This episode brought to you by Appeal. Appeal is a plant-based protective layer that helps produce last up to twice as long. Learn more at Appeal.com. This week on Meet and Three, we're looking at things that have changed and things that are still in flux. From mothers balancing new lifestyles to the social stigma surrounding pumpkin spice.
You got rid of the star rating system and talked about like I'm not gonna use the word ethnic when I talk about food. They recognize that safety was our motivation, and they were very uh you know receptive to the changes understanding what we were trying to accomplish. A cupcake or a piece of bacon or a glass of rose is not inherently gendered. Tune in to Meet and Three, HRN's weekly food news roundup wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm uh coming to you live from the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
We got uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez out there in undisclosed lower uh Southern California location. How are you doing, Nastasia? Uh, good, fine. I'm telling Rebecca to stop texting. Yeah, she knows we're in the show.
Rebecca, by the way, is the boondoggler. Yes, I know. Our intrepid uh, what's it called? Um PR brand person. We got uh John is uh coming to you for the last time prior to Thanksgiving in New York City.
He's gonna be he's gonna be uh quarantining himself up in Connecticut for the for the holiday. How you doing, John? Doing well. Doing well. Got Matt in the Heidi Hole booth, right?
Uh, yep, yep. I just, you know, accidentally mute myself, all the good stuff. Hey, speaking of this, you're in Rhode Island. Rhode Island right now is like the like the it's like the littlest state with the biggest hotspot right yeah I mean I I haven't been paying attention to the relative numbers but it's worse here than it's ever been before yeah you guys doing all right uh yeah I mean we we're we've been hunkered down yeah hunkering hunkering yeah uh my uh the album of my second college band was called hanker for a hunk of sleaze and uh that was a take on hanker for a hunk of cheese the PSA that they used to have about trying to get you to eat more cheese and it was like a ball almost like a phlegm shaped like a like a like a like a booger shaped man with a cowboy hat on and like a long pointy nose and stick legs and he was trying to teach you that you should be eating more cheese you ever heard this song you ever seen this PSA hanker for a hunk of cheese no one I'm the only one hanker for a hunker a slab of slice of chunkka a hanker for a hunk of cheese if I can find it I'll put it in a wagon wheel like they they want you to eh yeah it's classic uh it's classic PSA it's up there with uh all of the uh the Mormon the Mormon commercials about not lying you familiar with those I think we've discussed those on the air before Chef Joanna enthusiastically chimes in with a slab or a slice or a chunk of that's correct a hanker for a hunker a slab a slice of chunker a hanker for a hunk of cheese that's how it goes pretty much anyway uh and it's basically saying the the guy is saying that if you feel kind of like down and out and you don't have any energy that like you should eat cheese. Like if you're literally it's like if you're weak in the knees, a chunk of cheese.
And I don't know anyone who's like, you know what I need? I need fast energy, so I'm gonna eat cheese. Would you eat cheese for fast energy, Nastasia? Uh yeah, sometimes I do. Really?
You wouldn't go for like the nuts or like some sort of sugary to hit you real fast? I mean, cheese, I feel like it's more of a sustaining thing, plus it's gonna make you real thirsty, you know. Yeah. Do you get headaches? Oh, let me introduce who we have with us and we can talk about it.
I want to I wanna talk about eating too much cheese in the evening and its relationship to headaches the next morning with or without red wine. But before I do that, uh let's introduce. We have two guests. One's just coming on for uh a little bit, and one's gonna be with us for the rest of the show. So why don't I just uh introduce the first one?
We have Ben Simon from Ben to Table. He's on and he's talking about some a new collab that Booker and Dax is uh doing with uh with uh Ben to Table for the uh Thanksgiving. And we also have with us, and uh by the way, like I checked beforehand, we're doing the Jersey style pronunciation. James Breshon, who's here with his new book, Flavor for All. Uh James Breshon and your wife uh Brooke Parkhurst uh come out with uh a new book.
When when did it come out, James? Uh October 27th. Brand new. All right, so yeah, we're only we're only a couple of weeks into this. Uh and you might remember him from last time he was on with uh the flavor matrix.
So uh we'll talk, well, let's let's do let's let's talk about this collab first and then we'll get into flavor for all. So, Ben, you wanna you wanna say something about what's going on here? Sure. Um, hi, and welcome. Or I welcome to me.
Um, glad to be back on. Uh sorry. Uh so we are working together on a fun Searsol box. Um, so for all you torchheads, um, we're doing four of my favorite things that I think will go really well with warm weather, cold weather cooking, so warming cooking. Some beans from Rancho Gordo, some grits from Geeche Boy Mill.
A Italian culinary herb powder from Campagna. So handpicked, hand ground, a mix of thyme, sage, rosemary, bay leaf, and oregano. John and I were talking, it's basically like Italian poultry seasoning, right? It's like an upgraded 1970s smell, which I love. Yeah.
Like imagine it's like literally the perfect thing for stuffing, is the idea here. And then Villagerata's uh Harissa, which is one of my very favorite um things to put on specially bred stuffs. Uh but it's a wonderful, sort of the the the best version of Harissa I've yet found anywhere. They've used preserved lemon uh as well as really tasty Moroccan olive oil. Um so great for putting on toast with an egg, great for uh you know dipping a piece of meat into.
Um so really nice for for winter cooking. Um so those will come with uh a bunch of booker and dAx stuff. Do you or Nastasia wanna want to talk about that? Good, go ahead. No, Dave, go all right.
Well here, so you it's your turn to promote it. Oh, you did all Nastasia made me sign 400 postcards. It took me hours and hours and hours to sign because she made me put my little elf on every postcard. Hey, listen, Nastasia's been setting up websites, newsletters. She's been she's been pulling her way too.
I'm not saying she hasn't been, but she just said that she's doing everything. Not fair. I mean, with this, yes. With this, the vast majority. There we go.
All right. But I have to say, like, you know, it's not like I haven't been working on designing new products for us. That's true, too. Yeah. Okay.
So, um, or testing them. Whatever. I'm just saying. Uh, so a lot of you out there, some of you have seers all ready, but maybe your screen is getting a little long in the tooth, burning out. So we decided, since nobody likes to buy the screens because they're super expensive.
They're expensive because they cost a lot to make, because they're coated in palladium, they might as well be a piece of jewelry for you know, for the amount of palladium that we have to put on those suckers. But um, we figured, uh, no one likes to buy that. So what if we made a package with, you know, Ben's curated stuff for the season, and then you could get a set of screens uh to like refurbish your your Searsol for the for the holiday seasons, in case you need to give your bird a little touch up, a little touch up, right? Or whatever you cook for, you know, your your Thanksgiving, your Christmas, you need a little touch up on it, you know, your screen's right there, and you don't have to feel like a jerk shelling out a bunch of money just for the screens, right, Stas? And then we figured, well, some people might not have a Searsol at all, and they might want one, and they might want some cool holiday kind of food to go with it.
So we also have a Sears All only package, which by the way makes a great gift for people who don't already own one. Am I right? Am I right, Sas? Yep. Yeah.
Uh and so that was the basic idea, no? And in it, Nastasia created so like uh we we used to do this thing called uh the the Franken, what are we what do we call it? Frank and turkey? What do we call it? Bionic turkey.
Bionic turkey. And uh where we would rip the bones out of a turkey from the inside out, leaving it whole like some sort of alien creature, recreate a skeleton out of aluminum, put the skeleton into the bird, pipe hot oil and butter into the skeleton to cook it from the inside out, drop it into a big bath, pull it out, and then like chill it, remove all the skeletons so it's just bird now, a like a big shell of bird without any bones, and then deep fry that sucker and then pull it out and then give it a touch up wherever it's not fully brown with it with a searzole. So we haven't talked about it in a long time. So Nastasia made a quote unquote how-to, right? Although it's not a full how to, right, Nastasia, because if you don't know.
Yeah. Probably shouldn't attempt, right? If you can't, if you can't figure out based on Nastasia's drawings how to do it, you probably should not attempt it. Am I right? Right.
Yep. But in each one of these packages, you'll get a postcard that Nastasia drew of uh of a turkey getting a nice tan from the uh from uh a Searsol, and then a uh her drawings of a how-to of how to make the the bionic turkey, along with uh what uh Ben just told you in the box. P.S. Uh you never know which one of the Geechee uh uh the the the which one of the grits you're gonna get. It could be it could be the blue, it could be the Jimmy Red, you never know.
Same with the Rancho Gordo beans. It's kind of like a puppy surprise for those of you that remember the puppy surprise toys. You guys remember the puppy surprise? Mm-hmm. How many puppies are there inside?
Remember that? There could be three. We we've talked about this before, so I won't go into it. Um yeah, but is that right? Where do they get this?
They can go on Booker and Dax.com slash BDX holiday2020, or they can go on Bend the Table. Ben, what's your site? Uh bendable.com and I'll have it in it'll be a there's a gifts section if you scroll down a smidge and it'll be right there. Link to smidge up put it up on the socials. Um then we also have our newsletter which just came out today.
So it's it if you signed up for it, which you can go into Dave's Instagram stories, um it's there and you can sign up for future ones. But we talk about this gift set, we talk about the auction to come on the show in LA. We talk about what Dave's reading, what I'm reading, uh what you hate, what you love, Dave. Well, next time though, it's gonna have yours and Rebecca's and John's loves and hates as well, though. It can't just be my loves and talks about what he's reading, Rebecca Gibbs, her own little corner, and we have a poetry section.
Um you wanna read the poem, S I can't pull it up right now. But no, let it be a surprise for people because it's a good one. Well, people who people who listen to the show, you know the poem. It's just it never gets old, right, Sas? Never, never.
So yeah, so that's that's gonna be coming on a maybe bi-monthly or monthly basis. But yeah, and if you have a poem that you think can unseat our favorite poem, you can try, but good luck. And I'll have you know, people, that Nastasia Lopez is a Stanford educated poetry maven. So you're not gonna slip some BS past her and have it be some sort of like garb garb poetry. She will know.
Yeah, you have to dethrone this poem, so try. Yeah, try. But good luck. Good luck with it. I'm thinking I I still wanna put that poem in in in my next book should it ever get finished.
What? Yeah. So yes. What do you Nastasia? Oh, hey, you know what?
James, I'll talk to you about it. You don't do the poem at the beginning because it's not really chapters in the same way. What do you think about what do you think about uh poems at the or not like quotes at the beginning of every chapter? What's your feeling on that? I noticed you did not do it.
I didn't do it in my first book, but what do you think about it as a thing? I mean, you know, if it if it makes sense, uh it can work. I think, you know, uh uh I you're often found, and I'm sure you probably the same thing in writing books, like you get an idea like that, and you're like, yeah, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do, you know, put a quote here, and then you get halfway through, and then you're just forcing them, you know. Yeah, same thing. You think the first half do you write your books in order, or is it like me where like the last chapter is the first chapter I wrote?
Oh, yeah, no, I'm I'm I'm all over the place. It's like, you know, I'm I'm doing chicken, a couple chicken recipes this day, and then we're bouncing to fish and then into desserts, and yeah, I I don't I I can't do that. I can't just like plow through one section at a time. I get too scattered. All right.
So let's for those that don't know, let's let's go through like the like the the basic in a nutshell. So the last time we spoke to you, you were just leaving. Thank Ben for coming on the show. Oh, he's gonna he's gonna leave. All right, Ben, if you're leaving, thanks for coming on.
Go to benditable.com. Are you like uh, you know, we've worked with you before. For those of you that don't know, the whole McGillah is Ben's chilling up in New Haven, and he finds products that you might not have at your local grocery mart that are curated and then packaged together with a theme, and he sends them to you on the regular should you ask for that to happen. And they're all high quality pantry style uh goods that aren't gonna like go bad on you, and you can use them when you want, but they're easy to integrate in, and they're always uh top notch uh top notch products is this an accurate statement Ben that is an accurate statement all right well uh go ahead and sign up get the gifts yeah sign up get the gifts in time for the holidays and sign up for our newsletter etc well there's thanks by uh all right so james when last we met you were had just had you just left uh ice or were you about to something like that still yeah it was getting ready to I think I think all the all the things all the the plans were in motion um moving down back to my hometown Penskola Florida to open a restaurant was leaving uh my position at ICE and um had just just come out with flavor matrix. Yeah so ICE is the Institute for Culinary Education formerly Peter Cump and now uh as the evil empire overlords that you are took over my uh former place the uh French culinary which later changed their name to the International Culinary Center and if you could keep track of that you're a better person than I am.
So when you were at uh ICE right uh you were part of a project with uh IBM's Watson which is not just the name of my small dog but also the name of their uh fancy computer program um where they were analyzing uh flavors and recipes right yeah yep exactly trying to uh so they'd kind of gone through the process you know Watson on Jeopardy they knew they knew um you know with their native language systems that could interpret and answer any question that was out there, but they wanted to see if Watson could make people more creative. So they uh decided to you know take all of that incredible computing technology, apply it to cooking, um, and see what the results were gonna be. Now, were you interested? Now, now you had been working on this, and then when you came out with um when you came out with uh flavor matrix, right? You were using a lot of the stuff that you had kind of gleaned from that project on um specifically on pairing and like why things kind of go together.
Um were you interested in that prior to the Watson, or is that really what got you into that? That you know, it was that one really was what got me into it. I mean, I, you know, the uh so a component of what Watson was doing was was using um you know the the flavor pairing theory, which really was something Heston Blumenthal uh created just 1999, and they were doing just experiments in their in their test kitchen out of Fat Duck and stumbled upon the combination of uh caviar and white chocolate. Like the whole crew was blown away by it, and they couldn't figure it out they wanted to understand why that was such a great combination. They took it to some flavor scientists and ran some analysis and saw you know some of these uh you know pairing matches on on the compounds in those in those two ingredients, and so it all kind of you know started from there.
So it's all you know very new, and I had really never heard of it until uh you know, until I was reading some of the background research on on the Watson project, um, and was just totally fascinated by it and wanted to wanted to kind of dive in and learn more and the whole idea with the flavor matrix was that uh you know, for everyone else in the world who doesn't have access to uh the Watson mainframe, like how do you how can you get a hold of that information for yourself? And now uh sorry, I just have to do this because you triggered me with white chocolate. Like, do you like white chocolate? Does anyone like white chocolate? I mean, do you like sugar?
Do you like milk? I mean, I I'm ish, yeah. But I mean, like, in other words, like you say the word chocolate, and like my mouth starts to water, and then like you pre-pend white to it, and I'm like, oh man, did you have to do that? Yeah, no, I think you know, it's really I mean, it's really interesting that that was the combination that that triggered it because I mean, truly, white chocolate is just milk, and I mean it's it the flavors are milk, is is really what you're getting. Cocoa butter, like when it properly done, should be completely odorless, so it should be you know absolutely flavorless.
So you're getting like a little bit of vanilla. I really think it was just the salty and sweet, like the intense sweetness with the salty caviar was really what that combination wound up being about. And then they just kind of by accident realized these other things. Right. Now that brings me to a point and to my whole kind of, and we had this argument the last time you were on.
So before we get into this argument, the argument's gonna be about flavor pairing based on uh on chemical compounds. That's the argument, that's what the argument's gonna be. But uh before we get into that argument, uh why don't you let us know what happened since that came out? So you went to Pensacola, uh, you started a a restaurant with uh your wife, who was also a co-author on the on the first book, right? Yep.
And so so what you want to talk about this restaurant and how you guys doing during the like how did how's Florida working during the pandemic for restaurants? Uh yeah, I don't know if you've heard. Um it's it's been a little bit rough down here. Um yeah, it's not going well. No, I mean, Florida as a state, not doing great.
Um, but we're we're kind of way here at the very end of the panhandle, almost like almost the Alabama border, right on the Gulf Coast. Um, so we you know made it through the first of the restaurant, uh, Thain restaurant, um, beautiful, fantastic. You know, we do handmade pastas, uh wood fired oven, uh, you know, that whole deal of like real, real Italian, um, something kind of new and different for the area, which which I'm very proud of, and I think is you know, the community has really taken to. So that is that's all great. Um, yeah, we had just made it through COVID.
Basically, we had about a six-week shutdown uh where we were, you know, takeout only. Um kind of got back through that, and then we just had two hurricanes come through here, um, which also sucked. Um shut up. Yeah, yeah. Sally uh in particular was pretty much a direct hit on us.
Um put closed the restaurant for about a week because of it, you know, lost, lost the entire yeah, we were out of power for five days, so we lost the entire walk-in cooler, um, you know, and had to kind of build back again after that. So it's just been, yeah, it's been I mean, not not unique perspective here, but it's been a hell of a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, this year has taught uh all of us that like uh you know, just when you think you got knocked down, you get knocked down again. Yeah, yeah.
We can we can actually get knocked down further. So yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as you're still breathing, you can get knocked down again. You know what I mean? Um anyway.
Uh all right, but so well, how long were you open before that happened? How much of the normal times did you have? Yeah, so that was the thing. Like, so we opened in uh July of last year. So we were I think when you know when we hit the COVID shutdown, I think we'd been open for about eight months.
Yeah. Which is you know, a tough, a tough time for that to happen. Yeah, for those of you that like aren't in the business, like your first like year or so, you're really trying to, even if everything that the guest sees is like on firm footing, you're still trying to like figure out how you're gonna make back your opening costs. You're still getting your systems in order, you're getting the flow right. It's like a hard time, and you're also working like a freaking demon for, you know, if it's your only restaurant at least a year, and it like even if it's like your second or third for like six, eight months.
So it's like it's a tough time. And my James, back me up on this, right? It's a tough time, you know what I mean. Brutal and getting, you know, and getting the staff, you know, in order and getting them, you know, right and and used to kind of the systems that you want in place and the ways you know that you that you want things done. I mean, you know, it's you just it's impossible to have you know that luxury of spending a couple weeks of training typically, you know.
Once you kind of pull that staff together, it's it's just really go time. And um, no, it's a yeah, I mean, absolutely. It's it's finding your footing. It's you know, you open up with the menu that you think is you know amazing and perfect, and then you know, you uh in three weeks, you're like, okay, we need to pivot on this, this, this, and this, because you know, this is what people are responding to, or people have no interest in this, and they're you know, all they ask for every day is is you know, this dish, whatever. Yeah, what was that dish?
Was it something you liked or something you hated? Oh, yeah, hated. Yeah. I mean, I it's always the way. It's well, you know, which I've still have never done and and will never do is we we'll never have an Alfredo pasta dish on on our menu.
Um dislike all gloppy pastas or just that one because people are asking for it. I mean, j that one in particular, also because it's just not, I mean, what people want is that garlicky white wine parmesan cream sauce. They don't even want like, you know, cafe Alfredo, Borrow Yapamigiano. They just want that cream cheese sauce, and I'm never gonna do that. Nastasia, you had a good uh uh Alfredo sauce over there.
Did people order that one a lot, or are we like uh, or is it not a New York thing, the Alfredo? Yeah, it was our best selling sauce because people like that. And we give people they had a good design though. Like uh you would have actually appreciated it, James. They uh, you know, I'm not allowed to divulge any of their uh IP and whatnot, but they had a they had a good they had a good way of because the their QSR was like crazy on point, right, Stas.
You like you designed that crap so that it like it it served out real it served out real quick and nice, right? Yeah. But you guys wouldn't budge on the pasta itself. So unlike, you know, kind of what you know, James, what you're saying, where like the average person ordering the Alfredo, which might have been true even at Pasta Flyer, but they don't care about the pasta, they just want the creamy sauce. I mean, you know, obviously Nastasia never lost sight of the pasta, right?
Yeah. Um anyway. Yeah, I I you know I I miss the sauce. I used to live right on the street from Pasta Flyer. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh yeah, good times back when New York was a place that people went. Yeah. Um, yeah. Uh all right, so let's so then you come out with this book, which is an extension, flavor for all, is an extension of the ideas from the flavor matrix, but more of more arranged in like a kind of I would say normal cookbook fashion, in that like here's some here's some sweets, here's some veg, here's some meat, right?
I mean, that was kind of like the the shtick taking it more into kind of like an everyday cooking thing and less of a I'm gonna go in a flavor matrix kind of way right was that the kind of gist of it yeah exactly it's it's you know this so flavor for all and you know uh one of the things one of the questions we got you know the most with after flavor matrix is you know people were super into it and you know loved using it to to build their own dishes and create their own dishes but you know people we would always ask us you know so but like what do you cook like what do you make at home you know when you're making dinner for the kids and and all of that um and because you know I think we did some some good recipes some really great recipes in in the flavor matrix but they're um you know they're meant to be kind of like push the envelope as far as like you know the combinations and some of the techniques and and all of that and you know they're not they're they're project recipes are not necessarily everyday recipes so you know we wanted to take some of those and and just also just kind of show that application of the flavor matrix about how you know it's not not you know not everything is you know uh needs to be an 11 Madison style dish it's it's you know a subtle twist on on the things that you make all the time that can make it you know a little more interesting a little more exciting so how old are your kids um eleven and five picky or not picky um the little the five year old's going through his little picky phase now um he used to be really great and he's kind of you know being a pain in the butt now um the 11 year old's great she's always always been aren't you lucky nice yeah uh yeah jeez all right so now let's have this argument and Stas, you never way in a way in on what you know, I don't know what you think about it because you never weigh in on this, but you know, and John, you weigh in. So here's the thing. In my opinion, let's have this fight. In my opinion, like, I think that choosing flavors based on compounds that they share, right? Is like an interesting thing to trigger an idea in your head.
And I think you probably don't disagree with this. Absolutely. So far, so far I'm with you. Yeah, but it's still based on your ability to once something is triggered in your head that you might not have thought of, to be like, yeah, that works, or yeah, that doesn't work, right? Because like, you know, there could be a compound in eggs and poop that are the same, but I'm not gonna put poop in my eggs.
At least not on purpose. See, that's where I disagree. I think you should be putting poop in your eggs. Like, you need to put that quote on the cover of your book. This is definitely that's going in the show right up for sure.
Put poop in your eggs. Oh man. John, what do you think about it? No, no, so yeah, I'm no, I'm I'm actually so far, we're not on for I'm sorry, we're not arguing. Um, I I mean, I can try to stake out the other side if you want, but no, I'm I'm with you, right?
So, you know, you can it's it's a great starting point. It I think it's really great for inspiration and kind of you know to get get you moving in a direction. Um, but it's not, you know, it's not flawless. Like, yeah, there's there's a way to make these two ingredients. It kind of shows you that there can be a way to make these two ingredient ingredients work, but just because like you, you know, mushrooms and strawberries, I think is is is a great one.
Like, just because you chop up some mushrooms and strawberries and throw them in the same pot doesn't mean they're just automatically gonna taste good. Yeah, one of the things people would uh often ask me, you know, with this, or you know, talking about either the flavor matrix or in flavor for all, they're like, oh, I don't like salmon, so can I use this to make something that's gonna make me, you know, to make a dish that's gonna make me like salmon? No, if you don't like salmon, you're not gonna like salmon. I can't, yeah, I we can't change the flavors of salmon. If you really like salmon and want to, you know, have kind of a new and exciting and unexpected dish that you know that combines some flavors you had never had with some before.
Yeah, we can do that, but like no, we're not, you know, we're not changing structures and and making things, you know, just completely different. Yeah, when I was uh a kid and my family, they still do this. My my dad and I used to be, I he'd be like, the the argument goes like this. Eat it. You love salmon.
I hate salmon. It doesn't taste like salmon, right? So it's like you can't, you know what I mean? It's like that's how the argument always goes. This episode brought to you by Appeal.
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Appeal. Food gone good. Learn more at Appeal.com. Alright, let's talk about one of them. Uh Nastasia, I can't remember whether you love avocado toast or hate avocado toast.
You're not neutral though. I can't remember which one it is. Yeah, I think it's good. I just don't think it deserves all the the I don't know. The new hype that it gets.
Even though you're in the land of magical avocados right now? I eat an avocado every morning. Yes. Yeah. But not in toast format.
I have it with a piece of bread, but it's not together. Now, what are your do you have any thoughts on avocados grown in Florida versus California? No. Alright. Now, James, do you eat like Florida avocados like hostile, or are you having more like the Dominican style down there, like the smooth skin, big, like less oily ones?
Are you going straight Haas on this? I don't mean like what's more in your markets over there. Um Haas. That yeah, yeah, you those are mostly just in South Florida. Yeah, so we're we're having we actually have more of a California.
More of a California style of avocado. And by the way, Pensacola, isn't that where Joe uh Scarborough is from? Are you personal friends with him? Uh actually my partner, um our partners in the restaurant, very good friends with Joe. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh all right. So your your avocado toast, right? Now what you do that's atypical is it's um now you put apple in it, that's atypical. Then you put fennel, which is a good match with apple, obviously, right?
Cocoa, ancho chili, uh, and that you know that that's the flavor combo. So which ones here are the are the chemical matchups, and like how does that how does that work there? So it's actually you know, um, fennel and apple. Um so there it's actually kind of two phases uh on that one. First is is the the pennelin apple, and those are are tying in like actually you know in that recipe the one the the compound that we highlight that that is the the common thread through all of those is is linolul um which is you know sort of that citrusy bergamot you know sort of aroma um so that's that's present in in all of um in all of those are avocado fennel and apple and you know a lot of that actually also comes from um the the botanical class like they're all those are they're all sort of tied together there um in in the laurel or uh with roots in the laurel family um but also the the the other thing there is with you know the oxidation of of the fats avocado pairs really really well with with big like toasted and roasted aromas which is where the cocoa and ancho chili comes in um you know obviously you know I don't I don't know how some people feel about it I don't like cooking avocados you know like grilled avocado was a thing for a little bit but I don't like the I remember that yeah I don't like the texture when avocado gets hot so you know if you want to try to kind of imprint some of those you know roasted aromas into it um you know cocoa powder sprinkling a little cocoa powder over something is a great way to do that or you know some toasted sesame seeds which is which is you know something you probably see a lot with uh with avocado toast as well how much do you hate a burnt sesame seed a burnt sesame seed a lot yeah how much do you hate when people toast sesame seeds and they burn they burn the snot out of them how many times have you seen that in your life um a lot a lot.
A lot. And the same when um, you know, and and you know, moving up that chain uh almonds and everything when uh or pine nuts when um people toast them in a saute pan over really really high heat, and they just get like a black dot in the center of them. Ugh. And it costs so much, and so you add them anyway because you just wasted all that money, but now the entire not only have you wasted all the money on the pine nuts, but now the entire dish tastes like poison. Yeah, it's the worst.
Ugh. I hate it. When I was at the SCI, whenever this the students would invariably this Nastasi and I would wait, whenever they were doing that, especially in the Italian kitchen, we would wait to see how many of the students scorch their nuts. Remember that, Stas? Yeah, yes.
Yeah. You can smell it even with all the hoods, man. And of course, they would invariably add it to the dish and ruin ruin on top of ruin. Remember, when you're cooking, or you're doing anything, right? You have this internal thing that wants everything to be alright.
Like when Homer Simpson, when Lisa goes vegetarian and she knocks the pig out of the grill, and the pig goes kind of flying through the air and in a stream and off a cliff, and Homer's running after it saying, It's still good, it's still good, it's still good, right? We all have that inkling of doing that, especially when we spent money and time on something. Don't do it. Don't add the burnt nuts. Don't do it.
Anyway, that's my feeling. Um what are your thoughts on also with chilies? I think people uh when they're toasting their chilies, have a tendency to burn the chili, and because it's a dried chili, they don't know that they've burnt it until it's too late. And I hate that flavor of over-toasted chili. I would rather have no toast at all on my dried chili, right?
I think people, when they cook fresh peppers, they're like, oh, I could scorch the skin and it's fine, it tastes good, and they're right, right? So they put that same mentality into when they're toasting dry chilies, but an overtoasted dry chili is a freaking nightmare to me. Nightmare. I don't know. That's just me.
What do you guys think about this? No, I'll listen. I'm with you. It's I think we're we're having the same. You're having your FCI flashbacks.
I'm having my ice flashbacks to, you know, watching all of our culinary students do these exact things. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing, like Stas, what is it the students, did the students do anything that like trigger you in general, or you couldn't even be bothered paying attention to them? With food, no.
I don't remember. I can't even remember back then. Yeah. You know, yeah. You just liked that we had to work in a in a garbage closet, literal garbage closet.
Yeah, that was my favorite. That was your fave. Yeah. Um the other one uh I hated is um when they wouldn't they wouldn't seize they wouldn't season at the right time and they wouldn't salt correct properly throughout that used to drive me bananas. Bananas.
Uh all right. Um so the avocado toast, did we do we've even finished talking about it? I I feel like I just got triggered by the by the burnt by the burnt nuts. Um I don't know. I mean, I think we yeah, I think we kind of via nail that.
So and I think, you know, it gets down to right, so like fennel and apple, um, really, really great in combination with avocado, but it's they're because of the shared compounds, but they're not things you're like, you're gonna you're not gonna get apple notes when you bite into an avocado. You know, they're they're they're kind of hidden, uh, I think you know, a little bit in there, which is what, you know, kind of working through sort of you know a lot of the data um of, you know, I mean, for people who are sports fans, I always you know, liken this to you know, and this is like the analytics of of flavors, you know. You're kind of going beyond just the surface numbers or the the surface taste when you when you bite into something and you know, seeing the things that that that lead to connections that you wouldn't necessarily maybe not necessarily stumble on on your own. Yeah. The uh you know what the you know what the dumb, the dumb like English person who's never been to uh never been here, what their word for avocados is.
Like, I'm not talking like English people now, I mean like English people like 200 years ago. You know what it is? Oh yeah, I I yes, I do, and I like this other alligator pear. Yeah. Right.
I like this as a game, just like making up uh making up these names for like to pretend like you don't know what an orange is, you know. What do you call it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, alligator pear, no, but like so it was called an alligator pear. But what's interesting is that like they must have been having, like I was saying, like some of these varieties, like a Dominican variety or like a Colombian variety, a very low oil, firmer variety of avocado, because you much more get the fruit notes in an avocado when you have a low oil avocado.
But all of us have been spoiled by very high oil varieties like Haas and bacon and whatnot. And so, like you say, it becomes hard for us to even think about the fruit component of an avocado. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But if you go back to its old name for people who didn't grow up with them, uh alligator pear, right?
You can think, oh, I get it, like, you know, they were probably eating what we would call a garbage avocado. And I've always used it as an excuse, uh not excuse, but as like a teaching moment for myself that not every avocado has to be this like super rich, oily, buttery, like Haas to be good. It needs to be that to be a good has avocado. But it doesn't that there is there is a use for these other avocado styles, you know. Yeah, wow, and you're going, you're actually going a lot deeper there than than when I heard that and thought of it.
I thought we were just, I thought they were just going pear because of the shape. Oh, well, you might be right too. That's also probably true. And what you're saying is probably accurate. But what I'm saying is like maybe I'm giving them more credit than they deserve.
I probably am. But you know, um, because right, a Haas does look like a pear. But to me, everything is pear-shaped, right, Nastasia? Uh yep. Yeah, yeah.
Uh, all right. Uh I'm gonna like run through some questions, but why don't you pick what's your what's your favorite recipe to highlight the process? It's in the book. The what's your favorite one to highlight the process? Um I think uh, you know, one I think that that hits really well because it delivers you some of kind of the classic stuff that you know.
It's a it's uh just a pan seared pork medallions with uh roasted apples. Um pork and apple, like nothing, nothing new and and earth shattering there. Um, but what I really like about this one is is kind of building in the process because you know, pork tenderloin, um I'm sure you'll agree, not the best piece of the pig to be eating. No, I'm crying inside thinking about how many people buy it on purpose. Um because you know, flavor-wise, because it's not it's not much.
It's it's a good, it's a good lean protein, and like for a quick meal to take that, slice it into medallions. You can have, you know, you can have those medallions cooked in like three or four minutes apiece if you if you slice them the right size. Yeah, except for people cook it more because like like it it doesn't have like a lot of pork flavor, but thank Christ it dries out quick. Um so what we do there, so taking that, seasoning it with like a little bit of um coriander and ground coffee, um doing the really quick sear on those, please leave it pink in the middle, and then um you're building what turns out to be like a super flavorful sauce um with a lot of depth um with deglazing the pan first uh with the apples in the pan with bourbon, taking that all the way down, then balsamic vinegar, then stock. So you get like a lot of these really huge, big, deep, rich, roasted um flavors coming through in the dish in about like 15 minutes of effort.
So wait, so what what what kind of ground coffee are you using? Do you like espresso ground? Is it do you need is it a particular yeah? I go, yeah, pretty fine. Actually, like the last couple times I've done this, I didn't have anything, I didn't have what I needed in the pantry.
I just popped open an espresso pod and uh sprinkled that over the pork. Huh. I uh I used to I don't know if I've said this on air, but um the ever, but the the singer in uh one of my bands in college, after you know, after I left, became a manager at an ice cream shop, and he used to uh no sorry at a coffee shop, and he used to go next door to the ice cream shop and he would bring over like a bunch of Turkish ground coffee. He would like set his grinders on the finest thing possible, put Turkish grind coffee, and then just dump coffee grinds, grounds on top of uh his vanilla ice cream and pound it. And he also smoked like two packs a day.
So he was like, he was just like this his voice was like an angel. He sounded like Eddie Vetter. Attractive guy too. And but he shook like a freak in Chihuahua because he was like eating coffee grounds and smoking cigarettes like the end of the world was coming. And that's on top of the espresso he was pounding as his only non-alcoholic form of liquid intake.
So he was a hardcore dude. Yeah. I haven't seen him in a while. Health health nut, huh? Yeah, health nut.
I mean, uh again, you know, like he he looked, he looked great. It didn't seem to hurt the outside. I'm sure his inside was getting slowly eaten away, but um, you know, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Uh you can't have everything.
Uh so yeah, all right. So how much coffee grounds are you putting on it? Uh, you know, not much. I mean like what I like to do is is mix it, you know, mixing that in with the salt and the ground coriander. Um I think it's I don't know, I don't I don't have it in front of me, but it's it's like a uh, you know, for for seasoning a whole tenderloin, we're talking about like a teaspoon.
So this is kind of like a uh like an interesting take on red eye gravy. Do they don't have red eye gravy uh as far south as you, do they or do they? Uh a little bit, a little bit. You know, we're we're kinda I mean, we're kind of the deep south, you know, here. I mean, like it's uh I'm closer to Alabama and Georgia than I am to, you know.
I always kind of put it this way, people in Pensacola, if I got in a car and started driving, I could get to Nashville quicker than I could get to Miami. Right, right, right. But I but I always yeah, so right. I always think of red-eye gravy as being kind of like Virginia, North Carolina, and like kind of like not not north and not south, you know what I mean? It it is, and that's definitely kind of like you know, where it is, and I think I would say like late 90s, early 2000s, when everyone was getting super into southern cooking.
That was like one of those things. That was like one of the breakout stars of of that scene, and it sort of really started to spread out everywhere. Is that where you came to it though, from the red eye gravy? Or what was the chemical compound? What was the pairing on that one?
Um, yeah, that one was actually more about just um l looking to build those big roasted aromas in the dish without, you know, um quickly. You know, without without having to sear the hell out of the pork so you end up over you know overcooking it, um, being able to kind of cook quick and still get these kind of like big smoky roasted flavors going on. So, what are your tips for people to uh not uh dry the hell out of those things other than uh other than make it quick? Yeah, I mean that's that's it. Make you know make it quick.
Um and you know, the the I think that's you know, one of the things we talk about in the recipes is you know, you're you're using this seasoning here that's gonna give you that that roasted flavor, so you don't have to have that super hard sear. Um, you know, really what even what we do is get the quick sear, take them out of the pan, get the sauce built, and then throw them back in and just you know, finish them off in the sauce. So, like, but how like how long in the so that I feel that's also old school. Like every all the old school recipes, like so like uh I read a lot of, you know, I read a lot of old old books, right? And so it used to be like the like things that you would now think of as exclusively quick cooking, right?
It's do the thing in the pan, pull the thing out of the pan, rest it, make the sauce, put the thing back in the pan, let them merry for a minute or two, and then serve it out. And I feel like uh you don't see that kind of instruction a lot anymore. The interesting thing about that instruction is is that a little bit of if you take it off way before it's done, let it rest a little bit, then put it back in the sauce, that'll gently bring it back up. And it's not actually a bad way to get something up to not being too cooked in the middle, but kind of being warm throughout because what you're essentially doing is two fast cooks because even though it seems low, if it's in hot sauce, it's actually a relatively fast way of cooking. Would you agree with that or not?
Well, 100%. 100%. It's also, you know, it's a technique we use a lot. Uh you know, that try to hammer into the cooks um with pastas with shrimp in them. You know, if you're building building every pasta to order, so we start by you know sauteing some shrimp.
I like to if you if you think about it, if if those shrimp are in there the entire time through the building of the sauce and then through the marrying with the pasta, they're just cooking way, way too long. So, like to get a little sear on the shrimp, you know, get that fawn, get that flavor into the pan, get the shrimp out, build the sauce, build the pasta all the way through, and then get the shrimp back in right at the end. Big shrimping, big shrimping, baby. Um, I if you don't uh I think shrimp, I'm trying to think. What are my feelings on viciously overcooked shrimp?
What Nastasia and John, what are your thoughts on viciously overcooked shrimp? Or Matt, you eat shrimp. What do you think about it? Does it kill you? Can you not eat it?
I know some people that can't eat a viciously overcooked shrimp, like it just pisses them off so much. Yeah, pretty much in that camp. I mean, I it's just such a waste of potential, and it's so e well, I mean, it's pretty easy to not do that. What about viciously overcooked scallops? Same.
Same situation, and that's even maybe more sad. Hmm. Stas, what about you? I don't like scallops at all. And shrimp, I mean, I'd eat it.
I forget, is is there a reason that you want to that with that's uh like available for the scallops? Was that you had too many, or did you have a bad experience, or just in general? Too many. Yeah. Too many.
You know where John was recently was in the land of the of my favorite scallops. He was on uh were you the vineyard or Nantucket? You were Nantucket, right? Oh my god, if you like scallops, Nantucket scallops are so stupidly good. Oh my god.
They're so good. I had heard sometime recently that you can like treat uh shrimp pre-cooking with like baking soda, like you sprinkle a little baking soda on them to avoid overcooking them if you're prone to doing that. Why would that cause them to I mean uh like uh something basic like that might make them absorb more water, but I don't think it's gonna stop them from overcooking, and it has the very real possibility of making them taste real soapy. They'll brown faster. Uh-huh.
Yeah, I was wondering if you had a theory on why. I mean, I don't know. Uh, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure, James, that you've tried all of these tricks, but there was a period of time ten years ago when uh a bunch of people, uh I think a lot of them coming from the Netherlands, actually, were interested in this idea of adding excess baking soda to things like meat that you were gonna put into uh a meat sauce like a ragu or bolinese or something like this, and then um hitting it so that it browns up because if you add base, you increase the browning rate dramatically. Um, and then afterwards adding an acid to it to neutralize all the extra disgusting base that you've added to your meat, and then serving that out brown. Uh, I always hated it.
Do you ever try that stuff, James? I mean, some people like it. Yeah, I yeah, I think that was one of those ones where, you know, you you get that little nugget of of information and you're like, hey, this is a cool fact, and then you just run wild with it and do it unnecessarily to so many different things. Yeah, I never really never really got into it. I mean it was, you know, cool to spine out that fact that you know, you know, you know, adding the baking soda here is really going to increase the browning.
Um and then it just tastes like, you know, it tastes like that stuff you like to mix in your eggs uh later. Yeah, poop. Chef Joe It was you that likes to butt yeah yeah you were the one who suggested everyone put poop in their eggs. That's the the record is clear on that. They suggested it first I just confirmed that he should put it in his eggs.
No you disagreed you I have to disagree I'm gonna run it back right now. I have to disagree with you there. Go to the tape. Yeah we're going to the tapes go to the video tape. Uh wait Chef Joanna said something about is it it was part of velveting with egg white what is velveting with shrimp?
Yeah that's true. Yeah Chinese technique yeah that's true right but I feel that's a different thing. That's more of uh yeah that's yeah that was and I mean that's more about like trying to use the baking side almost like as a scrub to to uh smooth the surface and you know almost like create like a little non-stick coating on the on the shrimp. Yeah I have to go reread it velveting was another thing that I feel like I got into a deep hole on because a lot of people were asking me about it years and years ago I have to go back. I I you know um I've been thinking a lot about starch recently when I'm doing the book I know like a couple years ago, I said it was gonna be the year of starch.
But I have read in the past four days, maybe one thousand five hundred pages on starch. I mean skimmed. I wouldn't say I deeply read them. You know what I mean? But uh, yeah.
Anyway. Uh all right. Well, how do we even get into this? Oh, shrimp. Overcooked shrimp and overcooked, and Nastasi doesn't like scallops because she ate too many.
And John really hates an overcooked scallop. Is it just it makes you sad, or do you actually can't stand the taste of it? It makes me sad. It's probably my favorite shellfish. Sochered like that, yeah.
It was never fun. Huh. Do you like dried scallops shaved over things? I don't know if I've ever had that. I've had I don't know.
I have dried scallops here to like make XOS, but I've never tried just shaving them. So I feel that was another big thing like like eight years ago. Everyone was like, everyone was like, well, but target is good. What if I just shave this dried scallop? Remember that?
James, you were backing me up on this? That was like a thing, right? Or no? I don't I don't remember I don't remember that. No.
Who was doing who was doing that? I don't know. I still things that was in the air, you know? In the air that night. You know, it's one of those things.
It was just a round. You know what I mean? It's like I think it was a combination of that and then like Chang on the what was it, the PBS chef show where he was trying to do like different types of katsuabushi and shaving different things on the foods. I think that probably he did the pork bushy. Yeah, that was his thing, the pork bushy.
Did um by the way, let's talk batarga for a second. Like, don't like. Um, for those of you that don't know, by the way, out there, Batarga is you take like uh my I get I can't remember whether it's classically mullet or it's now mullet. It used to be something. I can't remember.
But you take the rose sack, you salt it, you dry it, and then you you do or do not, depending on how you feel, coat it in wax, and then you sell it for a buttload of money, and then you slice it thin or grate it over pasta. That's what we're talking about. All right, go. Yeah, actually, so uh we have an excess of uh mullet here in Pensacola. So um I mean people with mullets or mullet the fish?
Both. Both. Um there's actually there's the there's a mullet festival uh and and the interstate mullet toss. The fish, the f the fish. Again, both.
Um wait. Are you talking about the you're talking about the fish toss? Is that what you said? Yeah, yeah. Mullet toss on a down the Florida state line.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard that they still had that. Uh no social distancing report. No. So like uh aside from the mad problematic.
Aside from that problematic fact, uh what what are you doing tossing the fish? Like what do you but like why would you toss it? So it's it's literally who can throw a dead mullet the furthest down the beach. And what's the answer? How far can you throw one?
Like roughly. I mean year to year. I I I've actually never been out for it because I'm a little uh afraid uh of the whole scene. But um it's a big it's a big thing. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean are we talking like a like a f like a f yeah, are we talking like like 40 foot? We talking like a hundred foot? Is it discus style? Like what's the best technique? Is it like an overhand tail grasping?
Yeah, most people I I've seen are are going, you know, overhand. I I think it's it's too small really to go for like the discus spin on it. You know, I think you you if it were a bigger fish, if we were like throwing, you know, bonita or something, I I I would see the uh discus being the way to go. But yeah, there's a straight overhand. Are you allowed to use a paper towel to get a good grip?
I think not. I my understanding is that it's like slippery and that is part of the challenge. I see. Do people cheat and like rub the fish in the sand first to get it a little weird you know, like a little chalk on their hand or field trip is all I gotta say. Yeah.
Next next year live live from the mullet toss. I don't know that uh I'd necessarily be welcome because I'd be asking all of these questions to someone whose only desire is to throw a fish, and I feel like maybe they wouldn't like me so much there. Um just to guess. All right, so mullet toss, mullet botarga, go. Yeah, um personally I'm not a huge fan of of the botarga.
Um, but I do appreciate it. Like we we we make it. Uh we make it at the restaurant. Um and use it occasionally. Wax dip or no wax dip.
Do you or do you not wax it and then vacuum it? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We just vacuum but once they're done, we pull them out, vacuum them. Um the wax is just another pain in the ass to take off of it later, right?
Yeah. Yeah, and if you can vacuum I mean, the whole point of the wax, like obviously historically was just to seal it up. Um and if you can do that with a you know, in a vacuum, then why bother? Um but actually, you know, my favorite use of that was we were um doing like a you know, uh a quote uh I mean it is whatever, it's a Caesar salad. Um but instead of egg yolk, we were using botarga and it was like a you know a broken anchovy vinaigrette with a little shaved botarga um tossed sandwich.
You gotta you gotta be really careful with that. It's gotta be just there's a there's a very fine tipping point, I think, on botarga and uh dish. Yeah, I'm with you there. Like uh that's the thing, it's one of those things that like I really want to like more than I do. You know what I'm saying?
Like, I love the idea of it. I'm exactly on 100% right there. Yeah. Uh you know what it doesn't go well with? Wine.
Oh my god. Like that aftertaste, like you're like the batarga has just died down in your mouth. You know that like same thing with like um like overly cured country ham, which I love. Uh which that's not something I want to love. That's something I love and have eaten a lot of.
But like a lot of wines, right after you the ham goes down, when you take that sip of wine, you're like, oh damn. I wish that. And botarga is even more like that. It's like that, like, in the back of your throat. You know what I mean?
Yeah, you know who does botarga really well? Missy. No. No. No.
Oh, they they've got a uh uh a ravi of the of their little okey or actually like boutoni. Um you know, little tiny round ravioli um that would that are finished with just a little bit of shade of botarga. It's are they making the botarga? Because I think most of it's probably just overcured, is why I don't I I'm wondering whether there is a botarga that I love love love. Yeah, I don't I don't know if they make it if they make it or they're you know bringing it in from Italy.
Nastasia, you have feelings on botarga or no? Yeah, I feel the same way. Like, yeah, I wish I liked it, but I I just don't really like it that much. Okay, and then let's go even more. What are your feelings?
I know you love caviar, right? So you're not anti-roe. Nastasia loves caviar. If any of you want to send Nastasia a caviar, go ahead. She will eat it.
Am I wrong about that? No. Yeah. Um, what are your thoughts on uncured cooked roe like shad row in a pan? I will eat it.
But you don't love it. No. Do you? Again, I have loved it in the past, but I think it was mainly because I was kind of like, you know, this is decades ago, kind of rediscovering something that, you know, was part of, you know, because you don't think of like this area having any culture at all of its own, right? Like New England does, and you know, obviously the South does, uh, you know, and like, you know, Maryland, Mid Atlantic does, but like, you know, you're around here, you know, you're not thinking of, you know, anything, but like, you know, shad, shad row, you know, bake bacon and shad row, you know, uh, is something that, you know, has always been from around here, not only from around here, but something that's from around here.
So I really wanted to like, you know, love it, you know, because no one loves Manhattan clam chowder, right? Is there one human being on earth who would rather have Manhattan clam chowder than real clam chowder? I don't know. No. No, not one.
Not one human being. Like, why would our great city put its name on such a sack of filth? And a New York strip steak doesn't really come from here. I don't know how we're even trying to claim that stuff, and it's not even my favorite steak, right? So I really wanted to like be like, I don't know, but then it's just it's just okay.
It's just fine. You know what I mean? It's like it doesn't have like enough of a flavor other than the bacon for me to love it. It pops a lot, and then when it's overcooked, it's dry and and grainy. I don't know.
So I don't know. Anyone else had like a life ending shad row? Now, shad the fish, my one of my favorite fish of all time. One of my favorite fish to eat, but very hard to bone. But whatever.
I missed the season this year. It made me sad because of the COVID. I mean, that's not obviously that's the smallest of the problems that we had, but um, anyway. And you guys like shad? None of you guys have ever eaten a lot of shad.
I know, I mean, I don't know about you, James, but I know that I've asked Nastasia and John this a lot, and they haven't pounded a lot of shad fish. You know, we used to do uh when I was with with Frank Stitt at Highlands Bar and Grill uh in Birmingham, we used to do shad row in season when we had it, and um no, but we never bothered with the fish because it's exactly what you said, it's just so damn so damn bony. So, like to serve that in a restaurant is is tough. You know, I think like if you're eating it at home, you're gonna deal with the bones, it's fine, but you know, trying to serve serve shad in a restaurant is a is a really difficult undertaking. Well, like up here, like along the Connecticut River and a bunch of other, you know, places that go up, you know, traditionally there would be shad houses, right?
And there's still a couple along the Connecticut up, you know. If you go, you know, if you know Connecticut at all, if you go old Saybrook is where uh the Connecticut River hits, and you go up like I don't know, 15, 20 miles to Haddam, there's a bridge near there, and you can still see on the side of the road, because there's a road that runs right along the river, like some of these old shad shacks. People would s set up for when the runs came, these uh shad uh shacks, and they would do like once a year they would do do the stuff. And there, as of you know, two years ago, there were still like a couple of old timers who knew how to bone shad properly. But shad, and I said this on the show before, but you know, just in case, it has an extra set of Y bones.
And so um the one lady who used to bring it to the store where I used to get it, um, you know, they would catch it in the Connecticut and then she would bone it and bring it to the store. Is they just have this way with the fillet knife that they can stay just I don't know, they're one with the shad, and they have this thing where they cut into the filet, remove this Y-bone in one shot, right? And then hand you something that looks like a fillet. But if you put your hand, so if you if it if you if you drape it, if you take the skin and you curl it towards you so that you're compressing the flesh, it looks like one fillet. But if you go the other way and bend the flesh out, blend the skin out, the flesh just like looks like it's coming apart into leaves because of the how the way this lady does it.
But she's fast. There is a fast way to do it. Uh and it's like big and oily and good, which is like you don't usually get all of that. And I think it's more delicate than a bluefish, but like has the oil in it. And I love bluefish, so I'm not saying delicate meaning that bluefish is not good, but I just think it's a great fish.
It's one of those fish that is good to grill because you can hammer the hell out of it and it still tastes good. You know what I mean? But unlike a skate, it'll hold together on a grill. Like a skate you could hammer the hell out of, but I want to hammer the hell out of a skate in the pan, not on a grill. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, and I think that's you know, the oil, that's the tricky, that's the tricky thing about shad, and I mean it is it is you know, a very, very you gotta have a quick turnaround for nothing coming out of the water to get on the grill. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, uh, what other fish are good hammers? Yeah, most of them. We gotta bounce fairly soon if you have any last pressing question.
Alright, so uh this what do you say, Sus? More promotions. Alright, hold on. I got a question in. We have a bunch of questions that weren't specifically for James.
Were any of the ones in that people sent via email for James, John? Nope. All right. So I have one from the Twitter. Uh this is from uh Pavlo Pavlovsky.
Writes in uh, and you you saw this too, James, about uh uh at least you're tagged on it. Yeah. Hey Dave and the rest of the gang love the show. My question the idea of pairing foods based on sharing some molecules, isn't that the definition of redundant? Are there other concepts to pair from?
So I thought I give you, like I'd read that, and we've talked about this a little bit, but I give you some time to uh uh respond specifically to uh to that, and which, you know, you go. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the um, I mean, well, so for so first of all, we have which we did sort of you know touch on before. Um, is it redundant? It can be, but it it you know, is it necessarily no? Because I think you know, when you're really looking at the full makeup of an ingredient, um, you're you're getting that look below the surface, right?
I mean, there's so much happening in, you know, a strawberry, um, you know, that is that is below the threshold necessarily that we would uh you know perceive um just by biting into a strawberry. Um so you're seeing kind of you know a lot more there that leads to some connections, you know, that you might otherwise I mean, you know, one of the I mean first of all, like strawberry, you're talking about 400 different compounds that come together to make that flavor. You can't pick out all 400, you know, all 400 of those uh, you know, without without getting into um the science and and the data of it. And you know, one of the most prominent ones is is mesafurane, which is which smells like you know a croissant, smells like buttered toast. Um, you know, you don't you don't really perceive that in a strawberry, but why is frickin' toast and strawberry jam so damn good?
I mean, that's part of it, but then, you know, um I mean that's I think that's it's again it's just one phase. It's it's one phase of it of it. And like we talked about before, it's like a great spot for you know inspiration, and you kind of hopefully see a connection. Hey, hey, these two is ingredients. Hey, they've got something going on there.
What can we do? How can we build off of that? Um, so you know, flavor, the yeah, I mean, flavor is is where most pairing does come from. Um taste, yeah, of course, is is gonna be the other part salty, sweet, you know, fatty acidic, spicy, sour. Um, you know, you I think you know you're looking, you're looking at those things, but uh, you know, I don't think any no no good dish is built on just one of those things.
You know, it's it's always gonna be about sort of the the combination and the interplay of of everything you've got going on. Mesofurane sounds like an Eric B and Rakim song, does it not? Kind of sounds like microphone fury. Anyway, uh yes, I think that is a I think that is a good response. Let me just knock this out real quick because we did get a response on this.
Uh our friend Quinn from Vancouver Island, who uh does a lot of interesting cooking. Check out uh what's his uh what's his uh Instagram there, Q Dragon Stas? Uh yes. Yeah. And uh and Michael uh Kunz both asked, uh, what about using Koji, uh, which we've spoken about for uh clarification instead of standard pectanex enzymes.
I got in touch with Rich uh She and he said um it's uh our cook quest on Instagram, and he said that he hasn't really tried it, but he thinks probably commercial preparations are uh stronger in terms of their um pectinase uh ability. And then John got in touch with Jeremy Omansky. Uh and what was what was the response there? Jeremy says it does produce pectinase, but in very small quantities, you're better off using pectinics. Alright, so there you go.
Those are from the two uh Koji masters and Stas, you wanna do some promotion? Uh buy our boxes. Wow. That's a strong statement. Yeah, buy our boxes.
All right. Uh where where are they gonna go? They're gonna go on Booker and Dax.com or they're gonna go on to uh uh bend to table Dax or bend to table. And also um if you wanna come on the show, go on our auction site. What are we auctioning off?
A spot on our show, Dave. Well, I mean, why don't you describe the auction so that they know what to do? They get to come on the show in Los Angeles in an unclosed location and Jack being on the with you, but socially distanced from you. They have to have a COVID test. If if they auction or if they're the winner, they have to have a COVID test within two days of the show.
Um Right. But specifically, Matt and John and I will be on this coast and you will be there, and then they will be near where you are. They will be able to do that. And they will be the only people who know your undisclosed location. Yeah, for that day, and then I move.
Um, you're doing on the last day that you're there. Very strong. And Jackie molecules will be there. Maybe Phil Bravo and his ukulele and who knows who else. Oh my god, the weakest of all instruments.
No, right, the recorder's the weakest of all. Why does the man like a weak instrument? Yeah, he no, he sent me some good ukulele music. So I'm not hating on all ukulele music. I'm just saying that like maybe it's the fact that I grew up listening to Tiny Tim playing ukulele that poisoned me to the idea of ukulele.
Maybe that's what it is. Stas, are you gonna perform piano for these people? Am I gonna what? Are you gonna perform the piano for these for these fine folks? If they No, I don't think so.
But there will be What if they pay extra bagels? Also, our newsletter, I just informed uh was sent out with the subject line. A great subject line gives your audience a reason to open your email. So strong. You know what?
I like that. That checks out. That sounds like us. But you should sign up for our email because in this one they only put my like a small smattering of my loves and hates on. It's supposed to have all of us, but I'm sure you know Dave, as we're looking at the thing, your loves and hates are the most opened links in the Yeah, but I'm sure that they would also open your loves and hates.
The gun, the gun is the most open link by like 90%. Everybody wants to shoot flies. Do you know anyone who's like, you know what? Like, I really want to like smash uh I want to smash that fly with my book. No.
Or I wanna like put a big mark on my wall with a book. No, or like I I'm gonna miss that fly and run around like an idiot. No, they want to blast that thing out of the sky with table salt. It is just a good idea. I think that guy's from Florida, in fact, the bug assault guy.
The gun is called bug assault, which eh well, problematic name, but it it it doesn't look like a real I mean it looks kind of like a real gun, but it's bright yellow, and you put table salt in it, and then you rack it like a like a Mossberg, and then you bam, and it just shoots this like tiny like pulse of salt out. Not like in the old days when you like took your real shotgun and filled it with rock salt so that you could like you know scare someone off of your porch. We're talking like tiny little burst of table salt that you know has the effective range of like three feet. Anyways. Do you know about this one, James?
I do. I do know all about the bug assault. I I I've got a couple friends at home. They love them. Yeah, yeah.
We're shooting bugs. Do you have Palmetto bugs up as far north as you or no? Yeah, um, not, yeah. Yeah, we do. They're not um everywhere, but we certainly see them.
God, I hate Palmetto Bugs. God, I hate Palmetto bugs. Yes, Nastasia? A great subject line gives your audience a reason to open your email. Yeah, yeah, it does.
And again, this checks out that that is we should just have that always be the that should always be it, along with the poem. That should always just be there. Until somebody unseats and give. So aside from getting us a poem that could unseat the poem, uh, the poem of all poems. Perhaps you guys can think of a subject line that will unseat uh our subject line.
But for our newsletter and more goodness uh like that, um, yeah, I I guarantee you no one was clicking on the links of what I'm reading. Uh no, I think those are the next rad things, too. Oh, geez Louise. All right. Well, listen, uh James, your new book is Flavor for All.
Uh James Bushone, Flavor for All with uh Brooke Parkhurst. Um go visit their restaurant in Pensacola. You want to push out the name of the restaurant again? Angelinas. Angelina's restaurante italiano.
And what's the name again for about? Is it because of the the the uh the song? Zoom zoom. Oh, no, no. So actually Angelina was um an Italian immigrant who uh came in through the port of New Orleans in the very late 1800s and and settled here in Pensacola in the very early 1900s and um opened one of the first uh produce markets in downtown Pensacola.
Oh, nice. But you're familiar with the Louis Primus song, though, right? Of course. Yeah, yeah. It's a great song.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I like Louis Prima. I don't know about you guys, but I like Louis Prima. I don't like him quite as much as I love uh Big Night, which is I think my in my top two or three favorite uh food movies of all time. What about Nastasi?
You're gonna be able to do that. I really wanted to I really wanted to do a screening of Big Knight with his staff before we opened, but um we didn't get to it. No, we weren't able to pull that off. Make it make it make it. Nastasi and I say that to each other.
Dax says that to me all the time. It's a starch, it's a starch. Make it make it. We always just say, yeah, it's a great movie. For any of you who haven't seen that movie, it's probably gotta be on Netflix or something like this, right?
That is like that is some good Tucci and some good shalub. You know what I mean? That's some strong shalub in that. Anyway. Uh John, you like that movie, right?
Have not seen it. What? Oh because of your whole because of you pushing it so hard. I watched it towards the beginning of the pandemic. It was quite good.
Also, Tucci wrote it, right? I think so. He's a food guy. I know he's a food guy. Yeah.
Yeah. I can't believe, John, that you haven't seen it. This is your like, you know, I feel like you should see it. Nastasi, don't you feel like you should see it? Yeah.
Yeah. How's he gonna relate to us if he hasn't seen it? I mean, I feel like if Booker and Dax had in a physical office space, it should just be on like loop. Well, for a while, Nastasi and I would have had the uh Nastasi is a fan of Alec Baldwin. Let me just say this.
And uh, so like, you know, we would occasionally just watch the Glengarry Glenn Ross monologue over and over again. Um, have you seen his he's you know he's hosting a game show now, Nastasi? Did you know that? Yeah, my parents won. Was it good?
I told you. Oh my god. Did you watch it? I'm watching Leslie Jones on uh on uh supermarket sweep. It's that's good, that's good pandemic watch there.
You get you get some Leslie Jones, you get uh to see people in a supermarket without masks. It's uh it's phenomenal. All right. Uh well, uh James, thanks for uh coming on the show. Flavor for All is in a uh you know, any fine bookseller uh near you.
If you want to eat at the restaurant, you got to go to Pensacola, right? Yes, that's it, man. Thanks. It was always fun. All right, cool.
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