This episode is brought to you by Fair Kitchens. Learn about the Fair Kitchens code and join the movement at Fairkitchens.com. This week on Meet and Three, we're exploring food for the eyes. How the art and culinary worlds collide. Incredibly elaborate.
It's a feast for the eyes, a banquet dinner with garnished ham, turkey, and an array of accompaniments. We shot uh baguettes with like paint dripping off of them with the blue, white, and red from the French flag. Oh, what did a student tell me? They said the camera eats first. And it's so true.
It's so true. Tune in to Meet in 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 live from almost 12 to about one from the Burda's Pizzeria and Bushwing. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez and Matt in the booth.
Special guest right now, Rebecca P the Boondogler. Are you gonna sing your own theme song? No. No, you're good. You're not allowed to sing your own theme song.
Dagalito! Dave sings all of his own theme songs. Yeah, I do. You're the only one who's allowed to sing your own theme song. Everyone else needs someone else to do it.
Oh, by the way, we're gonna have in a minute special guest, Chef Kate Williams from Lady in the House. So I was trying on the way over to somehow do a lady, like Lady is a tramp mashup, but the rhymes are real hard. The best I could come up with was Hey it's California too cold for a blouse. That's why she's the lady of the house. No.
No. Yeah, that needs some workshopping. Too cold for a blouse. Well, it's too cold and it's damp. What?
Blouse? You can't use the word blouse yet. Say blouse? Nobody wears blouse. I think if she's wearing the blouse, it's better.
No, who wears blouses anymore? I don't know. Oh, Nastassi's only she's either jumpers or dresses. The only two full forms of clothing that Nastasia wears are jumpers and dresses. And leggings.
And sweatpants. Leggings. Well, do you wear uh sweatpants goes on your bottoms? Under, yeah, with the thermal. Alright, well, you guys come up with better rhymes for that.
Okay. But I think that's the song. No blouse. Yeah. Oh, here she is.
Welcome, Chef. Take a seat. So uh I'm gonna let Kate get a uh get her seat here and get some earphones on. Are you gonna sing the song for her? No.
Why? You said the rhyme was no good. We'll work on it. We'll do it later. We'll do it later.
So uh, well, while you're getting settled, first of all, how you doing? Good, how are you? Okay, oh I didn't do sorry, I didn't do my normal pleasantries. Nastasia, anything interesting happened to you last week? Wait for it.
Yeah, but nothing. Really? Anything you want to talk about on the air? Nope. No?
No. That was that's our normal pleasantry. And then I do the same with Matt. Matt, anything interesting happened? No, I just want to hear from Chef.
Uh, all right then. Well, uh, so Nastasi wants me to tell this story, but I think let's talk to Kate for a moment. No, no, no, no, wait. Let's talk to Kate for a minute first. Okay.
Kate, how you doing? I'm doing great. How are you too guy? Doing well. So, for those of you that don't know, uh, should I you know do the quick, the the quick?
I know we're fellow uh French Culinary Institute people from back in the day. Currently, you're from Detroit and currently, you know, Chef Extraordinaire in Detroit, but you had a long road to get back to Detroit, right? Yeah. You want to do that quick, or you want like me to make up some stuff? Uh I could do it quick.
You know, New York, where actually you were my teacher in sous vide cooking, which that's like, you know, when I tell people that in Detroit, I don't know if everyone knows how like geeked out people are in Detroit over David Astasia. Um, so super exciting. We like Detroit. Detroit's awesome. It is.
You know, uh, we'll talk about that in a minute, but talk about you for a minute. Yeah, so um, New York, Chicago, Copenhagen, unexpectedly back in uh Detroit, and um thinking, you know, when I left 10 years before that I was never, you know, as a chef, I was like, oh, I don't know if there's a food scene here, and completely fell in love and then decided I wanted a restaurant um or restaurants now. Um yeah, that's about it. Nice. Well, the um also I read that you worked for Wolfgang Puck.
In Chicago, yes. What was that? What's he like? Well, uh, he's actually really cool. He's very excited you know, I mean, he is very much what he appears like on TV.
He's very excited about the food, right? Like he just can't stop talking about how his three-year-old loves his smoked salmon pizza and stuff like that. So what is he anyway? Is he Alzatian? Is he part of the Alsatian Mafia?
What is he? Is he German or Alzheimer's? Austrian, I think. Austrian? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, not German. Yeah, I believe he's Austrian. Cool. All right.
Uh so he was all right to work. I've always wondered, like, he's like one of these enigmatic figures to me that I've never I've never met the guy. Well, also by that time, so I don't even remember what year that was, 20 2008, something like that. There were a few people between us, so it wasn't like a directly report, you know, he's out in LA, whatever. But yeah, he was great.
Yeah, cool. So then you go back to uh Detroit, and you were there for a while before you opened Lady of the House, right? A couple of years? Yes, correct. Um so Lady of the House opened in 2017, and I moved back in 2010.
Yeah, white. You want to talk about the concept like the lady of the house, like you want to talk. What do you want to talk about? Like we Nastasi and I went there and you had a great kind of charity event. What's the name of that uh charity that you Chef Tell Classic?
I think we should do that in New York. Did I mention this? Yeah, I think you should come to New York when you are in New York. By the way, you're here for a beard house event, right? Yeah, tomorrow night.
Do you need to push that or do you not need to push that? No, I think it's sold out, right, Bex. Too late, people. Anyway, like uh the beard house is so weird. For those of you that don't know, I don't know, for those of you that like don't come to New York and aren't actually plugged into different chef communities, you know what I mean?
Like, but definitely a nationwide chef community is the community that's plugged into this whole kind of beard house. I'm not gonna say cult, because that gives it kind of a bad ring, but they make you pay for all your own ingredients. They used to, I don't know if they still do. They changed that. Oh, really?
I looked it back and so I wanted to double check. You're like, is that the case? It used to be, okay. So it seems like it's much different now. It used to be you paid your own way and your own ingredients.
They sold tickets because it was a chair, is a charity. Right. And so everyone was always like, Yeah, I'd love to do it. Oh, now I gotta pay for it. You know what I mean?
But now it's different, like you're yeah, this stuff's covered. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, exactly. And the cooks get really excited. I mean, so we did one two years ago and um brought some of our team, and we're we have one of them coming back with us, but um, you know, it's exciting like cooking at the beard house for them, you know.
Yeah, by the way, you're cooking in his kitchen. Yeah, you're cooking, and his kitchen sucks. If it's tiny. It's definitely tiny. It sucks bad.
It's a bad kitchen. First of all, for those of you, I've said this a million times, Jay's beard, uh, I have all of those books, beard on pasta, beard on bread, beard on whatever, beer, blah blah blah, blah blah blah. But it's like, and maybe someday we'll do a James Beard classics in the field someday, but uh, because I guess I have read them all. He had some terrible opinions about things. Yeah.
Terrible. Terrible. He liked electric ranges. Oh, that's news to me, actually. Yeah, he wrote, I like electric well, I'm paraphrasing.
I like electric ranges. Was that in his kids' book? I'm using my crayon. I'm using my crayon hand when I'm ready. Yeah.
Fire hot. Actually, Booker, uh my son Booker, his very first words were hot, because we had all exposed, like hot stuff in the in the loft at the time when he was born when he started kind of crawling and walking around. Very first word, hot. I'm like, damn skippy. Anyway, but you know, I don't because like if your kid shows up, if you're wheeling your kid in a stroller and there's a giant burn mark across their face from where they leaned into a steam pipe, that's on you.
Yeah, you're not invited back. Yeah. Wait, now that you're on your family. Oh, I was like, wait, wait. I just have to say this, people.
If you are uh a woman, do not make comments to fathers pushing kids in strollers about how they should have shoes on, how they're wet. Like, the dad can handle pushing the kid around in a stroller and the kid's waterproof. Is this in the middle of winter? Well, no, it's just like, I mean, maybe it's different now, but like 18, you know, 18 years ago when I was pushing Booker around in strollers, like, because like I was the guy at home, like Jen was my wife was working, and I was, you know, I had the more flexible job, so I was the guy at home in the crazy loft, trying to stop my kid from getting burnt against hot things. And every single woman on the street thinks that this is the first time you've pushed your kid around the city in a stroller or carried them or fed them, or I'm like, Mike, I appreciate that you're trying to help, but you need to shut up.
That sounds really hard for you, Dave. I know he hates me though. I'm saying it's like, you know, whatever. We do. Before we move on, can we just talk about the shower situation at the beard house?
I did not use the restroom. I don't use I consider that a public restroom, so I've never used it. But you've never even been inside to look? No. It's incredible.
Okay, he also has an outdoor shower. That he has like glass covering that area, and so all of his neighbors would see him showering nude. Bit of a couple all the time. Oh, I thought I I must have ranges. That part's amazing.
Also the me entirely mirrored bathroom. Yes, and bedroom. He's a creep. Alright. He also, now, I think we can all agree here.
I've said this a million times, but I'll say it one more time in case this is the first time you're tuning in. He only liked canned sardines, did not like fresh sardines. Now I love canned sardines because they taste good. But fresh sardines are one of the best things ever. Delicious.
Maybe it's because he couldn't get enough heat on his Ran State Electric stove. I think they swapped out his actual range. Do they have gas on the range now? Yeah, there's gas now. Yeah, yeah.
I think it used to be those just He's rolling over in his grave. Yeah. Trying to. He's trying to make it over in his grave, his glass coffin grave. Anyway.
Gross story. Alright, so I'm gonna I promise, sorry, Kate. I promised that uh, I promised that I would tell this gross story last week before I knew that you were gonna be on. But before I tell the gross story, I have something else to lead into it. So we're gonna play a little game of, and you can, you know, Rebecca and Kate, you can play Matt.
You can play here. It's called He's Wrong, She's Wrong, Both Wrong. No. Alright. All right.
Ready? Go on. So this leads into the story. So they just did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we'll do this without names so that we can't partial. The she may or may not be nostassi. Yes. And the he may or may not be. We'll not let that affect our judgment.
May or may not have been this morning. So uh and you know, you what feel free to weigh in, people. So I've been, and this is how it ties in. So I've been working for the last week or so on the design drawings for the Sears All V8, which is the kind of high-powered broiler attachment that we're gonna make that's you know, like gonna be like, you know, it's a hundred thousand BTUs in a space like this big, and it's gonna be on a timer, so it just it comes on when you need it and then clicks off of the timer. So like and you can take it on the go with you so you could have like a deck broiler on the go.
Wow. It's gonna be nice. So our direct competitor is something called the Auto While Grill, but so we're gonna have to do some testing. But anyway, we're excited because they're like, oh, it only takes three minutes to heat up. I'm like, three minutes?
Who's got three minutes? 15 seconds! Hot! Yeah. Hot now!
It's like, remember like uh crispy cream, hot now! Anyway, um, so I'm working on it, I've been working on it. I get, I finally, you know, I do CAD, which is the 3D drawings, and so I have every single part of this. And by the way, if any of you ever need to make something like a physical object and you're gonna get it manufactured, um, it it it takes a and it's taken us years to figure it out like how much work you need to do before you approach someone to do it, because if you don't, if you do too much work, they're like, I'm I can't do that, and you've wasted all that work. But if you don't do enough work, they provide you with an initial design idea, and once you have been provided with an initial design idea, it never changes.
And this is goes, this also goes with you know, uh design and architecture, exhibition design, restaurant design, menu design. Anytime you have multiple people involved, here's when you're in a meeting, I just highly recommend, and everyone hates me for this in meetings, but this is this is the God's truth. People are like, but it's it's just a dummy, it's just there. You don't need to worry, we can change it later. It will never change later, people.
Like if someone says, don't worry, it's just there to kind of show you what it could be, but it could change later, it will never change. So whether it's the shape of the pass, whether it's the structure of the menu, whether it's whatever it is, once it's just been dummied in, it's there for good. So fight early. You know what I'm saying? I mean, how many times do you deal with that with uh with like you know, your kitchen consultants, your your architects?
I mean. Oh, all the time. Just like, oh, don't worry. Like, we'll, you know, the water's gonna get to this temperature. Just don't worry, we'll take care of it later.
It's like, you know. Yeah, yeah. And because people, people like are like, don't get bogged down in the minutiae, Dave. I'm like, okay, I won't, then don't put the dummy in. Don't dummy it at all.
Just take it out of this discussion so we're not even discussing it. And I'll happily deal with this minutia later, but I will not allow that to remain in as a dummy and it becomes a hard fact in my life later because this is not something that's happened to me eight or twelve times. This has happened to me like dozens and dozens of times. Every time. Yeah.
In every aspect in every field of my life. But uh, so anyway, so I'm designing away. And so this morning I finish a set of drawings 36 inch by 24 inch, like A1, full blueprints, completely like with cutaway views, with like, you know, all of the dimensions on it, an entire build of material down to the number of set screws and their size and the materials they're made out of, like an entire thing. PDF. Nastasia this morning sends me.
You mean she. She, she sends me a uh forward forwards me a message from a listener about yeast, which maybe we'll get to later. About pitching yeast. You like pitching, you you uh do you do a lot of uh yeast, yeast and sourdough baking? We do, yeah.
So then I'll let you answer it then. I I have my idea and then we'll see. We'll we'll talk about it. Uh so she sends me this, forwards me this message. Because usually I send him the questions beforehand.
This is true on a word document. Usually 10 p.m. the night before, roughly. Between 10 and 12, night before. Yeah.
And then it and by the way, for those of you that don't want actually want to know the nuts and bolts, here's how it works. She sends something that says radio subject, no, r subject radio, text, yo. Attachment. For like eight years. Radio, yo.
So it's like, you know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, it's on a word document. So anything that comes in after midnight or one or whenever whenever I send it, I'll just forward the question directly so that he knows to add it on to the thing. And she says like forward radio or something like that on the forward.
Yeah. Okay. So she does that. About this yeast question. About this yeast question.
And then I'm like, I'm like trying because I want to get here roughly on time. So I'm also getting ready and typing, typing, typing. I finally, like, you know, I get the last dimensions in, like, the program I'm using is being a real P It P you know pain in the behind on like doing this specific cutaway exactly the way I want. I finally get it. I go save as PDF.
Nastasia's forward is there, so I just hit reply to Nastasia, write on it. I can supply the full CAD files if necessary. You said here's what I've been working on. Oh, get it. Get it up.
Here's what I've been working on. Yeah. He said this guy, this guy said, here's what I've been working on. I can supply full CADs if necessary. I still need to dimension out the I I can still dimension out for them the gas orifice and the nozzles, etc.
etc. Yeah. Attach this PDF, which is the complete I can show you guys the. Just says, here's PDF I've been working on. I can send them the actual cat as well as do a more detailed drawing of the nozzles aerodate gas orifice.
So I read, here's a PDF I've been working on in relation to the yeast guy, right? Because it's an direct answer to this yeast question. And I'm like, why can't Dave just copy the yeast guy instead of writing it to me? And so she forwards the guy. So I'm like, I'm trying to get out the door, and I forward the email to the yeast guy.
Dave calls me, he's like, I saw you, I'm you missed your call or whatever. Did you see what I was working on? And I was like, yeah, I forwarded the effing guy. What do you yeah? I'm like, what?
So she forwarded the entire, she forwarded the entire design schematic of the entire unit. Which came look at the level of detail we're talking here. I mean. I mean, forwards it. So then we start yelling at each other.
She's like, who just forwards? On an email that's unrelated. No, who responds to an email. To an email. But also something totally different.
There was something in my head that was like patent worthy. Yeah. There was something in my head that went like CAD drawings for yeast making. Like, that's weird. Why would I was like, it's all nerdy, okay.
So she starts yelling at me. She's like, who does? She's like, who does that? I'm like, yeah, who does that? Who doesn't read what they're doing?
And then we both just start screaming the F word. Just long F word. I think that the listeners can really know what we're talking about. You should send me the PDF and I'll post it as the episode. Yeah, they both.
Yeah, yeah. That would be smart. That's the good call, Matt. So anyway, so that's a game of he's wrong. She's wrong?
Both wrong. Both. Both wrong. Definitely the mutual, the mutual F-word was the right call there. Yeah, but at that point, so for those of you that don't know, we're not monsters.
At that point, we were just Fing our lives, not each other. We weren't screaming that. Yeah, it wasn't F you, it was more like we're both screaming F May. So is there like a hit out on that? No, actually and he was like deleted, deleted, deleted, and I was like, okay.
He's like for the highest bidder. Now, not only does he know about this, but you've now told all the listeners. But all they need to do can now understand that this is out there in the world. Well, no, as long as he deleted it, it's it's fine. Well.
Okay, let me just point out here that this is like the perfect example of things that happen all the time with both of you. Like pick up the pieces reply to a random email putting really important documents attached to it, and then you are annoyed that it came through and you instinctually forward it along without even reading what's attached. Right. Well, I mean, I'm gonna file that particular thing under, like we both know each other. Like, why haven't we learned who we are yet?
Exactly, exactly. That's really your point. It's like, you know, if this is the first time Nastasia had dealt with me, or the first time I dealt with her, I'd be like, you know what? Like, we'll give her a pass, or anybody. I love it so much.
All right, so now that's the that's what I was working on. So as I said before, uh like I have some certain issues, many. One of those issues is is that once I go into a project, and I'm sure you're probably like this too, Kate, like when you're in something, you're in it. Like time can spool away. Like, I don't, I don't pay attention to like, have I eaten breakfast?
Have I eaten lunch? Is the is the building on fire? I'm just like on what I'm on. I'm doing what I'm doing. You're really into it.
Yeah, so Rebecca is quoting a confessions. Okay. I won't tell you what her reference is then. Ask our lawyer. He'll that was another classic.
That is not safe for family show. I can just I'll say it quickly. I accidentally forwarded a naked photo of Dave on a horse to our patent list. It was not a naked picture of me on a horse. Yes, it is, Dave.
It is not me. It's you, Nick. It is my head on some model's body. And can I have that one for the show? And I will also say no genital.
No Franks and Beans. No Franks and Beans. Not even but. Although the whole point was that there was none, but yes. This is not appropriate for this show.
And neither was it appropriate to send to our patent lawyer. And that's today, people, that Nastasia learned how to manipulate group texts. It's still an issue, but it's better. Okay, okay. So anyway, so I get deep into it.
So you know what I was into because I just told you I was doing the Sears all V8. Alright. And which by the way looks kind of like a V8 engine, right? It's got that kind of overhead, overhead cam action. Do you have any schematics for that?
Uh okay, so also my kids were home from school, and so I was like, you know, you're gonna walk the dogs, right? Because that's the deal. If they're home from school, they don't have school, they walk the dogs. Otherwise, in the morning I walk to dogs. Okay.
So I go to Dax and I say, Dax, walk the dogs. Right. This is before I go into the K-hole. I like walk the dogs. Then I go back to the computer and I start like doing my my computing stuff.
And that was I I told him at like 8 30 in the morning. So then all of a sudden, around 11, I hear a noise. And it kind of, because I was at kind of a natural break, I hear a noise, which I normally wouldn't hear. And it's my robotic vacuum. I have a robotic vacuum that goes around the house and robotically vacuums everything up.
Its name is Xiaomi. Okay? Uh that's the name of the company. Anyway, so it's a you know, it's a decent robotic vacuum. And I hear it, and I'm like, oh, did they walk the dogs?
So I go over to Dax, who's still, you know, murdering people on his Xbox, which is, you know, what as he does, and I'm like, walk the dogs, like that. And so he like, he's like, ugh, fine, fine, goes and walks the dogs. He takes the dogs out, and I'm just sitting down to go back into another deep hole of of work, right? And you know, me, I'm hearing me, which is the robotic vacuum, and I'm like, what's that smell? Oh!
Ow! Oh my god! And so I run over and the robotic vacuum, noonie noonie noonie noonie no, had robotically vacuumed into the kid's bathroom where now one of my dogs is big. That dog can hold stuff forever. One of my dogs is only 20 pounds, and so it can't hold it from 7 p.m.
the night before until like 11 15 in the morning the next day. And Watson, the small one. So once Watson goes into the bathroom and he's like, I can't hold it anymore, boss, and he pees, he's like, might as well poop. Right? So he's like, peas and poofs, thankfully on the tile of the bathroom, right?
Oh no. I'm like, but Xiaomi doesn't know from pee and poop. So Xiaomi runs over with the brushes, inhales the pee in the poop, and then ejects pee and poop fumes out of its filter and instantly fills the house with dog poop smell. Like hot too, right? Hot hot sprayed dog pee and poop smell.
And then I was just like, so I just hit stop, shut the door and walked away. For like, it took me a good oh, oh, it would you too. It would take me a good, it took me a good five minutes to be like. So then Dax comes home and I'm like, guess what? So then I'm like, you're doing the initial clean.
So like I flipped Xiaomi completely disassembled. We start scrubbing it, sterilizing it, like boiling it, like all the things that we need to do, like trying to get this electronic battery-powered, poop infiltrated monstrosity back into like, you know, vacuuming shape again. And then Dax, it turns out, he has all these toilet, all these paper tiles that he's using to clean, right? But he can't find a trash bag because we don't he can't find a trash bag. So I'm like, I see him throw one in the toilet.
I'm like, don't throw that in the toilet, you're gonna clog the toilet. He's like, oops. And then I look at the toilet, and the toilet is full of paper towels. So then I had another half hour of plunging the toilet to try to get the god dang paper towels down the vet. Oh my god.
I mean, yes, having a robotic vacuum and two dogs in New York, first world problems, but unpleasant. Unpleasant nonetheless. Did you get an eye infection from like the humes of poop that were all around? I didn't, although uh I want you guys all to know that when you smell poop, it is actual poop molecules that are hitting your nose. Ugh.
Just as you know. And your eyes. I always wanted to make a little t-shirt for houseflies that say, the last place I landed was poop. Is it same with the fart? What?
Is it the same? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not that it's not, it's not the bacteria aren't hitting you, it's the volatile molecule. I mean, like, maybe it is. I mean, I don't know how diaphinous your your garments are.
This feels like a great place to go to break. I thought you wanted to do the classics in the field before break. After break. All right, here we go. We'll be right back with Kate Williams cooking issues.
This episode is brought to you by Fair Kitchens. The food service industry faces a challenge. More people are eating out, yet restaurants are losing talent. Why is this? Research by Fair Kitchens reveals a serious well-being issue within professional kitchens.
74% of chefs are sleep deprived to the point of exhaustion. 63% of chefs feel depressed, and more than half feel pushed to the breaking point. This can't be ignored. Fair Kitchens is a movement based on the belief that a positive kitchen culture makes for a healthier business. By taking the pledge to be a fair kitchen, they'll provide you with free information, tools, and resources to help you take action towards making your restaurant more stable, productive, and happy, which positively affects the guest experience.
It's time to act now. Learn about the Fair Kitchens code and join the movement at Fairkitchens.com. Are we back? Oh sorry, that was Yeah, yes. And we are back.
So I have been told by Matt, uh, in no uncertain terms that the new structure of the show is we will actually go to break. That will happen. And then when we come back, it's time for Classic Seat in the Feed. And so that's what we're gonna do. And uh what year were you at SCI?
Uh 2006. 2006. And you see, you like uh when did you when did you start cooking in life? Like I mean, like like when did you become more serious about cooking? Were you always serious about cooking?
No, I took a cooking class in high school and then just never stopped. That's like not a romantic story, but I just I you know I was bit by the bug and then um just kept cooking. Yeah. So 15 and professionally 18. Oh nice.
Alright, so I mean I I'm trying to get a handle for like when like you know, uh people became uh aware of certain things, but you know, when I was a kid, I used to break into my mom's cook not breaking, but like go take all my mom's cookbooks, read them, and like, you know, cook by myself because I was home alone a lot. Sure. I mean, and so I would, you know, not in the Macaulay Calkin sense, but you know, home alone a lot. And so that's when I really started kind of to cooking things that I probably shouldn't have been cooking on my own. But then, and in college, I would, I like would buy like I would buy portable ovens and baked bread in my dorm room.
Uh yeah, I'm a weird dude. Anyways, but like after I graduated college is when I got kind of seriously bitten by the bug of serious home cooking. You know what I mean? Which is by the way, by the way, different from restaurant cooking. Let's just, everyone needs to be clear on this.
You could you could be a fantastic chef and do almost no home cooking ever, not even like home cooking. Uh not eating it, but doing it. You know what I mean? And likewise, you can be one of the you know great home cooks and be a garbage chef. You have garb, you agree with this?
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the great disservices that's been done to us as a food culture, us as a country in our food culture is this kind of destruction of cook as being something that is honorable. Everyone wants to be chef at home. I'm like, no, you don't. You know what I mean?
Like, no, no, no, you know you don't. You know what I mean? Like, no, no one at home actually actually likes to cook that way. You know what I mean? Right.
Yeah, you know, you know, like all of like the pre-steps you have to do, like all the way. So like, let me tell you something, people. Let's say, let me give you a word of advice. If you're at home and a professional chef comes over to dinner, right? Like a line cook, whatever.
They come over to dinner, right? Especially a line cook. And you're trying to make something, and they say, if you're lucky, they won't ask for help because what's gonna happen is they're gonna ask for help, and you're gonna say, yeah, cut some onions. And so what they will do is take your entire bag of onions and cut them instantly into a thing. You're like, I only needed one onion.
Because that's not the way that cooks think. You know what I mean? They're like, I'm gonna take this thing that you have handed me and break the whole thing down, because it's a different mentality. You know what I mean? Uh anyway, and so and they're like, don't worry, you'll use it, you'll use it in the next dish you cook in like 10 minutes when we fire the oh, you're not firing anything else tonight?
Oh. So it's like a different, different mindset. But uh just firing. Like you don't use that at home. No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, if you haven't fired it yet at home, you're toast. You know what I mean? And this, by the way, is why I think like low-temp work, like sous- vide work is good in um in a home, because even if you're doing relatively simple things, it's very simple things. It's really hard to get a dinner to come together at once, especially if you wanna do stuff that doesn't sit around a long time. It's like if you're smart, which I never am, you cook something that can sit around all day without going bad.
Lasagna. You know what I mean? It's like, hey, lasagna, eggplant park, great, you know what I mean? You know, finish it at noon, it's still great at eight. You know what I mean?
It's like, who cares? No, it's always gotta be the steak. Or something that but for stuff like that, that's why sous vide is such a lifesaver because it allows you to get all the components of your crap together and then just bang, fire that stuff at the end and put it out. Anyway, that's not what I'm talking about. So I became uh very interested in home cooking right after college.
I graduated college in 93, and in 93, there was an internet-ish, but it didn't have pictures on it. So, like if you wanted to get a picture on the internet in the 90s in the early, early, early, early 90s, you joined what's called a use group, and then you had like a uh a buy, it's called a binary file, and that binary file was almost like a Word document, and then you loaded that into another program that would then convert that back into a picture. So you're like, oh, they posted a picture, so wait. Because you lost your connection, and then you get it, and then like, and you're like, oh, that's not the picture I want. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Who picked up my phone? Yeah. Anyway, so that's the way the internet used to work. So there was no internet, there was no YouTube, there was almost there's nothing like that.
The cookbooks that were available at the time were very good, but they didn't actually, even the ones done by professional cooks, didn't give you kind of cool tricks and tips that a professional might know for home, and they weren't they didn't they didn't really have fill this niche. Outcomes in 1993, Cook's Illustrated magazine. Cooks Illustrated, I was I got the full charter year, 1993, which was the first year. So Chris Kimball uh founded uh Cooks Illustrated, he founded Cooks Magazine, which folded in I guess the late late 80s, it sold that to Conde Nast. When they folded, he somehow acquired the rights to use the word cooks again, founded Cooks Illustrated.
Now Cooks Illustrated, the interesting thing about it, it many interesting things about it, but it came out every two months. It was in black and white, so it wasn't, you know, of the kind of you know, bone bone app or gourmet variety of kind of glossy mag. Uh it did not have any advertisements in it, and still doesn't, I guess. No advertisements. And it had these things in it that I had never seen in a magazine before.
Uh, and it had a very kind of unique um attitude. So it had, I mean, the first one's a lie, it had notes from readers. There's no readers because the sucker hadn't started yet. Everyone always got a lie a little bit, you know what I mean? But it had this section on quick tips that was kind of like the YouTube of its day.
It like showed you how to do it. Oh, I'm very familiar. Yeah, I yeah, I I had the subscription for years. Yeah, and so you can go and and they really started, and we talked about uh the man who had everything before, but they really started the whole idea of I'm gonna take a recipe and run it down into the ground and test it 18 different ways and tell you how things work. They hired a lot of professionals to do things that they were very good at.
So there's an extremely young Bobby Flay in here. Uh, there's a bunch of kind of well-known, well-known people, and some of the recipes are still the recipes I use to this day. Their muffin recipe from 1993. I see who wrote it because I don't I don't remember, but I'll I'll give her a shout out. Um but that's when I learned because like back in the day, when you bought a muff, you know how when you buy a muffin, you know how when you make a muffin at home, it's a sad little affair.
And then when you buy a professional one, it it's blasted over its its cap and has that giant cap that everyone is the best part of every muffin. Well, I didn't learn how to do that until I read uh well, that's that's a different one. I didn't learn how to do that until I read, oh, it's the same person. Marcy Goldman, wherever you are, you're a freaking genius. I don't know you, but I've been making your muffins and your one dough mini cookies, sugar cookie recipe from the 1993 Cooks Illustrated for decades now.
And you, you, Marcy, are a genius. So she's the one who's like, you're not making your dough thick enough, your bad are thick enough, you're not putting it enough of it into the cup, let it flow over. I don't know how she talks, no matter like, you know, let it, and then I also, by the way, I don't know if you know this people, I'm an extreme cheater. I'm an extreme cheater. So Chicago Metallic, you know, Chicago Metallic?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The baking pan people, Chicago Metallic. They make a muffin pan. I was all I've been blessed for many, many, many, many years of always having full full sheet tray ovens at home.
Yeah. You know, since ever since 90, since 1997, I've had full sheet trays, right? At home. So and for those of you that bake in an oven that doesn't have a full sheet tray, jerks! You know what I mean?
Okay, back me up on this. Full sheet tray is like a game change. Oh, absolutely. I can't. I'm trying to think of how have I not made that decision in my personal life.
Just because you have you had at work. If you need it, you'll be like, yo, I need to do something. Prep some stuff out for me, and they'll do it. The other thing I've told many people is that you know what's a luxury at home. It's nice, hard to keep clean, but nice, is um is uh a speed rack for sheet trays in your house so that you can just rack all the stuff up and everything.
Yeah. So Christmas cookie time, I'm the I'm the Christmas cookie. People are like, how do you make so many Christmas cookies? I got a freaking full sheet tray oven. Yeah, full sheet and a speed rack.
Boom, boom, boom, boom. Anyway, uh, where was I going with this? So Chicago Metallic makes a muffin pan that has an indent the size of the muffin cap, so it doesn't, you don't have to worry about being good at the batter. It can't spread past the muffin cap. Whoa.
Right? Yeah. Right? I I'm torn though, how I feel about it. It's cheating.
But why not cheat? Do you know how many awesome muffins I cranked out of that pan? I don't know where it is today. I think it got lost in one of my moves. But oh my god, that pan, so many blueberry muffins.
All thanks to Marcy Goldman. Here's another tip that Marcy Golden gave me in in the in the year of our Lord 1993 that I use to this day. Now, listen, I know all of you were like, you should keep around some cake flour, some white swan or lily, whatever it is, cake flour, because it's bleach and it's different. Listen, if you don't want to have multiple flowers and you keep AP in your house on the regular, like I do, and like most people do, most people also have cornstarch in their house. Or if you don't, why don't you have a box of cornstarch in your house?
If you need something tender, like a cookie, just sub in 15, about 10 to 15% cornstarch for your AP flour, and all of a sudden you've knocked the gluten down and tenderized uh tenderized your product. I use this sometimes in pancakes, I use it in crepes, I use it in cookies, all because of Cooks Illustrated 1993 and Marcy Goldman. For the good news for you people is that the first at least I think 10 years of Cooks Illustrated were bound at the end of the year, they did a bound volume of the whole year, and you can buy it complete with index. So this week's classics in the field is Cooks Illustrated 1993, charter year bound volume. And I know some of it's outdated because a lot of their stuff was we're only gonna test things that we can get in the Boston Metro area.
They didn't ever test anything that was hyper expensive or unavailable, so it doesn't fit into today's. I'm gonna go on the internet and get the nichest niche McNeish thing that I can find. You know what I mean? It wasn't about that. And it wasn't about going through Herculean effort, so it's like not my style now.
Crazy efforts to get marginal improvement. As for those of you that know, Nastasi and I are maximum effort, marginal improvement. Like that's our goal. Compare it to aviation. Oh, yeah, we're the trailing edge technology.
Like we make that plane a little bit better, but if it falls off, you're gonna land. You know what I mean? Uh you know what I mean? That little blessing, that little wingtip that saves like one gallon per trip, that's us. Uh but and uh you know who uh got their uh their writing start at Cooks Illustrated?
Kenji Lopez Al. Really? Yeah. So the mistakes that Cooks Illustrated made were they use the word best a lot when they shouldn't, right? They should just say, here's the path we chose, look at our path.
It's more of a DAO thing. You know what I mean? Look at look at the way of learning how to make something better. Look at the way of getting better. Instead of saying that there is a goal you have achieved, because we all know there's no goal.
You've you've achieved nothing. There's still work to do. You know what I mean? So uh, like that's a mistake. I think um, you know, some of the anyway, but we're not talking about their mistakes.
Go look at the classics, go do it, go do it. Uh Dave, did you realize so Marcy Goldman has a website called betterbaking.com. I did not know that. It was uh established in 1997, so definitely same issues you had with the internet. Yeah, being being boingy boingy.
Um and apparently they're she has a muffin recipe on here called Lawsuit Muffins. Ooh. Um they help you win a lawsuit. Apparently, they inspired a lawsuit. Oh, but I feel like you might need to reach out to Marcy and see how much.
Are they her buttermilk? Are they her buttermilk ones? Um I don't believe Oh, yeah, they are. If you need to make a muffin recipe, I mean, I don't know her current one, but the one that she used to use. This is the other thing.
Cooks Illustrated, once they've been around like 20, 25 years, they're like, oh, they'll there's perfect biscuit from 1993. Then they do biscuits again in like in like 2005, and they're calling it like the perfect business. Which one's perfect, people? That's what I'm saying. You know what I mean?
Can't be perfect twice. Jerks! Anyway, but uh great stuff, great stuff. Uh all right, now. Uh wait, we're gonna talk about Detroit more?
How about Detroit? When Nastasia and I went to Detroit. Tell her about how you almost got taken out by chicken. What? No.
Why? Okay. Oh. No. Why?
You don't have to. Because then I have to send it. You don't have to say the name? No. Talk about that later at lunchtime.
I'll talk about that later at lunchtime. But uh those of you that do you remember that? I mean, those of you that of course she remembers that. Uh anyway, so like I was kind of surprised at the how cool the food scene was really in Detroit when I went. That was a year ago now.
Mm-hmm. It was June. Yeah. Yeah. And um, like one thing that I they I still don't quite understand is like how all like how there's such a level of like fit and finish in a lot of the places there.
They're like, how is this all getting paid for? Is it really just that much cheaper to make something nice in Detroit than it is to make something nice in New York? Because I just don't understand the economics of it. You know what I mean? Because everything was so nice.
Like that, like the perfume bar, that perfume bar was just so physically nice. Physically nice. Yeah. Well, the rents are cheaper, obviously. So that's so you have more money to spend on other stuff?
Yeah, I mean, cost of living in general is lower there than definitely New York. So yeah. Yeah. Oh, and we didn't get to talk about uh the structure of uh Lady of the House. So wait, what are the other restaurants now?
How many do you have now? So two restaurants, Lady of the House St. Carl's, which just opened in August. So you guys weren't even here for that. Oh, yeah, but you were opening it.
That's the one that opened at the top of that hotel. Yep, it's on the second floor of the siren. And that one's more of a that's more of like a what was it, diner inspiration? Yeah, so um my great-great-grandfather had a bakery called that's my mom my grandma's maiden name Carl, uh called Carl's Kirchoville Home Bakery, it was called, uh, on the east side of Detroit, like pre-depression era. And so this is sort of like if that had never closed, right?
So touched by every generation since it's breakfast, lunch, dinner, um, bakery, but also um like sort of classic diner. Do you have any access to the old recipes? No, it's so funny actually that the family sort of the Carl family kind of dispersed a lot of places. So I've been getting letters from um, you know, women in Florida, like, oh, I have recipes and dishes from the original, but still haven't gotten them. So that'd be amazing.
If you're listening, yeah. That'd be amazing. If they're listening to cooking issues, yeah, odds, odds minimal. Uh but the uh oh yeah, that's cool. So it's that open in August, it's going well.
Yeah. Do you have a Coney on the menu there or no? No, we don't. Maybe we'll do one. I don't know.
I mean, I like to leave that to like the expertise. Yeah. I don't think when we where did we go? What was the place we went, Nastasia? I forget the name of it.
I don't think that those people in their white t-shirts had left that hot dog line in 50 years. You were at Lafayette, I think. I don't know. I was like, it was like white t-shirt. Yeah, a kind of a sour but nice look.
Yeah. And yelling the orders like there's no yeah. Best hot dog I've ever had in a restaurant. Yeah. Yeah, it was laughing at then.
Yeah. Yeah. Best. I mean, the problem is is that you need to I've said this on the air, so apologize, listeners, for saying the same thing so many times. They, first of all, eating at home, a skinless Frank, fine.
Fine. You know what I mean? You just don't have what you don't have the energy to go out and get a real one. But like the snap on those conies. Yeah.
So much better than any hot dog, sorry, Nathan. So much better than any hot dog at Coney Island ever. I mean, I don't even think back when Nathan's was new, they had a hot dog as good as the as the as the Coneys out of out of Detroit. And yet they're called Coneys after Coney Island because were they Greek? Some Greek person happened to stop in Coney Island on their way to Detroit.
Yeah, exactly. And and if if you don't know, it's like Detroit's signature food and the classic battle between the two famous ones of American Coney Island and Lafayette, which are in the same building. And I believe American Coney Island is the landlord for both, which is also funny. But um it's like Sally's and Peppy's pizza in in in New Haven, now owned by the same people. Oh interesting.
No, yeah, it's so um, in my opinion, the the actual dog is better and has like the um crunch at American, but the the Coney sauce is better at Lafayette. So I think is where you went. Well, yeah, but this is the I mean here's the issue. Like the other thing I've mentioned this before is that the the the thing that you can't get anywhere else is this uh beef heart chili, right? Right, yeah.
Uh and I love the beef heart chili, but I would rather have a bowl of the beef heart chili and then that dog with sauerkraut and mustard, because that's who I mean, that's just who I am. I'm a sauerkraut and mustard guy. When I I didn't ask for that because I didn't need to get punched. You know what I mean? But like.
Well, you should have gotten mustard on your mustard and onions on the case. Who the hell can tell under all that beef hard chili? I'm sure that's how it came. What do you think about the uh what do you think about the uh people from Flint who also say that they have a good Coney? Oh, interesting.
Uh this is new to me. I've been told that Flint also has a different style of but good Coney, but I've never been to Flint. Uh I've been to Flint. I've never had the Conies. Now I'm gonna have to check it out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh so what what like what other signatures? What's uh what's a what what else about Detroit food makes it specifically Detroit? Like what do you what do you what do you think about it? Well Detroit pizza, which now New York's getting a little bit of a taste of you bought us one of those.
Well, it's deep dish, but the right way, right? So it's not like so Chicago, the sauce is on top and it's like very, very deep. Detroit's is deep dish dish pizza, but you know, cheese on top. Cheese on top. Yeah.
Why would you not put the cheese on top? I don't know. Now, in the motor city, I'm assuming that your pizza comes faster than it does in Chicago, where you have to for some unknown reason, something it only takes 10, 12 minutes to bake, you gotta wait 45 minutes for it. Like, God knows why. Nastasi and I went to uh uh right?
Was it you? Was it you and I that went? We went to Rick Bayless when we did the Rick Bayless thing. I didn't go with you know. I didn't go with that.
So we went to uh do this Rick Bayless event in Chicago. Did John Deberry go with you? I don't remember. We went we went to one of the two or three famous ones, and we're like, we're gonna get a pizza. You know what I mean?
So he sits down, he's like, just as you know, it's like they don't talk that way there. It's like it's like 45 minutes to get a pizza. I was like, wait, I thought you just said that it was 45 minutes to get a pizza. Haven't you already raised the dough? Yeah.
Do you not have some idea of how many of these things you're gonna make today? I mean, I mean, for real. You know? I mean, are they that different? Like, is someone sitting there and like doing some calculations about the individual thing that I ordered directly off their menu?
You know what I mean? And I was like, this is a scam. You know what I mean? And I had it, and it could have been, it could have been baked by the baby Jesus, and I would have been pissed off just because I was so angry that it was taking that long for the pizza puppet. No longer a carpenter, just a pizza.
No, Detroit pizza doesn't take that long. There we go. That's what I was asking. Do you do you have little Caesars here? Oh, pizza pizza, yeah.
Yeah, there's the I've never been to one. Yeah, there's yeah, Little Caesars. The Illich family. Yeah, they also own all of your sports teams. Yes, yes.
That's true. There's oddly like four other national pizza chains that are like originated in Detroit, but those are not all deep dish. So I guess. Wait, Little Caesars is Deep Dish? Uh, or no, not tradition, not the hot and redies, which are always ready for you.
The thing about Little Caesars, which I've never had, is you get two pizzas for one cheap price, which leads me to believe that it's gotta be like dollar slice quality. Yeah, it is. Yep, it's still it's worse than that. Yeah. I also, I've said this on the air many times.
I like the dollar slice by our bar. It is not great pizza. It costs one dollar. It is, they pay New York City rents, they have two to three live human beings making them, and they come out of an oven and you can put chili flakes on at no extra charge. One dollar.
One dollar. I mean, how good can it be? But how bad can it be? Doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense.
Get to the question. Someone's like, hey, it's all potato starch on the cheese to make the cheese puff up mom's like, it's a dollar. You know what I mean? It's a dollar. How much does a pizza cost at scars?
Like $8,000? I still haven't been able to do that. You have to give them your car? You? Yeah.
Why not? Is it because you you enjoy your time more than you enjoy pizza? That's definitely not true. It's on my list. Getting really hungry for pizza.
Well, we're gonna have pizza later here, Bursa. So uh one other thing. What about the what about your uh you say I've read, and you told me, I think, that you brought some of your grandma's china into Lady of the House, but you don't use it, right? We do. What are you crazy?
No, it was I mean, like what else are you gonna do with it? And then put it on the freaking wall and be like, look, grandma's China. There's so much China that I the women in my family love China. That was like gifts when I was seven years old that my mom would like started me a collection. I was like, what the hell is this?
I wanted like Lisa Frank things, but you do it for copying individual plates or for serving dishes? Uh individual plates. And so now we have like people donate their china, like their mom's china, their grandmother's like, you know, when relatives pass, what are you gonna do with this? You're just gonna, you know, unless you're entertaining every night, like we are, right in the restaurant. If you steal one of these pieces of China, we will find you.
I do think people walk away with teacups. There's just we go through a ridiculous amount of teacups. People, you're terrible. People, you're bad. But they also other people donate, so really giving it.
So really is that just I love that it's such like a community kind of like collective thing that happens. Yeah. I guess same thing with the stealing, you know. I'm kidding. But they love it so much they want to do.
Like, if someone's gonna cherish it, then you know. Also, you aim at zero waste, right? Yes. Do you want to talk about that or you don't care? No, yeah.
Um so you know, I always say, like, you know, back in the day, cooks have been uh uh chefs and restaurants have been doing this forever because you want to keep your food costs down, right? But to like consciously be thinking, you know, our our comp our raw compost goes to the farm that grows our greens, and that guy, that farmer, Brother Nature, uh he actually plows our um parking lot during the winter, so it's like, oh, that all makes sense. Um we just started cooked compost, which is cool. We haven't done it, so all of our plate scraps are now going to a different farm out in Michigan. Well, that lets you do like meats and fats and all that.
Everything, yep. Oyster shells, yeah, all of it. Nastasi, what are you doing over there? This is just V UI. If we have any time, it's radio.
Oh, Nastasi Nastasia's making fun of me. So like on the zero, okay. So like I know I've gone off on this a million times, but like there is what you're you're trying to control, and I was in your kitchen, and this is God's honest truths. You're trying to control the stuff going, not let stuff go to waste, like do a good job. Even at an event, which by the way is a nightmare.
Oh, what I mean is doing events, if you have like something that you try to maintain, like it's hard enough when you have a controlled menu and when you can control stuff for a week to try to do a good job of not wasting a lot. Right. You know, a week or a month, and you have a freezer and you can control what's going in, you can monitor. Hard enough. When you're doing an event, it is a nightmare, so much waste in events.
Events just generate so much waste. So, like trying to have that attitude, I know it's got to break your heart every time you go to an event or see an event because of the waste that that happens. Right. It's just part of it. And cocktails, even more so, I think than food, are built around just intense waste because like we know we're like our ice machines are incredibly wasteful, like we waste a lot of ice.
It's like a lot gets wasted. But on the other hand, when I'm charging someone $16 for a drink, you know what I mean? That they don't want you know spence in there, you know what I mean? Like you know, so there's a there's a line. There's a line.
And you know, I'm not gonna give someone a bunch of lime rinds for family meal. Right. You know, it's like Alex Corno Shelley used to say that when she was working at one of our three-star places that she worked in um staged in um in France, that one of the chefs, I forget who it was, but one of the chefs used to serve the freaking raft from the consume as family meal. Wow. And she was like, Yeah, we just stayed it.
That's what family meal was. I'm sure that he charged her for it, you know, because that's the way those places work, you know. Yeah, so he's like, you know, no waste, waste nothing. And then, like, you know, eat the raft. Can you imagine eating the freaking raft?
Hilarious. This is just uh cute little blanched meat and egg lights. With lots of specs, a little salt, yeah. And foam. Can you imagine?
God, god, this business is bad. Anyway, uh, but so the event that I went to go do with you, I actually want to talk about you. Uh, and uh, and then I'll just do yeast and we'll go because we had no new questions, no new questions. And I don't think I have any old questions. Anyway, that's some comments.
Um you did this event where you had chefs making cocktails, and what was the charity going towards? So the chefs got to pick their own charities. So I was competing for alternatives for girls, which is like just outside of our Corktown neighborhood. Um homeless shelter, they do after school programs and their um outreach for sex workers. So amazing, amazing work.
Um, but yeah, all the chefs got to decide what charity they were competing for and kind of get out of the restaurant for a day, make a cocktail, have some fun. Um I mean, you know, there's a lot of like there's a lot of bartender competitions, right? The liquor companies will sponsor them, whatever. So it was sort of fun to make it. You didn't get a liquor sponsor?
We did. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but you know what I mean. Like they'll have their own specific ones that have nothing to do with chefs. What I liked about this, so that the conceit was is that they get chefs and not the chefs bar, not the bartenders who are working at their restaurant.
The chef comes theoretically, also chef designs, makes the cocktail, and then the judges are bartenders or bar people. And so that's why I was there. I was one of the judges. But the uh the funny that what's nice about it, what's friendly about it, is is that it it lets the the chef doesn't have to be so uptight because they're not competing in their own wheelhouse, so it's not like whose cuisine reigns supreme, you know what I mean? They're they're using their their chef chops in terms of the flavors, uh, but it's not really their skill set, so they don't really have to worry about being shown up as being a garbage face.
You know what I mean? In in in the cocktails, which I thought was nice. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then you get to have some good-natured prodding between the bar bartender world and the chef world on the judging.
And it can be good natured because I'm not like your balance sucks. You know what I mean? It's not like it's not like that. Oh, that's a terrible stir. Yeah, ooh.
Anyway, so like I thought it was really nice, and like it'd be a lot of work for you, but I think this is the kind of format that could spin national. Like we could like team up with someone. I mean, it's your thing. So, but but I think it's like, you know, that's the kind of thing I know we could probably do one in New York. We should.
That would be a lot of fun. You know what I mean? And then maybe, and then you know, maybe take it to a uh, you know, a couple of different you know what's gross? Uh there people don't live in cities. As far as liquor companies are concerned, people live in markets.
Oh, sure, right. Yeah. We could so I was about to use liquor company talk and say, yeah, we could do it in a couple of markets. Cities. Target markets.
Yeah. Well, no, and it's gross. They they they limit they everything there's like there's the primary markets, there's secondary markets, there's tertiary, yeah. All based on no, but that's the thing. It's it's not that it's not good.
It's no, but it that's why it's such a disgusting way to think about it. It's literally like how many people are there, not how much do those people care. And I think that you know, we've reached a place with the internet, with the ability of everyone everywhere to get all of the information all the time, where all you need is enough people to care. That's all you need. You know what I mean?
You don't need eight million people at your front door to be good anymore, I don't think. Right. I mean, I mean, I think that's maybe one of the reasons why there is so much good stuff happening everywhere. Um anyway, so sh let me get into uh I have a question. This is uh, and and we're gonna answer your question real quick, Nathan, just because we don't want you to send uh send our our plans for the V8 to uh all of our competitors.
Although we never officially say because can you give Nathan's last name too an email in case anyone wants to contact me? I have his telephone number here. Just kidding. Uh I have a question about calculating how much yeast or sourd start starter to use based on how quickly one would want to leaven a dough. I've done a fair amount of bread baking, but I'm a moron who hasn't kept notes on the different things I've tried.
You and me both, brother. You know what, people? Nathan's putting out a good point here. I know it takes a little bit of extra energy. I used to keep a bread baking book, actually, a notebook.
But if you are doing something, and the simpler it is, i.e. simpler in quotes, bread, right? The more you need to take notes on every little thing that you did. If you don't take notes, you are um you are destined to never be able to hone yourself down because you can't go back and see what you did. No one, no one has a memory good enough to remember every step that they've done and how it impacted their final product.
So the notes aren't just on the prep, the notes are on how it came out and how it came out relative to other things, what the kitchen was like that day. Very especially with bread, but with many, many things, note taking is the key is the key to being someone who can develop things well. Would you uh yeah, completely agree. Yeah. Um, so uh Nathan says, I'm a moron.
Uh as are we all. Uh, and I haven't kept notes on the things I've tried. I'm wondering if there's a resource you know of that might be able to give expected rise times of given amount of yeast or starter for a given amount of flour. I know there are lots of other variables, room temp, dough at uh dough additives, but a starting place would be great for developing a repertoire of recipes for different time scenarios. Thanks.
Nathan, no. No, no. What do you think? You want to No, I like I feel like there's so many recipes, even that just they don't even give you amounts. It's just like these are the ingredients, salt, water, flour, that's it.
You know what I mean? Because there's the humidity of the everything. There's just there's no way for anyone to know what the conditions of your kitchen are or how funky your sour is or your yeast or whatever. Yeah, I mean, every sourdough starter is radically different in terms of not only like the the composition of it, you know, yeast versus bacteria, how active they are, which ones they are, um, the condition of the sourdough at the condition of the starter at the time that you've done it. Like if you bake every day, your stuff's cranking because it it never has time to like overdevelop or die out.
You're just cranking, cranking, cranking. You know what I mean? And most of the people I know nowadays have favored much kind of longer rises, so they're doing kind of minimal pitch, and then pitches how much yeast you're adding anyway, or starter or whatever. Um the other thing is so like any of those variables is gonna knock you out out of out of the park in terms of being but knock you out of the ability to gauge, but even when you're using um commercial yeast, like you know, red, you know, fleischman's or red star, one of these things, which by the way, I know everyone hates on them, like they're easy, they're there. You know what I mean?
And uh, but uh, you know, I will say that it has been over 20 years since I've added a whole package of yeast to I always underpitch the the breads and then and pizza dough specifically is the one I cook most often and let it rise a long time. So I'll do I'll do like miniature micro pitches. Like I'll pitch, I'll do like you know, two kilos of flour and I'll put in like half a packet of yeast and then let it instead of just retarding the dough which everyone does just let it rise a lot longer uh Chris uh no not Chris uh Chef Palambino from uh from Motorino was like he's like yeah you could put it in the fridge and retard it or you could just add less yeast I'm like okay Chef. You know what I mean? And then you get the the effects of those kind of long rise times.
But when you're doing that kind of like micro pitching stuff it's like little variables can change a long time. And so usually what I'll do is I'll let I'll let that kind of stuff rise a long time and then if if it's rising too fast then I'll retard it in the fridge. What do you think? Yeah same we used to we've done ours we have a right now we have a s uh regular sour, a rye sour, and we're actually about to do a this gluten-free sour, which has been kind of funky and cool. What's the base?
Um there's a little bit of tapioca it's um oats sweet rice brown rice um I'm missing something there's like seven different flowers and what gives it the ability to hold the bubble in the sourdough is it like the goop from the oats what is it? Yeah it's very wet. So it almost needs like a double toast but you can't it's it's super funky. It's like yeah it's cool. You know a lot of uh uh it's been many many years but a lot of the papers that I used to read are like a lot of the like millets for instance which you know yeah there's millet yeah yeah like millet the the bread ability of the millet is greatly increased by um long ferment times where it gets to make other goopy things that cause it to be able to hold gas better.
Yeah, it's a 15-day the the sour starter was 15 days until it was ready. No. Yeah. Cool. All right.
Wait, so we're getting kicked off the air now? Yeah, we gotta go. We gotta go. All right, well. Chef Kate, thank you so much for coming.
Thank you. Hopefully, Nastasi and I can make it out to see you again in Detroit. Maybe do this uh event here someday. Thanks, Boondoggler, for coming back on as usual. We're gonna have apparently uh, you know, maybe the boondogger will be back when I get life coached by Claire, which no, I'm not going anywhere near that, and you shouldn't either.
Well, yeah, well, listeners, if you want Claire to come life coach, Dave. Remember to remind them who Claire is. Claire is my best friend. She's also a wedding official, your nemesis, and the user of the vegetti. Yeah, yeah.
And and I would be interested, maybe if you guys could just do like a general poll as to who thinks that idea would be uh beneficial for Nastasia's relationship with Claire because I think it's a horrible idea. Apparently, Nastasia's relationship with Claire can't be damaged by anything that happens here on the city. I don't know. I feel like a big crack in the world. You would have to be a little like sensitive to her training.
You would have to What does that mean? What do you think are the chances that Dave is gonna be sensitive to her training? What does that mean? Sensitive to your traditional literally, what is like what is that agglomeration of words mean? You have to be flex that she's like, Dave, let's talk about your issues.
And you have to be like, okay, Claire, well, I feel like I'm not good at answering emails. And she'd be like, I don't feel like I'm I'm not, I will not answer emails. Cooking issues. Cooking Issues is powered by Simplecast. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network.
Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content, subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your email at the bottom of our website, heritageradio network.org. Connect with us on Instagram and Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can also find us at Facebook.com/slash Heritage Radio Network.
Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization driving conversations to make the world a better, fairer, more delicious place. And we couldn't do it without support from listeners like you. Want to be a part of the food world's most innovative community? Subscribe to the shows you like, tell your friends, and please join the HRN family by becoming a member. Just click on the beating heart at the top right of our homepage.
Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.