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Their mission is to make an outstanding product in a safe and clean environment. To learn more, visit RT11.com. This week on a special bonus episode of Meet in Three, we find out why the bacon, egg and cheese, that classic bodega sandwich, is popping up on menus of New York's trendiest restaurants. We did a few iterations of it, and I was trying to fancify it. We tried the sausage egg and cheese, and then we tried to put shamula sauce on it.
We used feta cheese, and we just like taking ingredients of the Mediterranean, if you will, and try to infuse it. But uh for me it was like a car wreck. Tune in to hear about the wild journey of the bacon, egg, and cheese. From deli to fine dining on Meet and Three, HRN's weekly food news roundup, available wherever you listen to podcasts. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
How are you doing? Good. Yeah? Uh-huh. Yeah.
Matt and Booth, how you doing? I'm doing great. Yeah? Anything happened in the past week when we weren't here? Uh no, the place just shuts down while you're not here.
Oh, you didn't cook anything good, eat anything good, stab anyone, nothing? No, I went down to Shenandoah. Uh, I was looking for bear. He was gonna cook up some bear, but do they eat bear there? Is it bear season?
No, you're not allowed to eat the bears anymore. But they're supposed to be delicious. That's that's the lore. Um, ding ding. Young bear is supposed to be delicious.
Uh Nastasi and I have had old bear, like killed at the wrong time of year, and not good. Remember that? Yeah. It was not good. Where remember when we we bought some stuff from this guy?
But then Dave cooked a whole raccoon, right? And they were giving the this is at the FCA, they were giving the tour to a new potential student, and they would take him around to each of the kitchen classrooms, and Dave's sitting there with this whole raccoon. I think he had already deep fried it or something. Yeah, it was nasty to me. And then the kid, the stit potential student was like, what's he cooking?
And the tour guide was like, I don't know, baby. That's true. That's a true, that's a true story. I I don't think those people shelled out the money to go to the SCA. What age is raccoon delicious?
Uh I don't, not whatever we had. So, like, you know, it turns out we bought from this guy, this guy, I'm not even gonna say his name, but uh, he, you know, on his website, he was like, oh, everything is responsible, blah blah, USDA, like legal and everything. And then I talked about it on the blog, and a bunch of people, you know, wrote in and were like, a PS, this guy was arrested once for doing like illegal stuff. I mean, it's the kind of stuff where I was like, I'm never gonna order from that guy again. So we never ordered from him again.
I mean, there's an there's another outfit out that sells kind of like super rare exotic meat, but the problem with exotic meat that's not like if an animal's being raised for food, like in general, like it's slaughtered at the at you know, at a time anyway, that has some relationship to an economic value of when the either meat is good or in some cases, you know, wolf or sheep, whatever. But there's a reason why an animal was killed at that particular time at that stage in its life. A lot of the exotic stuff is like, I gotta go kill some raccoons now. So who knows? You know what I mean?
Or no, well, it's like, you know, like I got this lion, and I swear, like I got this lion, and uh it's eating me out of house and home, and it turned mean. I mean, who knew lions would get big, right? I mean, who could have predicted that that little cub would turn into a giant meat-eating dangerous animal that I have to have in a cage outside my house? Who could have figured that out? You know what I mean?
And so then they sell it to you know, this guy that we don't buy anymore, and then they, you know, it's kind of horrible, it's a horrible thing. So it's all these so the bear is probably an old circus bear, is what Nastasia is saying. Definitely, yeah, probably. You know what I mean? So it's like not not anything you want to support, but I will say that uh I've heard from hunters that you know, bear at the right time of year, the right age is delicious, but I have not had it that way.
And you can get, I think, commercially prepared and raised bear in in Japan, at least up in Hokkaido. You know, they're kind of famous for it, but I've never had bear. I was, you know, the one time I went to Japan with Nastasia, we didn't have bear. No. No.
Not that we know of. Yeah, yeah. Uh, so you know, I'm waiting, so I don't know. The answer is I don't know. I know that the raccoon I had, not delicious.
The beaver, delicious. Delicious. Uh I heard someone else on the internet bad mouthing uh beaver. Uh, hello, internet. I disagree with you on this point.
So uh somebody is on the phone with I think a piece of information, not a question. All right. Uh hello, caller on the air. What is your piece of information? Hey Dave, it's Andy in Chicago Land.
How are you doing? Doing all right, doing all right. What's up? Good. So as a fellow lover of most things, Neil Diamond, I wanted to defend Cracklin' Rosie.
Ooh, get her good on board, yeah. Legitimate song. Yeah, totally. So it's um the legend is that Cracklin' Rosie was this cheap sparkling rose wine that he heard of and wrote a song based on it. So it's a poor man's lady because it's cheap, you know, don't eat uh whatever.
What was the other thing? Oh yeah, it's store-bought woman. It's a bottle of booze. So you can go on loving it and not feel too bad about that song. Even though, you know, I think there's some other questionable Neil Diamond tracks.
That's it, like what's the what's the questionable one? LAS FINES on the time. Well, you know, the one that we all love to hate, and even even me, you know, uh Sweet Caroline? Yeah. Sweet Caroline.
Is it problematic from a lyrical standpoint or is it problematic because it's an awful song? Because everyone goes bah bah like what's the that's terrible. I mean part of my family show. Family show. Yeah, family show.
Yeah. Um but uh yeah, so I mean that's terrible, but also I think I heard that he wrote it after being inspired of a young Carolyn seeing a young Carolyn Kennedy uh on the cover of a magazine and it sort of sexualized her. So I don't know if that's really a problem. I don't know if that's really true, but how old was she he at the time? Like what was the spread?
Oh, you know, I mean, she was like, you know, pre-teen. Oh, gross. Oh, disgusting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, you know, I don't know if that's true.
Don't quote me on that, but you can well you can you can quote me on it as long as you say it's, you know, it's not authoritative. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, you know, he's still alive, we could ask him. You know what Nastasia's favorite is? Traveling was it, Traveling Brothers uh wait wait uh brother loves traveling salvation show traveling salvation show that album is the best it's as one of his first albums I think and it ends actually with Sweet Caroline but uh yeah that's a banger you should listen to the whole album Nastasi enjoys any situation where you physically have to lift the old ladies that's right yeah pack up the babies everyone goes you know you guys have all seen Hot August night right to the album I mean listen to the album oh my god oh yeah the album I know I think yeah that's what I meant that's all I meant um yeah so all right well that's it let me ask you one more question before you go how damaging was that wretched jazz singer thing to his legacy you know I don't even know I'm a fan of basically everything that happened around Hot August night and before so I don't even really know what do you think I don't know I don't think I mean like that was just a terrible movie situation was that his only movie was a nightmare it might have been yeah I I've never seen it I don't think I ever will um I just like to think of him as you know his his in his prime years in the you know late 60s early 70s and just kind of leave it at that time I used to sing the uh LA's uh Fine but it ain't home New York's home but it ain't mine no more to my sister in law Miley when she moved out to San Francisco, she was like, You're a jerk.
She moved back though. Yeah, it's a good one yeah that's a great song. Great song. Anyway, thanks so much for that information on SNL you ever seen that? No.
No. Oh my God. So good. He tells the quote unquote stories behind his songs. You gotta check it out.
I like I like Will Farrell and I like Neil Diamonds. And that seems like I've won twice. Check it out. Yeah. Yep, you certainly have.
Cool. I appreciate that. All right, Dave. Yeah, take it easy, man. Thanks, sir.
Oh, and on the subject of non-cooking related stuff, we'll just get out of the way now. I'm building a laser projector. That's just has nothing to do with anything. But I bought this crazy laser on eBay, a visible laser, and I was like, oh, it's it's only 800 milliwatts. How bad can that be?
Oh my god. When I turn that thing on, Nastasia, I accidentally burned through one of the wires because the beam was crossing the wire. And then I realized, thank God my wall is white. Or like I want to lit my wall on fire. It is crazy.
So dumb. What laser projector for what purpose? So I had this idea that like, wouldn't it be nice if your laser pointer could work like a highlight or an underliner where you could just underline something with your laser pointer? Yes. Yeah, they said I'm I'm building that.
Does it underline the thing by searing its way into the wall? No, no, no, no. When you're scanning it at a high kind of frame rate, you see the point the dot's not supposed to stay anywhere. There's two, there's two mirrors, galvanometer mirrors, they're like, you know, like we're going back and forth, and they trace the beam all over and you turn it off and on. So it's like spread out.
You know what I mean? Like it's not like a dot that you're sitting there. I just wanted one. Okay. Okay.
Ah, dog is night. Anyway, uh, so the uh anyway, I will I don't know. So if you're gonna go buy a laser on the internet, just you know, be careful. I mean, everyone says be careful. I knew to be careful.
Like I had the glasses and everything. I wasn't gonna shine it in my eye, but I was like, who thinks 800 milliwatts less than a watt is gonna ignite stuff in your house. Dax was pretty stoked. Dax walked up there with like matches and was just like lighting match after match after match with it. I was like, Robert from the chat claims that you're going to have a very tough time finding a lens that the laser won't burn and distort.
Oh, you're not we're not using a lens. So it's like it's literally just mirrors, and it's not like a high power and it's not uh IR. It's it's all visible, it's all visible light, and it's just mirror bouncing. So it you know, you and it all this stuff used to be fantastically expensive, but now for like $70 or less if you're willing to get it direct from China, you can get like dual calibrated like XY uh galvanometers, and uh, you know, you like a and the laser, you buy a uh you buy a an RGB laser now, also cheap, where they've already like aligned all of the all of the mirrors so that the beams are coincident, and it all comes in a box. You know what I mean?
So you buy like the laser box and it's got you know TTL, which is just you know logic inputs for turning the individual lasers on, you put that onto a microprocessor, the microprocessor drives a DAC, which is a uh digital audio uh thing, and then you just put that directly into the input of the drivers for the mirrors, and they sit there tracing stuff and you're done. It's like, you know, a little bit of programming on an Arduino, and you know, uh, and you're done. The hard part is getting uh is building the little uh nine axis the the nine axis degree of freedom like hand thing that I'm gonna use as the uh drawing thing. Well, whatever, this has nothing to do with cooking. This has nothing to do with cooking.
All right, uh, and also nothing to do with my job. And now Nastasia's mad because she thinks this is the new civil war because she's thought that I was spending all my time instead of working on our business, working on uh reading Civil War. What? Since when? Since when me and how's that Sous vide book going?
Oh, uh you know what? Yes. Is it going? I mean, ish. I w in fact, the classics in the field for the first time ever, the classics in the field is going to be something A, related to the to the book, and B, I don't have it with me.
I forgot to like get it or bring it with me or anything like that, anyway. We should do this because it's what's this? Oh, uh wait, wait, we were still talking about weird animals, right? Or we're done talking about weird animals. So raccoon bad.
Yak, great. Loved yak. Yak delicious. I would eat yak again and again. Uh beaver good, bear bad.
Uh guinea pig, very good. Remember when they brought it in and we were doing whole deep-fried cooey, the guinea pig? Yeah. That was very good. Cappy bearer, good.
Uh crocodile, we never had a, or alligator, we never had a good one, right? We had that in Florida, right? And it was terrible, right? It was garbage. Yeah.
I mean, or I've had it, you know, commercially prepared. Whatever. Anyway. Uh how did that come up? How did the weird animal thing come up?
Oh, yeah. In Shannon in Shenandoah. Listening to uh listening to John Denver before he moved out to uh freegan uh John Denver. What is the fact? Oh, Nastasia's famous.
Oh, I bought you. If we're doing this chicken cannon thing. I think we're doing the chicken cannon thing. Do you do we have do we have confirmation we're doing that? Not from your brother-in-law.
Anyway, uh, I bought you John Denver's Christmas album, so we can play it. But what does it have to do with the chicken gun? Just in general? Alright, yeah. So Nastasia, again, not cooking related, but Nastasia's favorite.
David is yours. We both. It's not, it's yours. You found it out, and you're the one that like fine. This is a classic Nastasia saying that something that is her favorite is somebody else's favorite because she's like, I'm a little embarrassed that it was.
Oh, speaking of a little embarrassed. I need people to tell me what they think the coolest karaoke place they've ever been to is. Nastasi and I, I've gone for the first time in my life to karaoke, so I'm in NeoPhyte. And I found that the system was garbage. So I want to hear from people like supposedly in LA there's a bunch of good ones.
Really? I spoke to Damon Harjoe Rogo at the bar, and he says that there's some good ones in K-town here that have like effects and stuff like that. He's gonna take us to one of the good ones anyway. I want to know what like the most like uh like tricked out. Wait, Carol the John Denver.
So John Denver. I mean, John Denver, voice of an angel, right? Acted in many famous versions of Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, you devil, like all of those things with George Burns. Uh troubled men. Anger, deep-seated anger.
I mean, among other things, right? I mean, there's like anger issues. Well, I mean, that's what we're talking about now. Yeah. But went through, you know, a nasty divorce, nasty divorce.
Where he had to give her half of everything. And shows up, walks up, and by the way, you should in your mind, I want you to be singing uh Grandma's Featherbed, which is uh one of his, you know, kind of good songs, right? You like that song, right? I don't know it. Didn't didn't get a lot of sleep, but we had a lot of fun on grandma's feather bed.
I don't know it. I don't know it. Anyway. Matthew, you know this song? Saucy, no.
Yeah. Uh, and at the end there's some muffled words about the girl down the lane. Anyway, it's a great song. Go listen to it. Uh goes into his four post featherbed.
Post divorce. Or during the divorce bed. During the divorce, and was like, half! Heff! Pulls out a chainsaw.
Cuts the bed in half and walks out. Now you're never gonna hear a John Denver song the same. Didn't get a lot of sleep, but we had a lot of fun on grandma's featherbead. Anyway, trying to follow the court's order. It's half.
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Join Heritage Radio Network on Monday, November 11th, for a raucous feast to toast a decade of food radio. Our 10th anniversary, Bacchanal, is a rare gathering of your favorite chefs, mixologists, storytellers, thought leaders, and culinary masterminds. We'll salute the inductees of the newly minted HRN Hall of Fame, who embody our mission to further equity, sustainability, and deliciousness. Join us to explore the beautiful palm house and yellow magnolia cafe at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where you'll taste and imbibe to your heart's content. And bid on once-in-a-lifetime experiences and tasty gifts for any budget at our silent auction.
Join the party. Tickets are available now at Heritage Radio Network.org/slash gala. Uh okay. So in from Long Island. Long Island?
Mm-hmm. Strong island. Does not wish to be identified. By the way, I want some people to write in. I know you write things to like words of encouragement to Nastasia about how terrible I am.
I've seen them. Uh I don't spare you any emails. But but will you please? This is a Long Island thing. Will you please write into her and tell her that before it's too late, she should allow herself to see a Billy Joel concert.
Please. Please. Why should you deny yourself this concert? I thought we were supposed to go. We were supposed to get tickets or like free tickets.
That's the only thing. How was that gonna happen? You said you knew somebody from MSG, anyway. When I was like 20, I knew the guy. You told me like like last year.
Anyway, whatever. Please enjoy the following. We have a striped bass filet that was caught this Sunday, but that's frozen or something, right? We can't eat that. That's for you to take home.
Okay. Uh masa, also not cooked, so we're not gonna eat it now, but it's made with macienda corn. Uh, and does this listener does not wish to be identified. No, Kevin from Long Island. Oh, Kevin, I think they signed a Capri Sun.
No, that's his email, and don't Oh, not what do you think about that beverage, Capri Sun? I love them. I have one flavor, Redberry Blast. Redberry Blast. So good.
That man, you and Booker, same exact human thing. Do you know that, like, uh, you know the company Honest Tea? Yeah. So they basically were like, the kids, they had kids apparently. This is the story that Booker tells me.
So it's filtered through Booker's mind. And I didn't bother researching myself. They had kids, and the kids were like, yo, we don't like tea. Make something for us. And they came out with honest kids.
This is a marketing genius thing because it's fundamentally capri son, and it just says honest kids on it. And so parents are like, it says honest kids, so I don't know. This box of sugar and water is better than the other one. And so they pound honest kids like the end of the world is coming. Jeez.
Yeah, Capri Sun. People are working on the Capri Sun uh cocktails. That's the thing. That's the thing coming up. Well, if like when you're on the beach.
No? No. No? What do you think of you like canned wine though? Yeah.
If in a pinch, we drink it. Well, I mean, like it's not like if you had a cooler and the cooler was full of beers and then rose wine, what are you gonna go for? Yeah. Do they put carbonated wine in cans? Sometimes.
Is that good? Lightly, no. You wish it was good though. Yes. That way you could be pounding.
Although you would get effed up hard. I get so. If if people that's the thing, is like they're gonna put it in a beer size can. They should put it in like a wine glass size can. They have like this thing called house wine that comes in a can and it's like it's like three glasses of wine, and how is that hey, sit there with a beer can and drink three glasses of wine.
Wide mouth. You know what I mean? Yeah, and if you're like keeping up with because you know you like kind of trying to up with your friends, yeah. Yeah, they should come in like a V8 can. Yeah.
That size. Yeah. Or slightly larger. Anyway, whatever. Uh partially dried uh Fuyu persimmon.
Do you like persimmon? Mm-hmm. I had some delicious persimmon from Korea that was given to us by one of uh Jen's uh my wife's workers, and then it went moldy. It was still good though. Not moldy like the mold we talked about before.
Moldy, okay, moldy. Uh summer sausage. Now, if any of you were alive in the 70s, summer sausage was my mom used to send me summer sausages in college. Oh yeah. Gift.
It's just like, I bet you miss this. Here we go. I bet you miss this. Was it full of like wet newspaper and tomato plants? Wait, what's the deal with summer sauce?
For those of us who weren't alive in the 70s. It's just alive in the summer. It was everywhere. It was like the thing. You went into Hickory Farms.
Yeah, you got their little like cheese whiz in like a piece of aluminum foil that said like something to fancify it. There was a summer sausage, there was like a port wine cheese thing, some crackers, and then a bunch of the Easter basket fluff. Yep. And then it was wrapped over. And like, you know, before Hickory Farms was in the mall, Hickory Farms was crap you ordered from a catalog that showed up at your house, and you had to wait several weeks.
And salumi wasn't a thing. Yeah. So then you would wait and it showed up. Then once it was in the once once you could just walk into a mall and buy it, I was like, the blush is off the rose. I was like, you know, nine, but something like that.
Summer sausage. So that was one of the things. That was like the hickory farm thing, right? I bet you miss this. But this summer sausage is uh not the Hickory Farm style.
It's a blend of hunted white-tailed deer from upstate and commercial pork. Uh okay. It's uh with a CH Hanson Safe Pro uh culture, which is the lacto culture that you use to drop the pH in it so that it's safe. Uh fermented in a bag to proper pH, then smoked. All right, you want to wanna.
Oh, it's um uh Elias Caro from uh Olympia Provisions, who is on the show while uh his his recipe with minor adjusted adjustments stored in the fridge since January of this year. I've been eating it since then, and then we got some Venetian jerky. Matt, you're having some of this. You heard what I called you venison jerky. Uh standard recipe with uh Handashi in it.
Hunted this, uh wait, hunted this white tail past Saturday, and you already have jerky. Man, you're prolific. And two different types of Chinese rice eel mold, which I also enjoy, and gets caramel creams, a man who knows my favorite candy. Now you eat this and we'll talk about it, and then while you're while you're eating, I'll be talking, and then you talk about gets caramel cream and our unsuccessful attempt to mimic it what we were trying to do while I eat mine. All right, alright?
Go. Okay. This the sausage is good. We try to make gets caramel creams, but with a coconut cream center, and it was we we were unsuccessful. I don't know why we were unsuccessful.
It was bad, but imagine people. That would be so good. Yeah, a coconut caramel cream with it. We get caramel cream. For those of you that have never been to the northeast or you know, Pennsylvania or anything, getz is spelled G-O-E-T-Z.
So it should be pronounced Gertz, but it's gets. And it says on the package, because they're sick of people mispronouncing the name, Gets. Let me ask you a question. Random question. You go to a bar.
I don't know. Let's say it's existing conditions, right? Okay, no, let's go to my bar. My favorite bar. Let's say you go to existing conditions and and you could buy Martin's pretzels in my favorite.
You know this. You've heard me talk about it a million times. What? Did you get them yet? Not yet.
So my question is what is reasonable to charge for like three dollars. Three dollars for three pretzels? Yeah. Alright. I love Martin's pretzels.
Martin's pretzels, the best. I had these people come up to me, people that I generally respect, and they're like, really genuine generally respect these people. This is a delicious sausage. They were like, it's really good. They were like, I don't like hard pretzels.
I was like, get out of my face. Don't talk to me for a week. They were some of your colleagues. Yeah, I was like, I don't want to see you or talk to you for like a week. Like, how do you not like a hard pretzel?
I like soft pretzels. First of all, soft pretzel, not really even a pretzel in my heart. Pretzel stick, not a pretzel, pretzels pretzel. And Martin's are like the best. Clearly.
If you've never had a Martin's pretzel. Oh my god, right? And some mustard. I need some mustard up in this. I need some mustard up in here.
Uh yeah. Let me get so you talk while I eat the jerk. When you finish eating the jerky. Jerky's good. What do you gotta say more about it?
Because I gotta have about five seconds to eat. Well, I'm worried about it. Why? Because you say that you're not supposed to eat you don't eat cow jerky. And you eat everything.
Like cow jerky? No, you say don't try. I don't eat cow brains. No, when we when we go on road trips, you say don't get the cow turkey, get the pig jerky. Or the turkey jerky, but not the cow.
I don't know. I don't remember saying this. Really? No, but you've said it three times. The best turkey jerky is the one from Lancaster County PA.
In the Lancaster County farmers market, there's a lady called the Turkey Jerky Lady, or something like this. And her turkey jerky is like the best turkey jerky if you like turkey jerky. Do you like turkey jerky? I like jerky. This is good.
I could use more salt and spices, no? You could. But no. Actually, you could not use any more salt or spice. I wish I could tell you the story of the Amazon person that I pissed off this morning.
Nastasia Lopez. I texted Dave. And I said, I'm an A-hole. Which, by the way, is the approved term. Please.
Yeah. Let's start calling each other A-holes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Go ahead.
That's it. You're not going to say anything more about it? No. Nope. Anyway, what do you think of the jerky?
I think it's good. I mean, I always add more salt. I always have. I don't think it needs more spice. I just like, I'm a salt fiend.
But the issue with jerky is that it's easy for it to go way too salty because you're dehydrating it. You know what I mean? You could post salt it or post-dust it. Anyway. I'm gonna answer some questions in a minute.
And then we gotta remember, we gotta get the classics in the field. We only have 10 minutes. And yesterday, you'll like this. Uh so we also we did Quest Love's event. We did Questloves uh book launch for the mixtape potluck last week, which is why we didn't have a show last week.
And uh that was mostly because I couldn't. And I had to do a I I had to do a cocktail that was almost entirely Grand Marnier, and Nastasia decided it was gonna be called one of my favorite things to say. It's a it was originally my grandpa lives in my driveway, but but Grand Marnier is grandma in bar parlance, and so we called it my grandma lives in my driveway. And so all of these people were like, uh, I'd like my grandma lives in my driveway. And I was like, and Peter came up and was like, my grandma lives in my driveway.
I'm like, are you mocking me because my grandma actually lived in my driveway? Peter came human punching back. Yeah, we've told that story on the air, right? My grandma lives in my driveway. You're not my grandpa, my grandpa lives in my driveway.
If there's a way to Google the episode where you talk about your parents' wedding or your mom and your stepdad's wedding, that's the greatest story ever. Really? Ever. The Jispiti. Yeah.
I try to like I don't know. To this day, I don't even know. I've never had a Jispiti. I don't know what it is. I don't know like how to translate like Neapolitan Boston diaspora.
Hey, what's the word that you say that I said what does it mean? Shkutengorp. I don't have any idea. Some of them I know what they are, but like they're just mutilated. Like Escongee.
You know, give you know what I mean? That means squid, right? Uh conch. Like, you know, welk, yeah. Give them the schutongee.
Give them the shk and gorp. Anyway. The other one I have no idea what it means. Someone who is fluent in this sort of in these sort of dialects can tell me. I just grew up hearing it.
I have no idea what it is. I got, hey, so like you know when uh you know when uh Charlie Brown like gets a rock in uh on Halloween? I got a rock, which is like terrible. You can see the rock getting thrown. It's pretty dark, those peanuts things.
Anyway, so in my stepfather's family, I got Codopolis. What? Cordopolis. What? Then the way I say it, it sounds like, you know, what's his name?
Uh Brad Pitt in uh Inglorious Bastards. Gorlami. But like Gerard, my stepfather Gerard is like, Codopolis. You know what I mean? It's like, there's all the someone someday will tell me what it means.
Jeff from Palm Springs writes in on eggnog. Could you discuss the safety of aging eggnog? Assuming it is safe, which it is, if it's aged long enough, why is it safe? Uh, how are those perishable ingredients preserved? Alcohol and sugar.
Uh what's happening in the process? This stuff dies from the alcohol and the sugar. Uh I enjoy your show, Jeff from Palm Springs. So, uh, every couple of years this crops up. The famous work was done by Rockefeller University.
Um there was a doctor there, Rebecca Lansfield, who was uh died in 1981. Uh she born in 1918, so she lived to a ripe bold age. And every Thanksgiving, now listen, this is what's important. She was aging from Thanksgiving to Christmas. So her recipe was a dozen eggs, a quart of heavy cream, a quart of light cream, a pint of bourbon, a quart of rum, nutmeg, and sugar to taste, one half to three quarters of a pound.
That's a nightmare of a recipe I know people, but this was in the 70s or whatever. She was writing this, so you know, cut her some slack. Uh in terms of units, it's a nightmare. Uh beat eggs, add bourbon and rum slowly with stirring to prevent precipitation of egg proteins. So she didn't ribbon the eggs, which is what a lot of people do in modern things.
Uh then here's the weird one. Beat heavy cream separately until it peaks and add to the egg bourbon rum mix. So uh, and then it's aged, but I'm gonna go ahead and say that maybe she adds the cream later. I don't know. Because why would you whip the cream, add it and then age it?
But she doesn't specify. Anyway, uh so it turns out that that recipe is 14.4% uh alcohol. And if she had aged it without the heavy whipping cream and put that in at the last minute, which is maybe what she did, then uh it would have been around 20. It has a bricks of about five to seven and a half percent. What's it supposed to be?
Eggnog. No, eggnog's supposed to be what. I don't know, but this is her recipe, that's all that matters. So they tested her recipe. Do you know what the alcohol percentage and eggnog normally should be?
No, because I don't make it, I don't drink it. I don't have a recipe for it in my book. I've never come up with a recipe for it. Do we make it one year? If by we you mean piper, I thought that was you.
No. Uh so they tested it. They they the issue is is that the uh the bacteria isn't killed right away, uh, but it doesn't grow anymore and it starts dying. So after a couple of weeks of aging, it is uh it is fully fine and and will stay fine. It does change over time.
Some people like very aged eggnogs, some people don't. Um, Kenji did some sort of tasting a couple years ago where they didn't like uh the eggnog after being aged for a year, but they were serving it at 20% alcohol, which is way more alcoholic than the Rockefeller uh recipe, so who knows? Nick Bennett from Porch Light ages it for a couple of years. We once had one that was like four years old and it was nasty. Guess what?
Nick Bennett's gonna use this year for Christmas. What? Wine Santa. Oh god. So wine Santa, I you know I don't have the time.
I don't have time. Uh Alex writes in uh interested in hearing uh Dave's opinion on space ice cream. I'm personally a huge fan. Thoughts, opinions, anecdotes, chemistry. I've made it, the stuff's just freeze-dried.
It's easy to freeze dry uh ice cream because it's already got a lot of air holes in it, so it's relatively undense. So the less dense the ice cream you start with, the uh easier it is to freeze dry. And because it's already kind of in a frozen state and you're not worried about collapse, you can just kind of take ice cream out of the freezer and freeze dry it. You don't need liquid nitrogen or anything crazy. So if you have any sort of freeze dryer, uh it's very easy to make.
I think it's okay in the way that like you know, marshmallows in a cereal box are okay. What do you think? Yeah, I don't, it's fine. But it's it's r it's like one of the easiest things to make in a freeze dryer and it's relatively stable, so uh, and it tastes relatively good compared to other freeze-dried things straight. Uh like, you know, the worst freeze-dried thing I ever freeze-dried, like oysters, oh my god, were they bad.
Remember that? No, I don't know. And clams. I don't know that it was with the God. Oh, it was canned clams.
I took canned clams and freeze-dried them. And imagine if the ocean came to rob your mouth of all of its moisture. Imagine if low tide, the personification of low tide, showed up and removed every speck of moisture from your mouth. That is what it tastes like. The trick with Oh, Davey, I got three minutes.
The tip with the trick with deep uh freeze drying is that there needs to be enough water in it for there to be a good texture when it's done, and there needs to be enough fat in it such that it's not intensely drying, or enough sugar such that it's not intensely drying when you eat it. That's the trick. Uh now, uh, and then we did this other thing. Okay, so. Oh, you didn't get the question I said, you.
Yeah, what? I did. Oh, country ham. Uh we'll do country ham next time. Uh, because I want to get maybe uh I'll get Chesare to see whether he can find the question was does anyone sell shank on country ham?
And I don't know whether anyone does in the US sell an American-made shanking country ham because even at the heritage places the the shanks are cut off. This Joe Ankowitz wrote in this book. I don't know, I'll think about it for next week. Cloth. So, in closing, we have a couple minutes.
Classic city in the field. So this week we're gonna talk about a book that was very important to me uh called uh Roasting, a Simple Art. You ever have that book, Nastasia? No. How many millions of times have you heard me talk about it?
Many. Really? So what so tell me, what am I gonna say? Something, I don't know. Ah, so you can see browning effects.
No. Uh different cultures roasting. No. Then get to it, Dave. So you've never heard me say it, you didn't say you had.
What? I've heard you talk about a book called Roasting. And then from there you spaced out, so you have no idea. Like okay. The book was made in 1995.
It was called Roasting a Simple Art. So Barbara Kafka, I actually had dinner with her once, which I'll get to in a second if I have time. Um, she wrote this book in the kind of mid-90s. And the uh I don't feel that people are reading it very much these days, but I think it's hard to kind of underestimate the effect it had, or at least the kind of ripples that were thrown into the cooking uh water by this book. Uh and in fact, it is one of the was one of the very couple of books that is really influencing, influenced me to the extent that I'm thinking a lot about it for the book that I'm writing about the miracle of moisture management.
And it's a big thick book, and it can be summed up basically with this turn your oven up. So all of the recipes in it are turn your oven as hot as it can get, you know, and put the stuff in. Take the chicken, turn your oven up to 500 degrees, throw it into the oven. Take, you know, take your potatoes, cut them up, toss them in oil, salt, pepper, you know, maybe some rosemary if your cheser, maybe some onions in there, uh, throw it into the oven at 500 and just cook it till it's done. And when you read it, it's one of those things almost like low temperature cooking where you're like, that's crazy, that's crazy.
Because when she was writing it in the 90s in 95, no one, no one was really thinking about what was going on in the cooking process to make to make things work and what the effect of jacking the temperature is. Instead, people like Julia Child were like bent because it fills your house with smoke. In fact, almost none of us have a vent good enough that we can turn our oven up to or an oven clean enough. If your oven is like scrupulously clean, and if all of the fat that comes off of a bird or whatever is caught in a pan that has liquid so that it doesn't scorch and fire, you can crank your oven to 500 reliably. Uh because the bird itself is probably not gonna burn, but it's just all the ancillary stuff that causes all the smoke.
So I would say most people that are following her recipes are really only going up to 425, 450. But it was this really just like you know, pedal to the floor way of cooking was rather revolutionary at the time. And so she caught a lot of flack for it, including from people like specifically Julia Child, who gave her flack for it. So this book was like, I, you know, it was important to me. I was doing all these experiments.
I had this giant blodget half pan oven that I had modified so that I could shoot video in it. It had glass on all four sides, and I would crank it to you know up to 450, which is the highest it would go, but it was convection, and I was doing her stuff, and it really had an effect on kind of how how I was cooking at the time. Had dinner with her, and by the way, she died last year at the age of like 84, 85. I had dinner with her and Giuliano Bugiolli, which by the way, he also just died this year. Uh crazy.
Do you like crazy Italian people? Yeah. But do you like hardcore? Like, I have I ever told Giuliano Bugiali stories on the air before. Well, well, next, maybe I'll choose a Giuliano Buggiali book and we'll talk about Giuliano Buggiali another time.
So I am having dinner, I was I was 30, like two or three, but I looked like 22 or three, and I had just started uh doing low temperature cooking, sous vide cooking instruction at the French Culinary Institute. I'm in Napa, which you know, sorry, California, Napa in the summer is a hellhole, so hot, so much sun and everything I hate. Anyway, so I'm there at this conference being put on by Mondavi. This is the conference where the next year I went to it and Mandavi got wheeled up to his seat so he could sip champagne out of a straw in his like 90s. He couldn't move, but he could still sip champagne out of a straw, and I was like, that is the way to go.
If you if if anyone's like, but it's quality of life, quality of life is dude is drinking champagne out of a straw in his 90s. This is a huge win. I see this as a huge win. Anyway, so we're at Mondavi at Copia, and uh I have dinner with Barbara Kafka and Giuliano Bujali, and I stupid, stupid guy. This is always how I do it, so stupid.
I say to her, hey, so uh, you know, roasting, great book, love it. You know, but what do you think about this low temperature cooking? And she lit into me about low temperature cooking as this new fad and everything, because I think she took it as yet another attack on the way that she was writing. She also wrote the first like well-known microwave cookbook in the 80s, in like 1987. But in my normal, like bonehead fashion, I kind of wasn't clear about well, low temperature and high temperature, they're like brothers.
You know what I mean? You can't do one without the other. What I was really saying is I'm kind of supporting this high temperature idea that you have, right? And but also kind of melding it with low temperature. My whole cooking career trajectory since then has been about high, high, high and then low, low, low way way of cooking.
And that's still the way I think. And I think people don't go back and look at her book, especially in the light of low temperature cooking, uh that you know we do now in C V cooking. Go back and take a look at her work and and kind of reassess the importance of what Barbara Kafka did, because I think it's important. That's this week's Classics in the Field Cooking Issues. Cooking issues is powered by Simplecast.
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