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Hearst Ranch is a proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio Network. Learn more about Hearst Ranch at Hearstranch.com. This week on Meet and Three, we're telling the stories behind iconic dishes. We learn what it will take to save New York's most famous egg cream, discover the importance of the goat neck in the East Village, and take a trip to India for delicious flatbreads. Our customers who come in to get egg creams and t shirts, they love to talk about their childhood or their teenage years or their college years.
I was living in uh Nepal and Northern India. And out there there's a real famous dish. A classic dish, I should say, is called paya. Parati Vali Gali, or as it awkwardly translates in English, the lane of the stuffed flatbread makers is probably one of the most popular food sheets in Old Ali. Tune in to Meet and Three, HRN's weekly food news roundup wherever you listen to podcasts.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive on the Heritage Radio Network. Pretty damn close to 12. I was here not that late. I mean, late, but not that late.
From Earth's P3 in Bushwing Brr Brooklyn! Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas. We got Matt in the booth. Feeling good.
And Peter Punching Bagim from MoFat. How are you doing, Peter? It's risen to the status of an official moniker. Peter, the punching bag, Kim! What's my WWF costume there?
Uh I don't know. I got punching bags. Big punching bag. I'm just dressed like a punching bag, basically. Yeah, you'd be protected from hits.
It's good. My move is just standing there and the other person punching me until they fall over. Call in all your rope-dope questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
What are you here for today, Peter? Aside from getting uh batted about Well, I am here, David, to uh be on the show because it's been a long time, of course. He's lying. But also trying, want to uh give a plug for Mofad's Kickstarter campaign that's up right now. There you go.
We are raising money for the exhibition Africanslash American Making the Nation's Table. Can you describe this exhibition? Well, it will be the country's first exhibition to recognize black contributions to American cuisine. Wait, you mean the first one that we're doing? The first one, the first major one.
First one ever. No, but wait a second, it's like it's the first one ever, really. That's right. No one like people have talked about certain contributions. That's right.
Right, but no one has ever devoted an exhibition to this subject. And who is heading the exhibition? Who's our curator? Dr. Jessica B.
Harris. That's right. And who, by the way, host on Heritage Radio Network, so check out her podcast that we're on. I don't think she's recorded one recently, but she has some podcasts up on Heritage Radio Network. And I would say, if you were like, it's not just that this is who we ended up with.
If you could choose any single human being on Earth to be the curator of this exhibition, she is the OG. Yeah, she is the one. There's generally a consensus also among the sort of culinary community. I mean, it's just like she is the one who's been writing about this way before anybody was talking about it, really. So yeah.
No, the for a long time ago, long, long, long time ago, like hers were the only books on the subject that were available. It was, you know. Uh, you know, I went to uh when I was in New Orleans last, I went to Dukey Chase. I think I spoke about it on the on the show because of their shrimp clements so and the butter that I want I want to have like packed into crates and sent to me the Clemenceau butter. Uh but when I told them that uh that Jessica had told me to go there and speak to them, they were like, yeah, she told us to speak to you, and that's why we're talking to you.
Because literally, nobody, if she tells you to do something, you do it. Yeah. So yeah, so I think you'll agree, Dave, this is probably one of the most important food and drink stories that we could really get out there as an exhibition from Mofad. And we have our campaign up right now. We could definitely use some support.
And if honestly, if every listener to Cooking Issues just took five minutes, put in 20 bucks, the cost of you know a pizza, then we would get past our goal multiple times over. So please visit AA.mofad.org. Again, that's aa.mofad.org. And really, contributions at any level uh really help, but uh would really appreciate it. When I was in college, the standard garbage pizza was seven bucks.
Nastasia called it! We were trying to think of something that wouldn't take you off and onto a tangent. But yes, okay, agreed. Depends on where you get the pizza. Depends on the number of toppings.
Even today. Let's just say even today. I can go to the West 4th Street stop, get off, and walk three feet and obtain eight slices, a whole pie of dollar slice pizza. Dollar sliced pizza. For eight dollars.
So this this the stipulation here is that this is a higher priced pizza place, and you're getting something more along the meat lovers extravaganza with three X's. Which by the way leaves me to this, which is not a tangent, Nastasia, Peter, you're a snob. That's it's a long way to say this. $20 pizza. Anyway, but back to the pizza is the answer.
It's you for the low cost of two and a half dollar pizzas. That's right. For the low there you go. That is irre That is irreputable. Assuming it's sliced in eight slices, of course.
Which, you know, that's the way God wants pizza slice. Well, unless it's a small pizza, in which case you go to six. But no one likes a small pizza. Or personal pizzas go to four. But in any case.
So uh yes, go to amofad.org and please kick in, and we have lots of nice perks. You can see the exhibition before anybody else. We've got signed books from Jessica Harris. We've got uh some really great stuff. So I've said this before.
You know, Nastasia Lopez likes to walk up with a 50 cent piece and get change for her coffee. What? She buys the cheapest coffee. She buys the worst coffee. Yeah.
Delhi coffee? No, not even. No, no, Delhi, they have to pay overhead. They have to pay rent to have it deli. So that's too high rent for her.
That's too. No, I make my own coffee now. What's what's your definition of bad coffee? She buys coffee that was brewed like at three in the morning, put into a caraft, taken out on the street side in a truck and served all day, been kind of kept hot all day. Not in a thermal correct.
Oh, the cards. I see, yeah, I got it. She also, do you know how to do it? Come on. I mean, those pastry carts, it's like a part of New York City.
I mean, I get it. I enjoyed that they exist, but would you ever buy coffee there? No. No. Do you enjoy a stale Kaiser roll with uh butter?
Because that's the other thing they sell, really. The stale Kaiser roll. I grew up on stale Kaiser roll and butter wrapped in saran though. Yeah. That was, you know.
There is a romance there, but they're objectively not a tasty way to start your day. No, they're bad. You know what? I used to love, love, love Kaiser rolls. I think too doughy for most applications.
They go stale too quickly. What do you think about the Kaiser roll? I love the Kaiser roll. Caller on the air with a question about Kaiser rolls. Really?
I mean, not the last part, but yeah. Caller on the air. Not about Kaiser Rolls. Sorry about that. Yeah, well, you know, well, one, let me just say uh uh Johnny Hunter turned me on to the show a while back, and um it's had a huge impact on my knowledge of cooking and dude and food in general.
So really appreciate what you guys do. Johnny's a great guy too. Yeah, he's a good one. Um so I have a bunch of friends who just moved into this really nice house uh in South Austin, Texas, with a huge backyard. Um they're trying to have a housewarming party, probably like 50 to 80 people, and they want me to or you know, it's a group effort here.
But uh the idea we came up with was just roasting a whole pig. Um, you know, we know some farmers in the area, so we can get a good one. Um I've never done that before. I know you need to butterfly it. Um, but I wasn't sure if we should like rent uh uh a pit smoker to put it in or build it ourselves.
So I wanted uh I wanted to know if you had any insight or suggestions and how to go about it. The biggest pig I've ever personally cooked whole is only like 30 to 40 pounds. And I'm assuming that you're gonna get like a standard like 180 to 220 pound hog, right? Probably. I think it's gonna be around like 110, 125.
Okay, like a medium size, medium sized thing. I mean, there's something fun about there's something I could see it going both ways. Like it's not particularly difficult to build, um, it's not particularly difficult to build a uh a pit, you know, uh in the ground. But, yeah, and then you have it, right? But also there's something fun about not having to do that and then renting the unit and having it show up.
The rental units are probably also easier to control because you know you can kind of look up their characteristics, fire them up fairly easily. Uh whereas the one in ground, I would run a couple of tests first to see kind of how much stuff you need to burn to get it to what temperature, how well it maintains. So I would probably do a test firing beforehand. It's never good to fire something up the first time, although that's entirely how I operate my life. You know, I I still tell people that it's not the kind of way to go.
But I can see the kind of the joy of both ways of having something just magically appear and having it work uh versus uh you know putting it in into the ground. So it's really gonna be, I mean, I'm gonna have to leave that up to what's more important to you uh to do. I mean, for me, I would probably build the damn thing. But but I think I'm a bad guy for this though. Isn't it it's pretty cheap to buy a cajina too, right?
Uh do they hold a full do they hold that big of a I think they do, yeah. People love the cajina. Yeah. People love, love the cajachina. I was looking at doing a whole rug for Mofad, and I was looking for the easiest sort of surfire way to do it.
I ended up landing on the cajina. But I can't remember how much that thing costs. But the cajina, it's been a long time. It's basically like a lined plywood box, but it's overfired. Yeah, I'm not sure.
I can't remember. It's been so long. People do love the caja china, which is not from China. It's like, why do they call it cajina? Lord knows.
But yeah, it's m mainly from the Caribbean, I think. Yeah, I know like the people I know who use it are Puerto Rican, but I don't know where it's from. Yeah. Um, but anyway, uh, yeah, butterflying is gonna make your your life easier, but I don't feel I feel that there are many people, maybe even some people on the chat, who have an outdoor space where they can do this who are more expert. I've always wanted to do a buried pig.
Talk about, talk about really like now that there are people who do the buried pigs who um who like bury thermocouples with it so they can figure out what's going on, right? But there is something real baller about a buried pig. You know what I'm saying? Like a giant Kahlua style buried pig. There's something like kind of baller about that.
But again, yeah, you got to got to see that in the Yucatan, the cochinita for Bill. How was it? I don't know. Oh, it was amazing. I mean, they uh they took the big lattas, like the aluminum pins, and then they cut the whole thing in half and buried it underground for I think it was like 17 hours.
Yeah, that sounds good. Um but I don't think we have that much dirt to work with. Well, I don't know, like what do you mean? Like how hard is it to dig a hole in Austin? I mean, in Connecticut, it's impossible.
Well, they just have you know, it's a it's a yard and part of it has like cobblestones on it. I just don't think, and they don't own the house, they're renting it, so I don't think we can build like a four feet deep hole. But um if they don't own it, just rent the thing. Hey, it comes in, you bring it, you tow it in. This is Austin.
Someone has a pickup truck. Like, go like, you know, go, you know, tow the thing in, fire it up, cook the thing, get rid of it, and then you've done nothing to their house. That seems to me, with those kind of scenarios where there's no ownership of the house or desire to have a pig shaped like hole in the ground or burnt spot. Uh-huh. You know?
Because this that sucker you can just chuck up in the driveway and go, you know. Yeah, I was thinking like I saw online you can do it pretty easily with Tinder blocks, like building a um I guess just a pit, you know. But I I was wondering should I be nervous at all about like a grease fire? I mean, what do you mean nervous? You worried about burning the pig?
Like what are you gonna what are you gonna catch on fire? You're not gonna build it next to the house, are you no, but if the fat drips down in the backyard, it's not like an issue at all. I mean I mean like if you I mean like I wouldn't say this is someone who lived in like, you know, who's gonna build a fire near brush in California right now. But I mean you know like it's like what are you gonna burn down? Like you can hose you can hose down your your grass and all this other stuff around it if you're if you're really worried about it.
But you know in general like you gotta follow a certain state like don't build it near any structure or an like that can burn or any source of tinder. Like if you had a if you had a pile of dry tall gr if you were like had dry tall grass or brush anywhere near you I'd be like that is a bad idea. Even with a grill I would move that stuff away. You know a couple of a couple of uh you know good pops off of one of those and if you have a tinder box next to you will p light up, you know what I mean? But you know, I I would assume that you you know you could either moisten down this is the same problem like you know, people have when when like I'm lighting fireworks.
I'm like, it's wet here. Nothing's gonna light on fire. It is wet here, you know. But you know, if you were doing that in California, you know, in Sonoma, you know, where the in the entire ground is primed to catch on fire, then I'd be like, yeah, you know, fireworks maybe not a good idea right here unless you had like adequate fire breaks and whatnot. But I would say the same thing for any of these things.
Right. I mean, Austin's not dry, is it? Um, it's pretty dry. I mean, uh it's rained a good bit in the past week, but hopefully uh when it won't be anymore. This is gonna be early December.
Yeah, I mean just I mean like exercise caution, don't build it near sources of flame, you know, especially sources of flame that can travel long distances. Yeah, it just comes down to moisture management. It's all moisture management, baby. That's the answer to everything. Like all of life's problems can be solved with moisture management.
Yeah. Moisture management. Yeah. Let us know about it. I'll keep it posted.
Yeah, let us know how to know it turns out. All right, cool. Peter burned my sausages. Oh, that is that the name of your next band, Peter Burn My Sausages. I gave them a heavy dose of my yard.
Oh, you did the uh Argentinian style grade? Yeah. The tripod grade? No, question, Stas. Were the sausages delicious?
Yes or no, were the sauces in the city. Okay, so Peter was Peter was at Nastasia Lopez's fall festival, which I couldn't attend because Dax was racing, and he was wearing a tie. Okay, he was it is because I was my kid was Calvin of Calvin and Hobbs, and I was his loser dad, who's always in a suit. That checks out. There you go.
So there you go. Was was Felix peeing on the fire? Yes. You got a full costume. There you go.
I would love that. Yeah, yeah. But who was who is the uh tiger character? I have we had a little stuffed animal tiger for him to carry around. Yeah.
But he didn't, he hated it, so it didn't really work. But spiked up his hair. You know, he's blonde. Um I haven't, you know, I can't remember anything about Calvin and Hobbes except for the car pictures. Well, the thing about Calvin and Hobbes is I've reread it as an adult and as a parent, and I've realized that Calvin is actually like seriously a troubled person who has no ability to connect with anybody, and he lives in this hypothetical world.
And so he's he's got some kind of deeper issues. Just like us. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But if you look at the comics now, everybody has a hard time with him. His parents, his classmates, his teacher, his friends. He has no friends. His only friend is this stuffed animal. And but are we to assume in the cartoon that the stuffed animal is actually a real character, or are we to assume that it is an imaginary character that is some sort of pseudo-alter alter ego for him?
That's what it is. So there's a really dark undertone to Calvin and Hobbes for me now. Sweet. Yeah, sweet. So you dress your son as that.
There you go. Yep. And that's Peter Kim for you, folks. And you know, the sausages ended up good, right, Stas? I mean, it's like just a little little heavy my art on it.
It's like when people undercook things and they say, you know, it's a little al dente. Uh so last week should take this to heart because the only input from the chat is I think you should make a bunch of sausages instead of doing a whole pig. That's that. But don't do them Peter Kim style. Right.
Don't do them Peter Kim style. Uh all right. Alright, so uh last week, I'm gonna give some updates. Last week we had, and uh next week I'll give an update because I'll post the pictures. Uh next week I'll talk about Art of Varc hot sauces because I got the received the Art of Arc hot sauces.
Uh but last week Nastasia and I did some tastes on uh air. A listener who preferred to remain anonymous but went by Capri Sun, uh sent us a bunch of stuff. What did we taste on Airstas? The venison jerky sausage and the summer sausage. Right, we went off on summer sausage.
But they also summer sausage, Dax love the summer sausage and the jerky. And then, like, you know, at the bar there was endless jokes about you know this person or that person's summer sausage. But the uh by the way, summer sausage, and I'm not gonna get into it again. Listen to last week. Listen to last week.
Listen to last week. Uh they also included in that care package, which Nastasia didn't mention. Uh, they included in that care package uh, well, we mentioned it, the masa, the blue masa made with macienda corn. Shout out to Macienda, and a uh striped bass filet. Beautiful, by the way, beautifully filleted striped bass filet.
Uh, and then I wrote read on the package that it was sent in, it had been Ike G made. And so uh I was like, so that night I, you know, pressed out the tortillas in my Victoria. By the way, if you buy the tortilla, the standard tortilla press, like the tinned tortilla press that is standard here, which I think is made by Victoria, just an FYI. The way that they're organized is there's uh the flap and then the handle, right? So you put saran down.
I don't know, some people say they can do it without saran. There's freaking lying, there's morons, I don't know what the hell they're saying. But anyway, you put saran down on the tortilla press, put the ball of tortilla, you put the ball uh closer to the hinge end, right? Then you slap it down, you put the handle over, go pfft, you press it down, and you might have to you know push hard to it a couple times, and that's it. That's your tortilla.
Now, uh, a little trick, they're not very well aligned, and so the maximum or the minimum thinness of tortilla is not ideal on those things. So I have a cardboard permanent cardboard shim that you know, thin cardboard shim that I use. You should find your own thickness that you like that I store with my tortilla press such that I can get the proper thickness of tortilla out of the standard American available Victoria tortilla press. Anyway, so I made a bunch of blue corn tortillas, and since I have a very nice uh crepe maker, a crempeuse, pronounce it properly, PDP. Come on.
Come on. What what crep crep? No, the the company crampus C K R A M P K K-R-A-M Cramp? Crampus. There it's it's like the Brittany model, it's like the French crepe maker.
It's the one they use in France. It's the one I carried home on my back. There you go, baby. Yay! Anyway, it's gas fired.
And so, like, it's a very good comal substitute. And so I was able to get nice puffy tortillas, they were very good. And then, because you ekiji made the uh striped bass filet. For those of you that don't know what I could, I don't got time to tell you now. Look it up on the Cooking Issues blog.
But uh I ate some raw just so I could see what the texture of. And even though it had been uh frozen and thawed, the texture of it was very nice, very nice, very clean flavor, very nice. Uh and then the rest I did my standard, my standard technique, which is uh little flour, little flour on the skin side, butter in the pan, start it to crisp it up, and then uh, you know, base the butter over the top. Well, salt and pepper, but uh base the butter over the top, and then uh under the broiler for a while, pull out, put back on the stove for a little bit to requisite the bottom skin, sears all the top to finish and dump out. Delicious and not overcooked.
Uh I love I love it as Sears all with the fish. Nastasi and I, Nastasia says I should talk more about my Sears I'll use. I also I was also steaming the hell out of some cheese. I've been steaming so much cheese recently in my in my burger tender Connecticut style official cheese steamer. And I have to tell you, I love the hell out of it.
You know, we had a Johnny was mentioned earlier from Madison. So for those of you that are from Wisconsin and in general, that area of the country who think you know squeaky cheese, I have now steamed. I have become, I'm not gonna say I've become the master of the cheese steamer, but like the cheese steamer and I kind of speak the same language. We've got our communication protocol down such that like, you know, I got I can run it now on an induction burner and I can just sit there and keep it, and I know how long I I can keep cheese a lot longer. The steamed cheese, so the way this works, people, is you have a square box called the burger tender.
Burger B you burger with apostrophes, tender with a apostrophe R. And in it are a bunch of little like rectangular dishes made of Ultem plastic, right? Which are kind of real nice. And then you can put burgers in them, but that's kind of dumb. I don't really like the steam burger.
But then you you can put into it these blocks of cheese and they steam, but because they're in this container, the one of the tricks is you gotta pam the container first so that the cheese can come out. But the trick is this you steam it, and you can as long as you don't like have like too much of moisture condenses in over a long period of time. So if the steam is really, really raging, you get a lot of moisture in, but you can kind of pour the moisture out, it doesn't matter. But I've tested anywhere from like 10, you really need about 10 minutes to steam the cheese, right, up to like an hour. I haven't done more than an hour and a half.
Anyway, so the trick is you pull it out and you let it rest, and as it rests, the outside skins up a little bit. And if you're using straight cheese as opposed to pizza, you think, going back to pizza, that it's the cheese on the pizza that's burning you. I think it's the sauce that's burning you. Because I've eaten these cheese almost right out of the steamer, and I don't get viciously burnt because there's not a lot of water in cheese. You know what I'm saying?
And so there's not a lot of ability for it to transfer the heat to your mouth. And so the steamed cheese can be eaten relatively quickly, but if you dump it right out of the bucket, it kind of oozes everywhere. If you wait like between 45 seconds and a minute and then take it out, it starts going into the dough phase where the cheese becomes a dough. So, like, like mild Kilby style, like queso de papa, like crap BS cheddar, that stuff steams like on point, amazing. Sharp cheddar, you have to wait for it to fully melt out and then congeal, and it's good.
But, and here's where I'm gonna say like if you ever have a chance to steam cheese, Peter, you would never buy this cheese, Nastasi would never buy this cheese. But you can get it at Trader Joe's. So, you know how President makes the cheap brie? Yeah. What the hell is that, Matt?
President makes the cheap brie. They also make a cheap fake emantaller called madrigal, madrigal. And madrigal fake Swiss style cheese from France by the President Corporation. When you steam that thing, when you cut it into like little two-ounce like squares and you steam it, it doesn't melt. Even for 45 minutes, it doesn't melt when it's steamed.
But what happens is you pull what is that noise, Matthew? I have no idea. When you pull out, when you pull it out of the steamer, right? You let it sit for a second and you eat it, it's not the first bite that's squeaky, but as it starts cooling in your mouth, the second, third, fourth, and fifth bites are the squeakiest of all squeaks. Makes a makes a Wisconsin cheese curd seem like cream cheese in comparison to its squeak ability.
It is and to me the pleasure of the squeak is so high. I I brought some into the bar and I steamed it in my little all ten containers. I steamed this cheese at the bar, and like half the people were like, oh yeah, super squeaky. And then I was like, you guys aren't worth it! And I left.
I was like, like no one can understand. If you're not like, this is why I won't serve it at the bar, because it's like, for those of you out there, if you can hear me and you like the squeak, go find President Madrigal President brand Madrigal cheese. Cut the rind off, slice it into pieces. How big is that, Peter? Like like three quarters of an inch.
Three quarters. Three quarters of an inch thick. Right? Into like almost like sticks, if you can. Steam it for like 15, 15, at least, at least 15 minutes.
Pull it out, let it set, push on it. It should feel rubbery. Let it sit for a second, and like you can feel it's pliable, and eat it, and then let the other piece sit for a little bit and eat it and see how long the squeak maintains. It's ridiculous. It's the squeakiest.
The squeakiest of all squeaks. It's the squeakiest cheese I've ever had. The squeakiest I've ever had. I didn't know you derive so much pleasure from squeaks. All people who truly love cheese curds derive pleasure from squeaks.
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So, anyway, so I enjoyed uh I enjoyed the care package that I received. Yeah, yeah. Well, if you like a particular quality about something, may as well see what it's like to take it all the way, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Right. That's right, Peter. This is what people don't do. Like, whenever you're testing something, people say, How do you figure out X, Y, and Z? All right.
Well, you try to do something that's close to what you think is right, and then do a lot more and a lot less of that and see which way it goes. Exactly. Right? It's like all the way up, all the way down, see what happens. All these kind of middling things takes forever to get where you want.
That's right. You know what I mean? Anyway, someday, you know, I want I want to do a thing of tales of the cocktail this year, but I'm probably gonna miss the deadline where I talk about literally, like specifically how to do drink development from kind of my point of view. But then I thought it'd be interesting to get someone whose drinks are kind of the exact opposite of the style that I work in. But I gotta figure out who that would be, and then ask them like in the next day.
By the way, speaking of next day, Nastasi and I will not be here next week. We will be in China. China. We will be in China next week, trying to make our next product. Nastasi Lopez not psyched about going to China.
Because I've How can you not be excited about going there? Have you ever been to this part of China? No. It would be like imagine you're like, you're not excited to go see the United States. You've never been to the US.
You're not excited. We're going to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and we're staying only in Elizabeth. No offense, Elizabeth, New Jersey, but offense, New Elizabeth, New Jersey. Absolutely offense. Direct offense.
I've never even been to Ron Conkoma. Anyway, yeah, so like the thing is like you're like, you're gonna go like New Jersey, a lot of great places, but not even like I hear there's nice Elizabeth. No, you're gonna stay at the Kogen plant right off of the New Jersey Turnpike. Okay, I got it. The place where your car has to be on resurf, or you pass out.
You know I'm talking about about the Jersey Turnpike, where you're like, what is that? You're like, oh, that is the cogen plant and all of the that says like that has like fire shooting out of the top of it and then touts how like environmentally sound it is, and it's right next to all the petroleum storage. Because in Elizabeth is where all the petroleum storage tanks are, so it smells hard like petroleum right next to the highway. I got us a nice hotel in Hong Kong the last night because they listed an airport hotel. And I was like, Oh, actually, I I always stay at the Marriott.
The one right at the airport, super convenient. That's great. I'll put you there, and I'll stay in the nice hotel. Uh okay, well, good luck getting to the airport in the morning. What time's our flight?
Oh, you're taking a different flight? Yeah. But yours place is a little bit more. Why don't you talk to me? But where are you staying?
You're staying on the island? Or are you staying on Kowloon? On the island. You're I mean, I can put you at the airport hotel. Marriott.
The Marriott by the airport, the water tastes terrible. They don't filter it. It tastes like a fish tank. Horrible. But like, and tea tastes like the water.
Horrible. Like a fish tank. Like algae. Like garbage. Like filth.
Safe, garbage. But their buffet, decent actually. Decent. Uh Timothy Hamlet writes this. Can you refresh my memory about your Neonata pizza?
I tracked down a couple of jars, uh, genuinely unavailable in Canada, at least online and in Vancouver, but now can't find the episode where you discuss how you make the pie. Very simple. I actually do I remember how I did it. I don't. I think it was just basically you make it the dough, you put on the neonata.
You make it the dough. You put it on the I think it was just Neonata. Did I put cheese on it? I I'm I'm channeling I'm challenging my classics in the field guy from later who's you know, as Nastasia and I was saying, fun to say Giuliano Buggiali. But like, say it's that.
No. It's a lot of yeah, how many ways is your mouth move when you say it? Giuliano Buggiali. Anyway, uh, and whenever I say it, I remind myself uh of the way that uh Brad Pitt's character says Gorlami. In Glorious Bastards, which is, you know, one of everyone's.
If you've seen that movie, that's one of the all-time best parts. Yeah. He's put his name's supposed to be Corleone, and he's like, what's your name? Gorlami. He's supposed to actually be Italian.
Gorlami. And he says it just like that. I love it. Anyway. I think I just put on uh I probably did put cheese on it.
For those of you that don't know, like most old school Italian people, Giuliano Bujali included, back when he was alive, would be horrified that I would put a fish product and a cheese product together on a flatbread and call it something. So we won't call it pizza. We'll call it like an American-style flatbread with certain ingredients. Anyway, so I believe it was neonata, uh, like a little bit, sparse amount of fresh mozzarella. I probably put on some grana of some kind, fired it off.
Uh I think I put mozzarella, maybe I didn't. And then the trick is is just like uh cracked it you you uh fry some eggs and then you put the fried eggs on uh and you eat it. That's all you need to do. Oh! Did I put a Rugal on that?
I probably put a ruble on that because Nastasi and I, and my family and I, so like so like when I eat at home and when I eat with Nastasia, which is pretty much all the pizza I ever eat, like we put greens on it. Cuz. When I was a kid, I never put greens on. Even as a young adult, I never put greens on. And then like, I don't know, like eight, nine years ago, it's just like, why would I have pizza without some greens on it?
Depends on the pizza for me. Like what? What pizza do you not want greens on? I think if it's uh a meat product on there, I want to have greens. But if it's uh more of a veggie pie, I don't need the greens.
Why? It's cuz. But it's like a cauliflower pizza or like you know, cauliflower pizza. What? What are you?
Oprah? Cauliflower pizza? Yeah. What? That is what?
Wait, wait, wait. Explain to me. Explain to me how cauliflower works on a pizza. You do like a white pie and you throw roasted cauliflower on it. It's delicious.
Like what shape is this cauliflower? You cut it in like thin slices. Okay. Yeah, it's good. I don't know.
Yeah, it's good. You know what I like? Like the eggplant slices from eggplant parm that are fried out, sliced in pieces, and put on pizza. That I like. It's also good.
Yeah. Cauliflower pizza? Yeah. You you're familiar with Oprah's new pizza that she's selling. I'm not talking about making the dough out of cauliflower or like rice.
You're familiar with that though, right? Oprah now sells a pizza where she's like, one third of the pizza's cauliflower. No, I hate that. But I have long enjoyed eating cauliflower before cauliflower became this weird thing now. Your kids can't even tell.
What weird thing is it now? Well, no, it's like everybody's like ricing cauliflower. Like you'd like to do it. Rice cauliflower's not terrible though. Yeah, I know.
Most people aren't using the stem. So you know, like they have to sell the florets to you. They gotta find something to do with the stem. Yeah. I also really like broccoli stem.
Yes. Broccoli stem's delicious. Yeah. Yeah. I have no problem with rice cauliflower.
I don't really like the texture of it. I'm just saying it's like the cauliflower being used to replace all these other things, like cauliflower risotto, cauliflower using cauliflower as a dough for pizza, you know. Yeah, cauliflower risotto, what's that? Rice cauliflower? Yeah, and then you make a quote and quote risotto out of it, but it's not.
What's the word risotto mean, you think? Exactly. Yeah. It's not coloursotto. Yeah, it's not like, yeah.
So, you know, I think I've said this on the f on the radio show before, but I use cauliflower as a oh, by the way, neonata is a uh fish, a tiny fish, neo newborn fish, uh neonata fish and pepper condiment from Calabria that you can get at Calluccio Brothers uh in New York City in Brooklyn. Uh it's hard to get even here, so you might have to go to their store. And they have the best baccala of any, it's not the season now, but come Christmas time. If you can make it out to Caluccio Brothers in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Brooklyn, then um they have the thickest, biggest uh like baccala fillets I've ever seen. I was gonna buy one, but it would stink up my whole house.
Um wait, so what were we talking about? We're talking about cauliflower. Oh, yeah. So I would literally use that as a threat to my kids. I'd be like, what are you having tonight?
Cauliflower. Because like, I told you this story, right? Did I tell us on air where Booker was like, I don't like green vegetables. And so I was like, all right, I'll get cauliflower. So I got cauliflower, it's not green.
No. And I put cheese over it. This was another thing, you know. I was like, I steamed the whole head. I brought it out, it doesn't look like a vegetable, it looks like a human brain.
And then I pour like cheese sauce all over it, and breadcrumbs. Yeah. That's a win, right? Yes. Cauliflower, breadcrumbs, cheese sauce.
Yes. And the crying from both of them crying, screaming, you know. And ever since then, you know, both in English and Spanish, I'm like, they're like, Hamburguesas de cauliflor. They're like, ah, you can't even imagine how do you even make a cauliflower hamburger? Anyway.
Sure, somebody's tried. At the risk of earning the hammer's ire. Pfft, you already earned it, baby. Just by breathing. Wow.
Here's a second question. I successfully made a smooth emulsified sauce based on a method I thought I learned from the show, probably. Pressure cooked garlic for a long time, like 30 minutes, covered in oil, then blend a lot into a smooth emulsified sauce. It's worked a few times, but I must have forgotten a detail because my last few attempts the sauce is broken in a bad way, and I can't find the old episode where you talk about it. I don't cook it in oil, I cook it in milk.
And then the milk breaks, but the curds stay there. I drain off the liquid, brend blend the casein curds and the garlic with oil and salt, and that's how I make it. See whether that helps. That's how that's how I do it. Uh can't wait to hear how the laser project works out.
I hope it doesn't end up breaking your life goal of not catching on fire. Well, Dax has been lighting stuff on fire with the laser, but I have not yet caught on fire yet. Although the laser project is going well, I'm excited to have this like laser pointer. No one else cares about it except for apparently uh you, Timothy, Dax, and myself. No one else, no one else likes it.
Confirmed. Yeah. Well, Peter, just Peter, Peter, yeah, Peter doesn't care. Peter's care. Although we can use it in a presentation at the MoFad.
It'll be fun. Oh, hello. Yeah. Well, because what it the idea what I'm working on is like a laser projector where you can take their laser pointer and draw with it, and it stays on the surface. So, like, let's say we're doing a presentation in front of the legacy quilt, which you can describe that we're raising money for.
That's right. It is a massive quilt composed of 400 blocks. Each block represents one story of a contribution made by an African American to American cuisine. It will be a mind-blowing thing to look at. And the woman making it and her uh colleagues are incredible at Harlem Needle Arts.
That's true. Yeah, yeah. They are amazing. Um giant quilt, big stories. But the whole thing the whole reason is that in any like normal-sized exhibition, right, there's no way to like talk about the kind of breadth of contributions.
And so inherently, we have to cherry pick certain contributions and discuss them. So, in order to try to show that these stories are merely a part of a much larger quilt, right? Um, you know, we don't like to use the word like tapestry because not everything is kind of woven together. It's a bunch of actual contributions, not just some sort of mishmash. And so uh we had this quilt, but now imagine.
So if you're trying to explain the stuff in the quilt, imagine if you had this laser pointer and a docent could walk up and draw a circle around a particular thing, and it would stay there while you talked about it, and then you click and it goes away. That's pretty amazing. It's cool, right? Yeah. That's what I'm building.
What did you say, Stars? What mean thing did you say? You have a lot of questions. Go. I don't actually.
Okay. Uh I what? You have six, I thought. I don't know. You thought you said I didn't really bother reading them, but I don't know.
Uh okay, we get to the one I'm gonna go in backwards order. Uh oh. Claire writes in. This is the last one. This is why she calls it six, because she had so Claire of Vigetti and of wedding fame, friend of Nastasia, long time, ask her of ridiculous questions.
Friends with Claire. What is the best alcoholic beverage to order for a body conscious gal living in Mexico City? Well, uh, order enough of any alcohol and you will no longer be body conscious. But uh, I mean, all alcohol contains the exact same amount of calories per gram of alcohol. And all of the spirits that at least I normally drink have no added sugar in them, and so they are all identical.
Then the question is is what are you going to add to them? Uh and so um, I mean, just to put it in perspective, I don't I can't look it up right now, but uh let's say, you know, if you had uh I haven't done the math, but you a little bit of sugar is not gonna kill you. It's mainly one of the main problems with alcohol. There are studies I haven't looked at them recently, that if you drink, you will also eat more. That like your inhibitions to stop eating have also been turned off, and your desire to eat, so you end up eating a lot more when you're in a bit.
And so I think a lot of the excess calories are from excess food while you're also. Right. So I'm sure she's happy that you're sharing this. Yeah. Well, my point is is that when you are drinking, you also tend to eat more, and so maybe that's the issue.
Yeah. I would just drink what you like and then moderate the consumption of that. Yeah. But you know, whatever. All right.
Uh we also had uh, and this this was interesting. Hold a second. Um I tried to be better for this person. Let's see, where are they? Okay.
Steve, longtime listener. My wife will not let me listen to the podcast at home. Smart lady. Uh, and with six kids, I can't I can't find the me time I need to listen on the fly. At work, I'm in timing my Tuesday lunch breaks for the live podcast.
I understand you're uh a busy dad, if possible. It'd be great if you could try to get to the show on time, as I only get an hour's lunch. I will work on it. I will work on it, Steve. You're a loyal listener in Duluth.
Nastasia loves this question because she loves it when I feel bad. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Rub it in. Yeah.
Sorry, man. Loves it. It's really sad. She's really sad. And that's why you're laughing.
Just imagining sitting there. Watching the clock tick by. Yeah. Six kids. Six kids.
Angry wife. No one says she was angry. Just doesn't want to hear our voices in her freaking house. Which is fair. Fair.
Anyway. By the way, Halloween coming up. And for those of you that have not yet bought your candy, shame on you. But also there is still time to buy full-size candy. Remember, the only fun size is full size.
I have spent an inordinate amount of money on this year's uh Halloween candies. I will take a picture of it and post it out later. Nice. I love it. Do you go to Economy Candy?
Where do you go? No, I've I internet. So usually RightAid runs a deal close to Halloween, and they might start it now where it's like 50 cents per full-size bar, and then you can get a whole bunch of them. But uh they didn't this year, so I Amazon ordered it relatively early, and I paid a little more than 50 cents a bar. But like the just the look on kids' faces when they open up the door, and it's like full size.
Well, you must be known for that now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we go through an inordinate amount of candy. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Nice. And then like the trick is is that I might I might have to go out. Last year I had to go out and replenish. Certain things are full size, but they're not really full size.
Like it's good to get a bunch of boxes of airheads because even a full-size airhead's not that big and it kind of fills the thing up. But I got like, you know, I got a lot of the good, I got a lot of the good stuff. What's your favorite candy at the Halloween? Well, my favorite candy bar is whatchamacallit, but it's impossible to find that now. Whatchamacallit?
Yeah. I put I put one box of my favorites in, which is paydays. Yeah, yeah. I love a payday. I don't know.
Whatchamacallit Scott. What about you, Stas? I like milk duds. Really? Mm-hmm.
I need a bunch of them this weekend. I like a milk dud. I enjoy milk dud. Uh okay. So what?
Matt, Matt, what's your favorite? Uh I I don't eat a lot of candy. I just don't. Oh, Jesus. Sorry.
Did you were you alive when you were a child? Yeah, but I still just pretty much went with like straight chocolate. Okay, so chocolate. I'm so special dark? I well now I just get a bunch of dark chocolate.
It's true. I don't yeah, okay. I don't think of that as candy. Mr. Fanny.
That doesn't have like fun marketing. I'm not attached to any. Single origin only. Single origin my butt. That's what comes in the thing.
You get Hershey's, you get Hershey Special Dark, you get Mr. Good bars, and you get Crunch. Yeah. Oh, maybe Stasia with the correct correction. All right.
Uh how do you think you pronounce that? Rorde. Right. Peter, you're good at people. Oh my god.
You also you just got R of a question. Ruby from Denmark that I'm gonna hand you because it is too long. Oh jeebus. I'd say Rari. Actually, just email it to me and I'll put it on next week's question.
Well, I don't know. Unless it's time sensitive. All right. This is about EC. I'm an enthusiastic home cook and big fan of uh existing conditions in the podcast.
I'm rereading uh liquid intelligence. Nastassi's like, why? Why? Why? Uh and I want to buy a cream whipping siphon for rapid infusion.
I figure that buying a secondhand EC is better than getting a $30 knockoff. True. Thirty uh uh the $30 knockoff, if you buy the wrong one, may kill you, like you killed that French blogger, whereas the EC one will not. Uh anything to watch out for buying a second hand on eBay, which model is best in your opinion? I don't really know all of the professional ones, like they're they're all slightly different.
I wouldn't bother getting a thermal one because then you can't heat it and they're kind of big for what they get. The trick is if you're gonna buy a half liter or a full liter, the heads are interchangeable. So the ultimate would be is if you could buy a he one head, make sure you have the gaskets, because that you need all the gaskets and the tip and everything else is pretty pretty bulletproof. Uh but if you're gonna only get one, I would probably get the depends on what you're gonna use it for. For rapid infusion, I would probably get the half liter unless you're gonna do large batches all the time.
Because especially for home use, a half liter is kind of a good size for infusing. But you know, that's I wouldn't get the the small, small one, those are ridiculous. Um I wouldn't get the I wouldn't get the thermal one for your application. Um anyway. Uh but they're all, like I say, pretty bulletproof.
Jason in Northern Virginia writes in about combis. Greetings uh to everyone present, and thanks for uh inspiring us over the years. I'm interested in your thoughts on combi ovens. Uh I frequently roast in my convection oven based on that experience and feedback from family members with Steve uh steam ovens, the Gaganao or the Mieli. By the way, Miele has a freaking lock on vacuum cleaners.
People who like are professional cleaners, like I feel like Miele must give them money because they're always like, your vacuum cleaner sucks. Why don't you own a Mieli? And it's like, because I don't have that kind of cash to spend on vacuum. They're like, it's a legacy vacuum machine uh cleaner, man. I'm like, dude, like, do they pay you?
Do they pay you? Anyway, uh, or Mieli. Uh I want a combi oven. I have my eye on the rationale combi master plus XS. I don't feel like I'd get a big benefit from the automation of the self-cooking center and may find the touchscreen irritating.
Also, I spoke to a chef, remember? We uh had a chef in at an event at MoFad the other day, he's like, my rationale cook self-cooking centers break down all the time. Now I'm not gonna blow them up, get them in trouble with their, but they're looking to actually go to a more simple-minded combi oven. So the thing with a combi oven is that a lot of the fancier ones, and by fancier I mean read rationale electrolux, a lot of the ones with a lot of the crazy features in them, those crazy features and the electronic boards involved are things that break. So you have a certain category.
Now at home, I don't know whether this is home or commercial, but at at home, you know, you're not getting as intensive of a use. They're not being abused as hard. You can make sure they have enough venting on the side. The old rationales used to break constantly because the electronic boards were too close to a heat to heat source, and so they would fry out. But that's heavy-duty use, constant.
If you're not gonna do that, it might last you forever. So like something that might break constantly in a commercial application might last a home person the rest of their lives. You know what I mean? It's like this like you can go buy uh commercial water slides that have been decommissioned from water slide parks because they're too used for a water slide, but for your house, they're gonna be good for the rest of your life, if that makes sense. I mean, how many times is your butt gonna go down that water slide?
You know what I'm saying? Uh but but back to the uh combi ovens. What's a weird comparison? I'm just saying. Just saying.
So, like uh like the thing with uh with the combi ovens is a lot of chefs are moving to kind of lower, like lower technology combi ovens so they can get the steam. If they don't need all of the widgetry, they can get the steam without the inherent uh fact that it might break. Um I remember you saying that this is back to the question. I remember you saying that commercial combi ovens are inefficient. You think so?
I mean, like the only way that those things uh um regulate their temperature is by hurling energy into the atmosphere. They are gonna heat the hell out of your house, and as a benefit, it's gonna cost you a lot to run it. Now, the gas ones, I mean, gas is real cheap. The electricity, meh, I don't know. And also, you need a lot of power to run electrical combi oven.
Uh well, the commercial ones, I don't know about the home ones. Um, but I feel like the benefits of steam and good temperature control are worth it, plus it cleans itself like a dishwasher, true. Uh, I comply with the venting requirements, maybe putting it under the same hood as the range. Due to the power draw of the larger combi ovens, I'd keep a regular oven for large things. Yeah, so the XS, which I guess stands for extra small.
I didn't get a chance to look it up. It's 50 amps at 240 volts. 50 amps at 240 volts. That's a lot. Yeah, that well, what is that?
That's 2,000, 10,000 something watts. Like 12,000 watts. Is that right? 12,000 watts. 120 light bulbs.
12,000 watts. Or, you know, so yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot of power. Uh, any general thoughts on combi ovens or advice on other brands to consider? I mostly eat vegetables these days, but uh not sure where that balance will end up as time progresses.
I'm also interested in why you wouldn't install an induction uh cooktop at home but wouldn't want to ask a second question. I would. If I if I if if I could do it again, I like in I like induction. I mean, certain things are irritating. Like I like also having like a fire, but I use I use my induction cooktop a lot.
Uh, you know, it's easy to control. I you know, I use it. Um I am loath to provide a um recommendation on a specific combi oven just because I haven't used any of the modern ones or any of the smaller home ones, and I have not, nor will I ever recommend a piece of equipment I haven't used personally. Uh that said, I would take a serious and long look, because I don't I haven't looked in years at Paganao, and again, I've never used it to home one, but I would assume that someone who's making a home combi oven can put it into like ridiculous mode versus like the same way Tesla does, Nastasia's favorite thing, the Tesla, where you can put it in kind of ludicrous mode and then you're using a whole boat ton of energy. How scared did you get?
That's super scared. Uh especially with you know you at the wheel, you know, because you're crazy. But like uh, so we put uh you put it in ludicrous mode or put it in normal mode where you're using a normal amount of energy. And I don't know whether any modern combi ovens, they might, because very recently they started rating combi ovens based on their energy consumption, and so combi oven manufacturers might have included it's kind of like Volkswagen, you know, who lied about their energy consumption. They can tune the combi oven to not use as much energy, but then it's harder for them to do the low temperature stuff and to maintain the humidity exactly where they want.
So this is also my gripe with with home dishwashers. If you can hear me and you're a dishwasher dishwasher manufacturer, like what I want is a home slash commercial dishwasher, where it runs like a home dishwasher, where it is both gentle and energy efficient and quiet, except for when you're having a party and then it runs like a commercial dishwasher and goes crazy. Yeah, right? Like the way that most rich folks handle this is by getting two dishwashers. What a waste.
Yeah. Why not just be able to put my dishwasher in super energy inefficient mode just for parties? Right. You know? Anyway.
Uh all right. Here is the I'm gonna actually make it to the last question for today. You like that, Nastasia? You like that? And then I'm gonna be doing a few classics in the field.
I'm Jay. Uh by the way, this is they called you out. So, hello, Dave Hammer, Boothmaster Matt. How do you like that one? I'm keeping it.
Yeah. Uh, and the punching bag at present. Yeah. I'm Jay, straight up brain surgeon, straight up brain surgeon. Keep those hands in shape.
Don't burn those hands. Avid cook and collector of cooking lore and gadgetry, and a liker of liquid intelligence, which of course we all know Nastasia hates. Uh, for some demographics for Nastasia, I'm 45, married with three kids, and they all cook as well. Worked in a restaurant bar industry throughout college in front of back of house at various jobs, and I get whatever kitchen stuff I like as long as I don't bother my wife about her passions. I wonder what her passions are.
How do they interfere with each other? How do the cooking passions interfere with whatever the wife likes? I'm curious now. Yeah. Um, like what where where does where's the intersection?
Don't you don't you wonder? Anyway. Uh exceptions. Cookbooks. I have maybe 400, including liquid intelligence, and she gives me side eye for any boxes with the approximate shape of the book.
I understand this. Uh I'm in the process of moving to South Carolina and going to do a complete remodel of the existing circa 2007 kitchen, which is pretty weak. The root question is as follows with several caveats which you can ignore or use to spur uh discussion. Uh any advice on what equipment is a must-have and any specific ideas to implement. Budget is labile.
I like a labile budget. Uh I'm getting it plumbed with quarter-turned ball valves uh per prior advice. Yeah, do that. Just make sure your freaking plumber actually does it because God, God, I hate regular uh right angle stops with the twist. They always break.
They all a quarter turn is so nice. Your your plumbing will break. People, your plumbing fixtures will break. Why would you want to put yourself in a situation where you can't shut it off quickly and effectively? So dumb.
So dumb. Why do they make those god dang valves? Hate it. Uh obviously know about the work triangle. The equipment will be sub-zero, 60 inch wide, uh uh side-by-side fridge with separate freezer.
Now, let's say, I don't know, let's say your wife's an architect. Like mine. Architects hate fridges because even the what they call a countertop size fridge, countertop depth fridge, is actually deeper than a countertop. Check out, just for giggles, check out Liebhair, the same people who make like I think cranes and whatnot. Liebhair makes a true counter depth uh refrigerator where the actual door of the fridge is flush with counter depth.
Why is that? It's so weird. Well, I have this counter depth uh fridge by Lee Hair because my wife isn't a few years. No, I mean, why is it the fridges are always uh just a bit off? Because that drives me nuts.
Well, because so they can call it counter depth, but like uh the problem with the leap hair is it's very tall. So like small children can't make it to the top, or if you're, you know, you know, if you were sh like shorter, like then probably five, one or two, you probably couldn't make it to the to the top or back, right, without stepping on something, which is an irritant. Uh, but it's also shallow, so it's hard to put big things like a sheet tray with a turkey. You can kind of fit a half sheet tray in, but I think it's mainly for those depth reasons to kind of fit standard things into them. That said, it does look good, and I do like it.
It's got good temperature control. So take a look at the leap hair. And Wolf, I'm getting a range topper range with double ovens depending on space. I'm getting a uh Wolf's Combi oven CVAP as one of the ovens. It is not plumbed.
I have not looked at that one, but maybe our other listener could take a look at that one. I've not looked at it, I don't know anything about it. A plug-in induction burner, that's good. Warming drawer, good. Maybe a blue star salamander.
I looked at it, it has electricity. Why? Is it for the igniters? If it's just the igniters, fine. If not, you need to have some equipment that runs even when your electricity turns off.
Eventually, your electricity is gonna turn off and you're still gonna want to be able to cook. So make sure that even when the electricity is off, unless you're a full electric kitchen, if you actually have gas, make sure that you can still do some cooking even when your electricity is off. Um, do I need a Bain Marie? Eh. I mean, you have an immersion circulator, you say letter uh later.
I think it's gonna be kind of gilding the lily, and you can always just kind of improvise improvise things uh if you need it. I don't really want a fryer inside. I'm gonna fry outside if needed due to stinkslash films. Uh by the way, stink film is our next band. Yep.
And uh right, we're gonna talk about uh hoods later. Get yourself an outdoor fryer uh for sure if you're not gonna do it. Wiley has the Cajun fryer and he likes it. The problem with the Cajun fryer is it doesn't have uh good temperature control. If you're in an outside covered kitchen, I would get a regular commercial fryer and just update it for use in propane and build a cover for it.
No one has a decent, like fully automatic bezoval outdoor fryer that I can find. It would be nice because the Cajun fryer not having a temperature control is a little bit of a crimp. Uh the house doesn't have an outdoor space, so I have a full grill set up with uh green egg, wok burner, turkey fryer, pellet smoker, gas grill. Consider an outdoor, as I say, consider an outdoor dedicated fryer. Consider in your outdoor kitchen this hot, cold water.
Put hot and cold water to your outdoor kitchen and put a low boy fridge outside with a work top. The thing people don't have in their outdoor kitchen is a place to kind of prep things and a way to clean yourself off when you're outside. Hot and cold, right? Which you can stub out from your house and run with a hose if you don't want to bother plumbing hot all the way out there, uh, with a you know, some sort of a pit drain into it, and a refrigerator, that would be nice, right? Yeah, an outdoor fryer.
Uh I would also get, obviously, I would put seltzer in and get an ice machine. Here's a problem with ice machine. They're very energy inefficient, but if you have a nice bar, which you say you do, I would get look into getting an ice machine. My wife hates it because it's loud, right? The one that I have has what's called boardroom function, so you can press it and it turns off for four hours, which means that it doesn't make noise for four hours, or you could consider putting it on a timer so that it's off during dinner time or whenever your wife is near it and doesn't like the noise.
If your wife is like mine and doesn't like irritating noises because it is irritating. I just tune it out. The main thing you that you're gonna have a problem here is uh hoods. And then you ask me how many cubic feet per minute of evacuation is good. Currently, your range is not on the wall, but you're gonna be moving it to a wall.
All right, look it. Look it. Look at, look at, look at, look it. The issue with hoods is this. Uh I'm assuming you're gonna have insurance on your house.
And so if you're gonna have insurance on your house, you have to do things to the code. And every kitchen that I've ever built with serious hood in it, and I've built some kitchens with some serious hoods in it, I've never done what's legal in terms of uh makeup air. So all the air you suck out, you have to supply air for that, right? And so, um, and you know, I'm not gonna give you specific recommendations because you have to look at exactly how many BTUs, how wide they are. In general, it's gonna be easiest for you to stick to a hood that is six feet.
So try to get all your hot side in like in under six feet and get the hood as low as you can reasonably to do the bet the best extraction. You don't want any kind of kinks in your ductwork. You want your ductwork to go straight up. Also, put your fan on the outside of your house. Do not put the fan in your kitchen.
That's the main thing. Put the fan outside or at least in the attic, somewhere away. You want really want an exterior, uh, exterior up blast fan to do good stuff. And if you sounds like you're spending some money, so do it, right? Try to hide it so it doesn't look ugly on the outside or whatever.
But that is gonna make your life much quieter in the kitchen and gonna make everyone happier. I've always used very large-size fans. The reason that home hoods suck so much is the well, they don't suck. The fans are t a, they have zero extraction. B the fans are tiny, and because they're tiny, they have to spin at a very high speed, which makes a very irritating loud noise.
You're gonna want an exterior hood. But in a residential situation where you're in a house, you need to supply what's called makeup air, such that um you're not sucking uh all of your air-conditioned air out of, but also so that you don't suck fumes uh from things like your your boiler, your your boiler, or anything like that. They're worried about you possibly getting a blowout or whatever and getting carbon monoxide sucked through your house or other sort of bad things sucked through your house. So you definitely wanna supply makeup air, which makes it a little more complicated. But uh that and you otherwise, if you don't have makeup air, like it's something stupid.
Like I looked it up, I looked up the uh International Residential Code, and uh exhaust systems of more than 400 cubic feet per minute and greater have to have makeup air equal to the exhaust air and automatically open and close with the operation of the fan. And if you don't, they're not gonna be up to the residential code. And if they're not up to the residential code, if you do have a fire, you might have problems with your insurance. I don't think the the IRC for home hoods, as long as you don't call it a commercial hood, I do not think they have fire suppression requirements, but you might look into it anyway because fire suppression is a good thing, and you don't want to burn down your house. Now, that said, in the zero in the minus five minutes allotted, Matt, I got a couple minutes.
I mean, yeah, like five. Sweet. Time for, and Peter's gonna enjoy this one. Time for this week's what? Oh, I want to add pedal operated faucet sink.
Oh, hell yeah. Pedal operated faucet. You don't see enough, and it's so nice. And no one hooks it up the way they're should, even when they have it. Oh, one last thing before I go into the last thing.
Uh uh like next week is HRN's gala. Like, I don't know whether there's still tickets available. I don't even know where to go. But listen, when I was uh right out of college, I worked for asbestos attorneys. When I worked for asbestos attorneys, uh I was their database designer, but I used to be a paralegal and I interviewed all these people who died of mesothelioma as a result of asbestos uh exposure.
Uh and I said this on air, one of those people gave me his car when he died. That's the car that I took to my wedding. Um nineteen sixty seven or nine, I can't remember, Plymouth Valiant. Um sweet, sweet ride. Uh but uh we used to have these books that we would search through that had uh product advertisements for asbestos.
And so I used to search through them because the pictures were amazing, like you know, like really cool, like mid century, like graphically cool pictures. And one of them that I loved, I made into a t shirt like twenty five years ago, and it was for a product called Limpet Esbestis, and it said on it, It's sprayed Limpet asbestos, and then it said, No cutting, no no nailing, no whatever, it's sprayed. And then there's a picture of a guy spraying it inside of a school bus without a mask or anything, just a guy spraying asbestos. Oh my god. Right?
And so I made this t shirt when I you know, the old school way, like I I sit there and I I Xeroxed it out, exp you enlarged it on Xerox, exposed a frame, washed it out, did silk screening of the t shirt, and the t shirt finally died like last year. So I went on custom ink, and but the thing was I set it up such that anyone could buy it, but I think only like fifteen people or 11 or fifteen people have bought. I need to sell thirty by the end of next week, or all the orders can't donate to mopad or the t-shirt. I'm not making any money. It's not a money, it's not a donate.
I didn't set it up for me to make any money. I'm making zero money! But I just want people to order the t-shirt and spend their money on. It's not, it's like, do you want a t-shirt? It's not it's not an either-or situation, Nastasia.
Oh, so get both. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so I'm gonna figure out I'm gonna put it on on Twitter, on my Twitter, a link to the thing where you can buy this group order. And I'm gonna put on, I'm gonna put on, I'm gonna put what?
We've talked about MoFed. I'm talking about t-shirts now. Get off Zappos. What are you looking at? I can't even look at that.
It was like some stupid website. Like Nastasia has never once listened to what was I talking about? The asbestos t-shirt. What about it? About how you Xerox and the original.
What is it for? What's the company? Custom Inc. What no, what's the company? What's the asbestos company?
Oh, I don't know. Yeah, you don't know because you weren't listening. All right. So like the thing asbestos company, Peter. Sprayed limpet asbestos.
Anyway. So like uh also, like, we have some Gildan haters out there, for those of you that are no t-shirts. They are the crappiest. You chose them! They're the cheapest.
But like 80 cents, you chose them. They're the freaking same. If you look on the websites of people who actually manufacture t-shirts, they're like, they're actually made by the same people in the same factory. Uh, but like, the here's the thing. I'm gonna try to put on the anvils.
The problem is that I don't know how to change the order. I don't care. I will try. I thought American Peril went out of business with all the. It's a brand.
But it's not owned by that brand, yeah. By that terrible person. Alright, anyway. So I'm gonna put that on my Twitter. Look for it, Custom Ink Cooking Issues, sprayed Limpet asbestos on the on the Twitter.
You gotta order them or else nobody gets them. Nobody. Nobody. Now classics in the field, yeah. Alright, Giuliano Buggiali was a crazy son of a gun.
He died in May of this year, and he had one of the better names to say, Giuliano Bugiali. This book that I am gonna talk about today, I'm not gonna talk about his most famous book. His most famous book uh was his first book, and it was called The Fine Art of Italian Cooking. It was published in 1977. Uh, the one I'm gonna talk about is called Classic Techniques of Italian Cooking.
And the reason I love this book is it was given to me, it was the second cookbook that my mom ever bought me. I used to read all of my mom's cookbooks, which included, you know, the uh Julia Child, Simone Beck, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, uh, all of the Time Life Cooking of the World series, uh, the Woman's Home Encyclopedia of Cooking, which was amazing, women's, I forget the exact title, we'll talk about that one later. Uh The Gourmet's Best Desserts, all of that stuff. But uh the first book she bought me was Julia Child's The Way to Cook, which was, you know, kind of formative for me. I still make the Queen of Sheba cake out of that.
But the second book she ever bought me was Giuliano Buggiali's classic techniques of Italian cooking. She must have bought this for me in like 1990 or something like this. And um, it's a black and white, thick book. And I remember reading it and thinking, this guy's a nut job. Like a complete wing.
Like, when you read him, he is the most vitriolic writer. Because, and I'll just read a little bit from the prep preface. He goes, I stress authenticity. If I stress authenticity, if, and he does. If I stress authenticity, and this is where Peter's gonna be important for this discussion, uh, it is because I feel the authentic versions of dishes are the ones that have stood the test of time, even for centuries.
Any personal innovations, any personal innovations should stem from knowledge of the authentic traditional version. It is becoming increasingly possible to retain the authenticity of Italian cooking outside of Italy with greater availability of the proper ingredients, and is worth the extra time, extra is worth the extra effort to arrive at the traditional dish after you have prepared and tasted the original recipe. Then you can be more creative. What happens next is up to you. Which sounds like it makes sense, although he actually never ever wants you to change it because his core assumption is once you have made the original, of course you would never want to make anything else, right?
Uh and so and I don't imagine that he would want to use any ingredients that came over via the Columbian Exchange. So that's interesting. So he does rail against people thinking that it's how first of all, you gotta understand where he comes from. He's born in 1931, died this year. He's born in 1931, and uh he came to America, he was born in in Florence, he's a Florence, so you know Nastasi, with all that implies, being like like a guy, like a guy from Florence, an Italian chauvinist from Florence.
Chauvinist, not in the male chauvinist sense, but in the Italian chauvinist sense, uh only really likes Italian food. So he comes over here and he's basically washed out. He's living big night. If you've never seen Big Night, why are you listening to this instead of going to watch Big Night? Big night is maybe my favorite food movie of all times.
So he is a lot like uh, you know, uh the secundis, right? No, Primo, Primo. Primo's gonna be a good one. Primo is like which one is uh which one is uh Primo's the obstinate one. Tony Shaloub, yeah.
So he's a lot like Tony Shaloub, right? He wants to do things exactly, you know, kind of the way they are, and so he he comes to America and is a wash in just kind of what he considers BS Italian food, garbage Italian food. And so another guy like this is Tony May, the restauratura, which is a dumb word. It should be restaurant, shouldn't it? Restaurator is dumb.
That's what the real word is, but it's dumb. I hope it gets changed. But anyway. Everybody says restaurateur, so yeah. Yeah, yeah.
So, anyway, so like Tony May, Italian Restaurator, in although he retired recently, like he also had similar gripes. So, like you could get Tony Mae, you could throw him into conniptions just by saying the words shrimp scampi. He's like, it's not shrimp scampi. He doesn't talk because he has like an Italian accent, which I'm not gonna try to mimic. He's like, it's not shrimp scampi!
Scampi is scampy and shrimp is shrimp. So he would go crazy, right? He would lose his mind. And so you'd be like, shrimp scampi. And Tony Mae's head would just explode.
He used to come to the French culinary and say sh and say how much he hated the idea of shrimp scampy over and over again. Anyway, so Bujali, I've been reading his book for years, right? And certain of my recipi my go-to recipes, he has a recipe that is for uh a pasta, and I completely bastardized it, which is gonna be terrible. It was an asparagus pasta. I I make it with broccoli because it's available all year.
I'll tell you the recipe right now, it's very easy. Uh saute some onion, chop up some onions, don't put garlic in it, or bujali will come back to from death and kill you. Come back to life and kill you. But saute some onions, saute it, chicken stock, throw in uh the broccoli with asparagus. He hates don't don't freaking, don't use broccoli if you don't want bujali's like ghost to come and kill you.
But I do broccoli. Throw the broccoli in, steam it, then blend that with blend, like after it's steamed, blend the whole thing in a blender. I add cheese, I don't think he does. I add some grana, salt, and pepper, and it makes a super creamy broccoli sauce that you can put onto like fine, like thinner, finer pastas. And it's delicious.
It's delicious. Cooking it in that would be good too. Yeah. Uh yeah, par cooking a little bit because it's already a very thick sauce. You could add more chicken stock.
I don't add that much chicken stock, so my sauce is relatively thick. But do you like it? But anyway, so he makes it with asparagus, and that's a sauce that I've made now for like 30 years, fundamentally. And also I didn't have the money for asparagus. So I told him once, I was like, I I met him maybe three times, and I told him I was like, I make your sauce all the time, but I don't have asparagus, so I make it with broccoli.
And he was like, Yeah. The good thing about him is this if you look at pictures of him in this book and all of his techniques. The thing I like about this book, as opposed to the the uh his more famous book, is that all of the techniques in here are illustrated with a zillion black and white photos of him doing stuff. Yeah, it reminds me of the Jacques Pepin book, actually. That I also love, right?
So if you look at his thing of making pasta, the joy, the look of joy on the man's face as he's making pasta is immense, right? Yeah. And the thing that was kind of endearing about him uh is that he would sit there. I once asked him, I was like, when they started making Lardo at Oto when Zach was starting making uh Lardo at Otto, I was like, oh, they're making Lardo at Oto now. Have you tried it?
He's like, yes. I was like, he's like, I was like, do you like it? He goes, No. There you go. No, because they added spices and he didn't want the spices.
Here's what he said that he, for all of his curmudgeonliness, which was real, that's the thing. So when I had met him, I'd already I met him in maybe 2004. I'd already been cooking from his book for like 14 years, right? And so he was very nice to me. I had dinner with him with Barbara Kafka, who was uh last week's um you know, classics in the field person.
I had dinner with him together, and he liked me because I liked, I think because I liked his book and was genuinely curious, and I was asking him a lot of questions. But he he was so hardcore, but and this is what Nastasi says about me, he would then insult me with a smile on his face. So he always had a smile on his face when he was insulting you or telling you that what you were doing was garbage. I'll give you some uh quotes from him. I'll give you two quotes.
You should check out his book, by the way. He has some super old school, like my um my uh chestnut, my Italian chestnut cake is his recipe that I make all the time, which is nice, but on the dry side, if you like Italian chestnut cakes. And if you're a big night fan, if you want to recreate the timpano thing, he has a pasticcio alla lepre, which is very close to that, which you can look at to do a full-on old school um thing. And what I was gonna get into if I had more time, Peter, well, but I'll I'll do his quotes last. The thing about authenticity, the thing about authenticity is that authenticity is fake, right?
There is no such thing as authenticity. So, like John McWater, who writes about English, language has a lot of the same thing. People try to codify a language, but language is an ever-moving target. Food is also an ever-moving target. That's what our whole exhibition of Chow is about.
Yeah, I mean, I would say authenticity requires also taking it to a time, a place, and a people, right? So you can be authentic to a particular moment or people, but if you're not giving that additional information, just something being purely objectively authentic, it's just like a nonsense idea. Right. And so he and he studied, Bujali studied um all of the eras that he could find of Italian cooking. So this is why he also says, We're not all tomato sauce and garlic.
In fact, that's not even the majority of our food. And he was interested in all the regions and all the times, but he was still stuck on this idea of authenticity, which to me seemed kind of weird. But I will tell you where it comes from. I'll read you a quote that will, and I think he misframed it in terms of authenticity. I'll first say this.
That's not true. My mother never cooked one egg, and the stuff other mothers make is not necessarily top food or even authentic. So what he's saying is not only is your mom's food bad, it's not even authentic to what he wants to do. But then here is where, here's where it is. Giuliano Bujali, throughout his life, saw himself as, and he he had maintained a cooking school in Italy and maintained a house here in the US and was back and forth.
But he saw himself as someone who was trying to maintain an idea, maintain a series and a battery of things, and then not have them bastardized. He was especially mad about French bastardization of um of foods and the perception of French as being the highest end cuisine when he was such a lover of the history of Italian. In fact, he hated fusion so much that uh this is from his New York Times obituary. They says, for my last meal, I want fusion cuisine and bastardize Italian food. Then I wouldn't be afraid to die.
That's what he said. But uh, but to give you an idea of what it is, he saw himself as a preservationist, and this is this is the key quote, and helped me understand him better. He said, on Italian cooks, he said in it in the Chicago Tribune in 1998: cooks season each dish with their ego. Meaning that it's your ego that's making you change the dish, and you can't respect something that was built up by a people and a time, at a time and a place over centuries. So please check out classic techniques of Italian cooking, cooking issues.
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