tasting this whole event that happened over the course of a week or so. Uh the question is, wouldn't it be interesting to taste it? Taste a product, maybe not mezcal, that is just without those other things, just a plant. Yes, I would say it would be interesting. I would like to taste that.
Yeah. But it it exists. It's called Zignum. Wait. There's it it Lou is speaking about a large multinational owned uh distillery in Oaxaca.
No. No, it's owned by a woman. She happens to also own the rights to Coca-Cola in Mexico. Uh but it's just one person. But but she's she's literally making an espadine distillate that is certified as mascot, but it's made in the same industrial way that tequila is.
But not that some tequilas are, not all tequila is. But I mean, still using espadine and not like one of the other weird other we're talking about other varietals as well. Like seeing the diversity, you don't know what flavors agave tepestate or madruce is bringing to the table. Because you don't you haven't ever tasted it on its own. You've only tasted it cross-comparatively with stuff that somebody else has made.
Yeah, fair enough. But you could certainly compare the blue Weber of tequila to the Espedine of Mescal. It was made the exact same way. Yeah, right. The question is, what would happen if you what would happen if you used like a completely different I'm I would I would taste it.
If you made it, I would taste it for sure. I would think it'd be good as a as an experiment, as like a thought experiment, as like a teaching tool, but I don't want to I probably wouldn't want to sit around and drink it. You guys, you can't. After all of your non-snob talk, you're like, I wouldn't want to sit around. What about our weights that are using cenizo in Durango?
Oh, like 618, yeah. So there's a producer in Durango that uses agave during seas, and they're super like they use the word industrial in describing their process, which I'm so all about that they own the way they do it, and they talk about it straight up. Can they listen to ministry? Maybe. That'd be amazing.
We gotta go down there if they do. Yeah, yeah. Jesus did in fact build my car. Uh now It's a love affair. Mainly Jesus and my hot rod.
Anyway, uh so uh James, you have a book out called Understanding Mezcal. And here's some things I learned in your book. Uh I didn't realize how atypical the cutting process was in the distillation. You want to talk about cutting in uh mezcal versus in other spirits? Sure, there's absolutely no way to simplify it.
It's like the hardest thing. You're you're you're dealing with liquid that's constantly changing as it comes off the still in terms of alcohol percentage, the flavors that are there, all of that. And generally the distiller will take uh different selections of that, vat those things together, and then use different proportions of those two things to try to adjust to end up getting the actual ABB that they're looking for. So you got the heads, which normally I say spirits, I say a heads, you're scared, like this is the thing that's gonna hurt me, right? It's got methanol in it, a bunch of nasties.
Uh because of some special tricky things with agave, uh, methanol generally comes off mostly in the tails. So you're able to take that earlier cut. Uh and that's super high ABB, like 70% alcohol, somewhere around there. Uh and then you take a uh tail end of the distillate, they call puntas or uh colas, excuse me, uh, and then use that 20, 30% alcohol, and they use those two things together generally to adjust. Some people don't adjust with the tails, they just adjust with colors.
Can you imagine adjusting with the freaking tails like in a whiskey? I mean, can you imagine that? Or like like not getting rid of the pop skull in that? You know what I mean? It would be really raucous.
I mean, there's a reason it's called pop skull, pop skull, smoking, pop skull. You know what I mean? It's like anyway. So, like, I was shocked, I did not know that. That was interesting fact.
And there's no like true to form way of doing it. It's it is uh some people include the heads and some don't. Some people throw away the first thing and some people don't. Some people throw away a couple liters off the front, some people don't throw away anything off the front. They literally just run the still straight through.
And I did I did not know that. That I was shocked to find that out. Also, how do they replenish the water in the top of a traditional clay skill still? Uh in a traditional clay still with a pan on it, yeah. Just have like a running water source that'll go on like a little hose or something, and then like have a little offset uh off outlet on the side of it that runs into another hose that runs it away somewhere.
Right. So uh, I mean, like you were talking about efficiency and stills, and efficiency can mean many things. To me, efficiency means heat in cooling, like how efficient is it at producing a liter of alcohol per um per like input of energy in form of heat and or in the form of cooling with water. And when people forget about distillation, don't forget this, people. That everything you boil off, you have to recondense.
This is the mistake everyone always makes. They shaft themselves on the condensing end of their still uh apparatus. They don't provide enough cooling power. This is especially true in rotovaps, because in regular stuff you just turn up the water flow and because you don't need very cold temperatures. But I'm talking about you rotovap freaks out there.
I love you talking about efficiency in rotovaps when part of our process at Booker and Dax was literally rubbing butter around the outside. Whenever you say rubbing butter, you also have to say blah blah blah. So the uh, but the the interesting thing is is that is that efficiency, so I would have guessed that the actual input efficiency of these things is quite low because it has fairly small amount of cooling capacity uh for the size of thing that you're working. But when you talk efficiency, you're talking distillation efficiency in terms of ethanol per run, ethanol percentage per run. And you're saying that because of the you know, kind of relative amount of product that recondenses inside of the still and goes back down in, and the way that these kind of what you would think of as relatively um you know technologically non-advanced stills, uh, they actually produce a higher uh distillation efficiency and so don't need to be run through as much for a particular ethanol level.
True. Yes, exactly. They're choosier, they're better at separating things from other things. You're you get more alcohol and less water early in the distillation, and you get more water and less alcohol later in the distillation than a less distillation efficient still. Right.
So it has more as like uh as uh like a European distiller might say, kind of imaginary plates in it. By plate, uh it's too complicated to do it. Too complicated. Also, what about the copper? Now you're saying you were hating on copper, not hating on it, but you were saying that you think that the whole copper thing is a load of garbage.
I've distilled rum without copper and it tastes nasty. Like, have you tried distilling any other distillates in a clay still without copper and seeing whether they're good? Is there something weird about agave distillates that means you don't have to have the copper? Because I've tasted products that were distilled without copper, and they were bad. You're asking a really good question.
And like in the in the book, I say specifically that uh the distiller I call it's Don Q rum, and they have a giant stainless uh column still, and they have one single copper plate in it. And it's like, I don't know, it just makes it better. And that's a chemical engineer telling me that. And I'm like, got it. Like, I'm not gonna be able to understand this, right?
Yeah, I mean, I mean, like the the way the story goes, it's been told to me is that the reason stills were made out of copper is because it's easy to form and easy to solder. Right. And it conducts heat rather well, uh, etc. etc. It's good for a bunch of stuff.
It's good for a bunch of stuff. You can easily get copper sheet goods. Uh, you know, it just makes your life a lot easier if you're gonna go out and illegally make or even legally make stills. You know what I mean? Uh you can hammer it real well.
I mean, it's just it copper is just a really nice thing to work with in general, except for the cost. It's expensive. Uh, you know, especially for things like condensers. I mean, can you beat a copper for a condenser? I'm telling you you can't.
Uh you know what I mean? But in terms of just you know, efficiency. I guess silver. But yeah, anyway, but like the thing is is that who the hell's gonna do that? Yeah, make a silver still.
Oof, oof. Uh so they made them with copper originally, and this as the story goes, there is some reaction, may or may not be understood. I haven't researched it recently. Uh, and then when they move to stainless uh stills and other still materials, they're like, this sucks. And then someone was like, What's the difference?
Maybe it's the copper. And so they put some copper in and all of a sudden it was good again, and they're like, I don't need to know why, I just need to know. Yeah. That's how I run my life, by the way. I don't even know why, I just need to know.
Uh, Jack's giving me the F U face. Anyway, uh, so I don't I don't hate on copper though. I I just I know I don't understand it very well, but the the flip side of that that I don't get into in it is that in a lot of configurations with a c uh clay pot still, you don't use any copper at any point, is what you're saying, right? And that's super fascinating. And I don't know what another spirit would be like through that.
It'd probably be really weird. Huh. What are the pans made out of? Not copper. Well, they can be made out of copper, they can be made out of stainless steel.
Sometimes they're made out of like less savory stuff like tin, um, like mezcal amarillo, they use like reactive metal and it turns the mezcal that comes out of it kind of like ruddy, like rusty color. I want that. Uh I don't think it's good for you, but other than that. I mean, how much am I gonna drink? Speaking of, pour up, fool.
Ah. Uh it not being good for us has never stopped Dave or myself before. So uh someone explained to me, uh someone first described for those who uh I mean uh obviously the Spanish word, but explain copita and kind of like the cultural uh the cultural social aspects of drinking mezco. There's no uniform set of rules. Every place it's different.
In the north, they drink out of uh cow horns oftentimes. Gross. It is it it's and they smell very meaty. It does definitely impart. I've drunk a lot of stuff out of cow horns.
Gross. We used to have something called in college, we had something called the party horn, and it was a moose call, and it had an umbassure glued in the bottom, and it had a leather thong around the cow horn, and you would wear this cow horn, full-size cow horn, and then this I shouldn't describe this as terrible, and you'd put a bunch of, you know, I don't know, gin and sprite, whatever it was back in the day, into the cow horn, and you would drink it and then blow the moose call at the end, and might surprise you to know that after one very long night I woke up without the moose call, someone had stolen it. Ugh. That's a sad story. The party horn was gone forever.
What is it with people stealing things that are special and important to us? I don't know. People are bad. What else was stolen? Our bathroom devil?
Oh, yeah. Your bathroom always has like stuff ripped off the wall, doesn't it? Well, we screwed a painting on backwards so that people could just write on it and send it to me. Someone tried to rip it off. It's crazy.
It was screwed into the wall and then was torn free almost. They want a souvenir. Alright, Jack. Garrett Richard's supposed to call in and plug his thing, but he didn't. Oh, yeah.
So can you find the information and plug it for me? Yeah, it's happening this Sunday at the Rains Law Room at the William Hotel. What time? I will find the time for you. And describe what it's called.
He, by the way, is exotica night. He is our resident kind of tiki guru at the bar, and he says stuff that makes me make kind of a vegan face, but his taste is really good. And so he has a lot more latitude than almost anyone that I I work with on giving me like eight billion ingredient cocktails. True or false, Jack? True.
Alright, now describe what we're drinking. Oh, this is uh little something different. So this is not a gave cuperiata from Michael, this is agave in a kittens. Uh in the town of Rio de Paras, they uh tend to use that a little bit more often. Uh some of this is a Whoa, fermented with pulque?
This is fermented with poke, so they use poke as a fermentation starter. I've never had real pulquet, I've had canned pulquet, which is garbage! Yeah, we gotta change that. Gam polque garbage, right? Camp okay is not worth your time.
I was like, I had it and I was like, I do not like this, but I'm not judging pulquet based on this. I think poke is a great word. It's a good word. Pulke. Right?
Yes. Alright. Uh all right. While Jack's fighting that, Nastasi and I are considering doing a short web series where uh she sits there and makes fun of me while I review old kitchen equipment, like weird old kitchen equipment. I have one of them.
I'm not gonna say what it is, but I have one. But if any of you have uh weird old kitchen equipment ideas for us to or gadgets that you think might be funny for us to test out. Now, in this one that I have, uh just so you know, I'm gonna have to pull out a little science, I'm gonna have to pull out a multimeter. There will be yelling. Nastasi will make fun of me.
I haven't even recorded it yet, and yet I know all of these things. So uh if you have any ideas, send uh tweet them on over to um cooking issues. Also, uh I was looking up, you know who's still alive, people? Ron Popeel is still alive. He's like 83 years old.
You guys know who Ron Popeel is? No. Mr. Set It and Forget It. Mr.
Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mr.
Wait, but wait, there's more. Mr. Like uh, you know, uh Ronco Rotissory oven. Yeah. Yeah.
Still alive. Uh Nastasi, we should try to get him on the show to talk about that would be incredible. Ron Popeel on how he came up with all those kitchen gadgets. Yeah. From one gadget crew to another.
We should get a bunch of them before and try and cook a bunch of stuff in them. We should, and that's why I thought of this because I was looking up some Ronco products for the for you know what Nastasi's gonna do. And I was like, Oh, Ron Popeel, he's dead, right? And not only is he not dead, he's from New York, and he's like 83, so you never know. Yeah, well, who is it?
Malcolm Gladwell that wrote the the short piece on him. I don't know. I believe so. Yeah. Very interesting.
The t the tipping of Ron Popeel? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Nastassi, you gonna do that? You're good at that.
I am talking about it. For while she's pulling that up, uh Garrett's thing is this Sunday, uh, April 28th, at the Rain's Law Room at the William Hotel. Doors at six. He goes pretty late. I've gone after service in the past and continue to be served cocktails until around two.
Now, in did he doesn't dressed in black for this. Is he full tiki out? Full tiki, and it is a sight to behold. Different outfit every time. Worth it just for the outfit.
Worth it just for the bolo tie. Because g Garrett, Garrett, first of all, he has an excellent collection of bolo ties, including a sparkling kind of like Easter Island head bolo and like yeah, yeah, yeah. But the th the thing also is a he's not merely interested in tiki the drink. Like he is. No, he's fully embedded in the culture and has been since high school somehow.
Yeah, he is like discovered the music and then whatever the cosplay equivalent of tiki is, he is. No, he it's not cosplay. That's just life. Wait, what's what's cosplay? Cosplay is when you like are a person and then you also dress up as a character.
But he's not dressing up as a character. He is the kicker. He embodies the lifestyle. Yes. Alright, that's fair.
And he would do that at the bar where we do not have an all black dress code. Can't he get black on black tiki? If he he's he's actually actively searching for it. Okay. Uh so any uh any last words, uh, James on training cats, on uh Mezcal, on the tasting that's coming up.
Super excited for the tasting. Oh, by the way, this is uh this is delicious, much more austere than the first guy though. Yeah, this is that a bad thing to say or no. Yeah. Yeah, austere is a very fair statement on it.
Still kind of lactic. You're dealing with really um kind of cold weather at night. Uh this guy ferments in giant uh he has one giant fermenter uh that's super deep. Uh goes probably ten feet underground. It's about two thirds submerged in the ground out of concrete.
So concrete. Alright. There you go. Alright, so any last uh any last things. Thanks for coming on.
Of course. Yes. Can I get a last word in? Yes, of course. I just can I get two last words in?
Yes. You get two. Alvin Schultz. Okay, I just wanted to say that. Now he's gonna be so happy.
I saw him in Houston. I forgot to mention Nastasi and I were in Houston uh, I don't know, like what is that? Four days ago, five days ago? Yeah. From the Facebooks and the Instagram, it seems like he's he's killing the world right now.
Just like I didn't recognize it. He was looking, he's looking fantastic. You know, I think years ago he came to Booker all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh anyway, yeah, it was good.
It was good to see him. And he had distilled for us uh a a uh he I guess blended or infused tomato plant into a mezcal and then roto vaped it out and boomeranged that to us at UB Preserve. By the way, big shout out to UB Preserve. We had a good time uh over there. Big shout out to Nick Wong in general, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, and the whole crew, they did a great job. We had to do, I was forcing them to do a lot of like kind of like our stuff, and they did a really good job. You know what I mean? It was cool. I enjoyed it.
Nastasia did not enjoy it because Nastasia has just now learned that the liquid bread carbonator caps are now manufactured in such a way that they cross thread like a mofo on soda bottles. So Nastasi and I went just gotta have a feel for it. There's some very good thrift shops right near UB Preserve. Shout out to Pavement. And uh when we went there, like uh Nastasia was like, here's what's gonna happen.
We're all gonna buy something and wear it at the thing. I'm like, you're only saying that because you don't have to be in front of the people, you can do whatever you want. But Nastasia bought, I I have to say, I feel it a lot of crack on her outfit. I liked her dress very much, but she sprayed it with free game cranberry juice. She sprayed it with cranberry juice.
With vodka crayon? Yeah, with vodka crayon. It was seven dollars, so. But it's still, but it's it's the amount of money you spent's not important. It's that it was worth more than what you paid.
I bought a pair of cowboy boots, lizard skin. Lizzie's skin. Wow, yeah, yeah. A little high. Uh I now know how a woman's calf feels.
What? No, you can say it. Say it into Jack's mic. But anyway, uh we had a we had a good time uh down there in Texas. That's more cosplay, me wearing cowboy boots.
Yeah, definitely. That's cosplay. And I didn't bring my hat. I legitimately wear, although I people when I wear my hats, they're like, eh, cowboy hat. I'm like, you're an idiot.
It's not a freaking cowboy hat. Doesn't look like a cow. I wear planters, I wear planter style with telescoped brim, you stupid joker. You know what I mean? But I don't know if you know this.
I don't know if people have looked at like seen pictures of me. I am white. I burn. I burn. And I also hat.
I hate, I hate uh sunscreen. People, the man suffered a terrible third degree burn on his entire back. He needs clothing and hats. That's true. That's true.
Even if I liked lotion, which I hate, right? Uh I don't know whether it's because of, you know, it puts the lotion on the skin, left a scar on me or what. Now I have that going through my mind. I used to be a non-lotion person and I became a lotion person, and let me tell you, Dave, it's gonna change your life. You gotta hydrate, man.
Yeah. It's so important. Especially with your skin. I hate lotion. So instead, I just wear long.
The only part of my body that's always exposed is the back of my hand. Listen, the only reason I stopped getting crazy fingernail infections was because I started moisturizing. As a bartender, the most important thing you can do is take care of your hands. Would you say this is a moisture management problem? Listen, it's a it's a miracle that I'm still here.
I like that this episode has become like a personal grooming episode. I know. I know. If any of you have any questions about it, 2019 self-care is important. I need a I need a good set of tweezers, speaking of.
Oh, I don't want to know why. No, all of my tweezers get thrown out or used for other stuff. So Jen, my wife Jen had like a like it's does anyone out there have jewelry drawers? No. No.
No, anyway, like she had like an old jewelry drawer and it was all thrown in. One of those little chains like wrapped itself around some costume jewelry in a way that's literally requiring a stereo microscope at my house. And then I realized I no longer have any tweezers to tweeze this stuff apart with. How am I supposed to fix this delicate chain without squeezes? And place your micro greens.
Oh my god. Micro greens, micro everything. You know how I feel. Thanks for coming in, James. Cooking issues.
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