Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Aron, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center at New Stand Studios. Join behind me with uh John. How are you doing, John? Doing good, thanks.
Yeah? Yeah. All good? All good. Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels.
What's up? Hey man, great to see you. No, nice. Good to see you as well. We got a full crew down in California.
We have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez and uh Jackie Molecules Ninsley. What's up? Hey, hey. Hey? Hey.
I've made a mistake. I've picked up a super crunchy mini Schneider's gluten-free pretzel that Joe brought us, but now, because we're a you have to like what you touch, you take kind of a family, but I don't want to put it in my mouth because it's so freaking crunchy. So I'm just gonna have to hold it for the rest of the show, maybe. Yeah. In uh on Vancouver Island in the MIMO, we got uh Quinn.
How are you doing, Quinn? I'm good. Yeah. Yep. All right.
Okay. And uh in the studio today, our special guest. We are super psyched to have Katie Parla here for her new book Food of the Italian Islands, right? Now listen, in the show at the beginning, we just go around. Say you guys say hello so they know I'm not lying.
Joe. There you go. Okay. So uh we go around and we just say kind of any kind of random bull crap that's happened to us over the last week before we kind of get into so uh wait what do you guys got? You guys got anything other than these hyper crunchy pretzeloids?
Pretzaloids, Joe, because they're not twisted. Everyone in my family, I say what is a pretzel. They say twisted. I'm like, what? Twisted, what?
Twisted. And they try to bring rods in. Rod is the worst of all the fake pretzel shapes. Unacceptable shape. Not a good shape.
It's great for pasta. Great for pasta. Oh, by the way, by the way, you and Nastasia need to eventually have. See, you have a much more measured opinion about pasta than Do I? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Then so Nastasia, I don't know if you know this. Nastasia used to have a pasta business with Mark Ladner. And right I'm not making this up. Pasta fly.
Pasta flyer, right? Yeah. And so she do you guys know each other by the way? Do you guys know each other already? We kind of do a kind of do I don't.
Yeah. You do but you don't. You did but you won't. Yeah. Yeah.
Um anyway, so like, you know, she used to get her stuff uh like specially tweaked out in she was I'm not allowed to talk about it, she's not allowed to talk about it in Italy. Anyway, so she Nastasia's basic feeling. Why don't you just say what your basic feeling is rather than me paraphrasing it since you're right here? It's a huge category. Well, no, but her, she's like anyone that tries to make pasta, she's like given the I'm given the under the under the chin.
People who try to uh like extrude it and dry it at home. Well, yeah, yeah. But you also you don't like fresh pasta either, right? Mostly. Mostly.
Most, unless it's you know, better chain like there's there's things. But yeah, when people try to make dried pasta at home, I'm it angers me because there's so much great dried pasta, like commercially made. Like, why are you doing that? You know, it's pointless. And also when restaurants do it, it's often terrible.
And there's no point to it. So stop. Stop doing that. Wow. We're on the same page here.
Well, except for like so let's go to your book, your new book, Food of the Italian Islands, where you're like, you have a whole like beautiful, by the way, if you if you hate good photography, don't get the book. Yeah, for sure. Steer clear. Yeah, if you don't like people like looking kind of like sweaty and amazing at the same time, like that guy at the in the front, like Oh my god. The guy grilling a horse in 100 degree temperatures at night in Catania.
It's so glistening. The guy looks like an overweight Greek wrestler. Like he looks amazing. Like, you know what I mean? Like glistening.
It's perfect. Amazing. I definitely want to eat that dude's whatever. It was grilled horse. Yeah.
Yeah. I definitely want to eat that. Yeah. Yeah. You should.
Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I have only seen the PDF copy of this book. Right. Uh where is the but the front page, the front cover isn't what I have in the in the PDF.
It's this like giant, just like full page like octo squish. Totally. Okay. Is that the front page? Front disk.
That's like the end papers. All right. And I'm so sorry I don't have a physical copy. I the book came out today and I do not have a book. Thanks, UPS.
Yeah. That's great. I appreciate you for ruining this for me. I wanted to present all of you with books, but it'll have to wait. UPS is the company that like a couple things I'll say about UPS.
One, like if they say when they get it to you on time, they UPS never brings stuff early. Not ever, not once. If they say it's gonna be in five days, that crap can go all the way from California to New York and it's gonna sit in the UPS warehouse until day five, and then it's gonna show up. But then but maybe. But then if you absolutely positively to use FedEx's old thing, made it, they're just not gonna give it to you.
They're not gonna give it to you. It's upsetting. How is that a business? I disapprove. They once basically put I was in a handbag, a leather handbag business with uh my wife, where we actually went to the we went to Italy's like kind of like leather district to tie a deal with them because there was a kind of one of the last bastions of molded leather, and they didn't want to deal with us because we were, you know, like little like we had an inn, like actually, uh what's it called?
Um, one of the partners at Kate Spade, like hooked us up with their leather person over there, and she was still like, no. Like, she was like, I'll pick you up at the I'll pick you up at the bus station, I'll tour the factory, and then you you gotta get out. Oh my god. And go back to Florence. You know what I mean?
So, like, anyway. So uh, yeah, so UPS, we had like all of these like leathers, like full cowhides coming, like big thick veg can stuff that we were gonna, and just didn't show up. We had all these orders we had to make, just didn't show up. We're like, that's our whole, that's our whole, that's it. That's our whole business.
No, same. I'm like, I did this book and then no one can receive it. That's not ideal. All right, all right, all right. So listen, we're gonna get, we're gonna get back.
Anything else from the week? Anything, John, you got anything in the land of restaurants? Uh I did, but I can't remember. So John has a ridiculous and see whether you can weigh in on this. For every for every three-quarters of a pound of dried pasta for his carbonara, 10 egg yolks.
10 egg yolks. What do you think about this? I think with when it comes to carbonara, you can do what you feel in the egg department. You can even use egg whites, go nuts. Oh, yeah, no, I tried.
I don't know. All I'm gonna say is I made it again last night for the family because they enjoy John's Carbonara recipe. Thank you. Yeah, and my mom got me some of that uh grano arso flour. I'm like, what am I gonna do with it though?
So like she thought I was gonna make bread with it. I'm like, I'm not gonna, what am I gonna what? So like I I tried to make some earmuffs. I made some pasta, just sheet it. I just sheet it and cut it, you know what I mean, into like you know, badly, you know, cut noodles.
I didn't care, right? Uh anyway, so so many freaking egg yolks to make his thing. So I was thinking in my head, every time someone makes your sauce, an angel food cake gets its wings. Because like you have to make angel food cakes. What am I gonna do with all these damned whites?
Meringue. Nobody wants that much meringue. Nobody wants that much meringue. You go to a pastry shop anywhere in, you know, wherever where they do meringues, like, you know, Europe, you know, anywhere. And like beautiful window full of freaking meringues.
And then they hand you one that's like, you know, like big. It's like big. And you take one bite and you're like, I'm done. I'm done. It's too much.
Why do I want aerated sugar? That's true. Although I was at my nephew's birthday party. Get the name of this place. Ready?
Okay. Pequatzipus. Like Pequatzipus. It's a nature reserve. Pequatzipis.
Pequatzipis. And so Wiley, who's opening his new pizza restaurant in in a week here, stretch pizza in uh New York City. We'll talk about it because you you wrote a pizza book called The Joy of Pizza. I told you before the radio star, he's doing New York style. And you were like, good.
Not trying to imitate somebody else's style, doing New York style, right? Is that what I assume that's what I got off you? I think that's cool. I think New York style uh sometimes struggles, and when people are pushing to improve it, that's great. Yeah.
Hey, I'm gonna trigger nostasi again. So you went to college in New Haven. See. It's such an annoying way to we always oh, I went to school in New Haven. I lived in New Haven for four years.
At orientation, they tell you you have to be that obnoxious forever. Yeah, so Stas absolutely hates that. Her sister went too, by the way. Anyway, so yeah, we're talking about yellow. Anyway, uh sorry, Stas.
Anyway, so uh so point being that you literally before the show was like, oh, New Haven, I like the New Haven pizza because you can't get a clan pizza in it in Italy. Not a one. Yeah. It's infuriating. And no one ever feels bad for me when I tell this story.
But yeah, you can. Oh, yeah. Oh, pork. But there's this frutti di mare pizza that they do everywhere, where it's basically like frozen mixed mussels and shrimp and all sorts of junk. That's just on the pizza.
It makes it super damp and gross. And I'm like, why don't you guys just do a good one with clams? And they won't hear it. They're like, nah, nah. We absolutely not.
Do they make that for Italians or do they make that for Italians? For Italians? Absolutely. Okay. Look, the hot dog in French fried pizza isn't for tourists.
It's for Italians. Wow. So a hot well, hot dog in French fried pizza. It's called Virstal. But you know, we we know what it is.
Yeah. Is it good? That's fine. Yeah. I mean.
Okay, yeah. I'll eat it. Yeah. So what's the what how bad are American hamburgers in Italy? The worst.
Really? Worse than German. Worse than the Germans. Oh, worse. Yeah, because they use really nice beef, but it's super lean cuts.
It's 0% fat. There's no heat applied to it at all. It's basically like a tartare on a bud. And then they're like, oh, there's like pancetta and like provolone. So it's an Italian burger.
I'm like, stop doing this. Or someone go to America, eat a burger and figure it out. They won't. Because like even an average American burger, unless they've unless it's the one style of burger I can't tolerate is the super thick hammered burger. The one where they take a super thick burger and then and then just hammer the hell out of it.
That's the only kind of burger I can't tolerate. I can I like a thin overcooked burger. You know, anyway. I mean, I'll eat a boardwalk burger. I don't care.
Yeah. As long as it's not Italian made. And I'm not interested. I feel like that's my experience in a lot of Europe. Is like if any American went there and opened up a burger joint, they would just kill it because everything else is so bad in comparison.
But the Italian palate will accept fat in certain forms, just not in patty form when it comes to a burger. Like sausage patty, they're all about it. Okay. But burgers are just so lean and not properly cooked themselves. Well, so you have a whole section in your well in your book.
Well, I was gonna say about the dried pasta before I went off on the tangent that you you're basically like, listen, this whole like dried pasta, like everywhere thing is really like a mid-20th century McGillakuddy anyway, and that they didn't really figure out all this drying until you know the machine made stuff until uh late 1800s, anyhow. So, you know, this whole like feeling that like everyone's always eaten dried pasta forever and that's the way you should do it, isn't really the case. And people used to make fresh pasta, but it was more of a you know, more of like a you know, you had to know how to do it situation. So I I read into that apparently incorrectly, that you're like, oh, there's a place for everything. So you're right, pasta wasn't really something that was in the Italian diet until the 20th century in terms of like full all the regions.
Um, but some of the islands in the book, like Pons and Procida had a really strong Neapolitan influence. When you go there, there's dried pasta, and it's freaking amazing. And spaghetti and spaghetti and uh zitti and all of these things are perfectly cooked al chiodo, so less cooked than al dente, which just tastes really good and it's more digestible and you know brings all these things to the table. I read that section. I don't dubious well, more digestible.
What does that even mean? This is another thing. Nastasia also, you guys could talk for the whole show about Italians and how they only talk about like their poops and like and what they eat and it's a constipated culture. We want to share. I don't know.
I I feel attacked. I feel attacked. But it's always so nice when you cook for someone and then the next day they call you up and they let you know how efficiently they've they've digested it. So sweet. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's so nice. You don't know how the meal went until tomorrow. Yeah, no one's like, that was amazing. They're like, I will tell you tomorrow what I think about this meal. Wow.
Yeah. But they don't have the German style shelf toilets where you get to inspect after you go, right? Oh my god, the Dutch. They've mastered that. But that hasn't made it down to Southern Europe.
It's the worst. I love it. It's cool. Okay. Okay.
Can we just go? I know this is a food. This is a food show, but if we can just for a second, like the problem is Americans buying a shelf like toilet, but not okay. Anyone who listens to me out there, if you're one of those people that hasn't figured out that the that the cleaning brush needs to be right next to the right next to the toilet. Don't hide the cleaning brush.
Get a cleaning brush that like is it if you have one of those shelf toilets without a cleaning brush, you're the worst person in the world. You're the worst human that's ever walked on the planet. You know what I'm saying? I agree, and I can tell you're passionate about this. Yeah.
Well, I hate it. Because I've been to people's houses, and you know that if I'm using it in somebody else's house, other than for liquids, there's an issue. I need to go there. You know what I mean? Absolutely.
Also, uh, can we get a bidet up in here, America? Oh, well, uh, you know, I've said many times on the air, the first time I visited, or the only time I visited Japan, I was like, that's it. We're the worst, we're stupid. And I bought a Toto washlet. And that was it.
But they don't do that in Italy, right? No, no. I mean, it makes sense. It would save space in the restroom. But people are very attached to their bidets.
It's a ritual people treasure. Well, supposedly the bidets were sold like crazy during COVID. Really? Yeah, because of the lack of toilet paper. I did not know that.
Yes. Huge influx of purchasing bidets. Now you're now you're try triggering me. Both, both. Los dose.
You need both paper and water. You know, look, you don't need, need. You can you you can use use a hole in the ground. But you know what I'm saying? But like, you know what I'm saying?
It's desirable. Definitely. Desirable. Definitely. Uh wait, how do we get to talking about this?
What the heck? Oh, digestion. Fresh pasta. Okay. I don't know where we were.
I don't know where we're going. So the new book. Do you anyone else have anything from the week? Quinn? You you like to share a weekly cooking story?
You got anything? Uh yeah, today was actually pretty chill. I made some other uh vacuum packed ferments. But in the future, what do I do when I need to talk about all the pasta that I'm making and drawing with my extruder? You can't.
You can't talk about it. You have an arco boleno? Which one do you have? Uh the little one, the AX5. Yeah, listen.
Just do you know, like there's some things that you can't just you know, Nastasi's just gonna, you know, it's uh out of respect for Nastasi. You just can't talk about it. You know what I mean? Although Wait, Quinn, you're making you're making dry pasta? Oh yeah, I mean I I've done a few batches.
I think I have a good way to dry it. Silence. Yeah, I'm just gonna let that sit. Normally, normally Katie, you don't know this. Normally I don't allow any dead air.
Like I'll just fill any dead air with with talk. But I'm just gonna allow a little bit of dead air there for the Stasia to absorb. You know what I mean? It's like now. Yeah.
Uh okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, okay. What about what about you, Jack?
You like you always have some story. Did you go to someone's house and they poisoned you this week or what? No. Um, I made a Japanese curry, and um the spice blend called for dehydrated orange peel. And for whatever I was going to ask, I mean, the conversation you're having is way more interesting.
I was gonna ask about the best way to dehydrate orange peel. That doesn't involve waiting what seemed like forever on low temp in the oven. Why does it require dehydrated? I don't know, the spice blend, but they wanted it like ground up with all the spices. But is the spice end up into a paste or a liquid?
The spice is mixed with the roux, weirdly. Yeah, that's fine. And ginger. Yeah. Look, either like order the stuff online, or you know, because you're in California, I don't know what LA's Calustians is, but like, you know, I'm sure you have some sort of weird little shop catering to weirdos that sells all the dried stuff for some sort of faux medicinal reason.
No offense, LA. And then you can get some like, you know, dried orange peel there, you know, and then just blend it. Or just, you know, I mean, zest isn't gonna taste the same, but it's gonna give you some some stuff, you know what I mean? If you take zest and go chaka chaka chaka and then hit it in the see, the one issue you're not gonna get when you put it into a roux is you're not gonna get that slightly brown flavor that you get from dried orange peel when it's been like out in the sun or in a dehydrator. Uh on the other hand, you know, so what?
You know what I mean? Anyway, yeah, yeah. All right, so back to the book. The new book, which UPS did not ship to you here, and they shorted Kitchen Arts and Letters. Yes.
I was over there the other day with our buddy Matt signing books. Yeah, yeah. So uh it's called Uh Food of the Italian Islands. That's right. And uh, what's the name of the photography?
You work with? Ed Anderson. Gorgeous. Gorgeous shots. And let me ask you a couple of a couple of questions just about books, because I'm sure someone's listening who's interested in books.
All right. Uh so a lot of the other books that you have done, you've done with Simon and Schuster, right? Like you're on their Simon and Schuster, you're on their author page. Chronicle, Clarkson Potter. All of them then.
Voracious. Yeah, this is my seventh cookbook. Right. But it's the first from Parla Publishing. Well, that's what I was gonna say.
So most people who are self-publishing, I gotta talk ask you about why you're self-publishing, because there are people who self-publish because they don't already have a relationship. You have many, right? You've done many things, you know. Like you could walk into any publisher tomorrow and be like, yo, I want to write a book, and they'd be like, let's do that. You know what I mean?
That's right. Um it's un I think it's relatively unusual for someone with your publishing experience and history to do self-publishing. So why? Well, creative control is important to me, but even more importantly, is being properly compensated for my work. And I research my books for five years, which is a huge investment.
And then, as you know from your projects, when you get your advance, even if it's like a hundred thousand, which is you know, pretty good, but relatively average for producing a cookbook, 15% goes to your agent. Right. And then you're only getting the quarter up front, and you've got to pay for all your travel, half the photography, testing, and development. So when I receive advances like that, I'm already 10 or 20,000 in the hole before I get the second round, which doesn't come until several rounds of editing. And then using that money to pay off the expenses from the previous uh steps and then the photography, and then you've got to promote the book, and then you have to uh Yeah, a lot of people don't know that.
The author pays for photos. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think some publishers still do cover photography, but it's few, that's dwindling. But, you know, I kind of for the first time after a decade of this and 20 in publishing overall, a decade of cookbooks, I looked at how much money I was losing, and I was like, okay, let's do some simple math. If a cookbook costs $35 cover price, how many do I need to sell to break even if I invest $100,000 on it?
And the answer is like around 2,800 books. So I thought I can sell that. Maybe I can even spend a little more money and through pre-sales, generate capital to cover the production expenses, and then start earning money pretty soon after publication. Right, but you're in the hole for the whole production cost though. Not really, because the printer doesn't want everything up front.
They're fine paying you in. Well, I mean, I mean going around the country, Italy. And that had to not been cheap. No, it's definitely not cheap. But it's also included in that, like the hundred K hypothetical, nice round number, covers the printing, the binding, the editor, development editor, copy editor, proofreader.
It covers all the travel, it covers publicity, and it also covers the logistics, moving a container of books to a warehouse and then storing those books because it costs like I don't know, three cents a month or something for each book to be in there. And then also the um uh the costs that the the logistics company charges just for the honor of doing business with them. And so it might seem like you're putting out a lot of money right away, but you're not. Huh. And so you your experience with it has been so far positive.
Unbelievably positive. Exception of UPS. UPS is the worst. I also am not a super fan of Shopify. The creation of this book, which I thought was going to be really complex and challenging, printing it, having it bound, having it moved across an ocean, that was all incredibly smooth.
But getting it from a warehouse in New York to mainly bookstores to retail uh retail customers, it's been a dream. Everyone's got their book already. And it's just out today. So that's been great. But getting, you know, cartons of books to now serving to even Matt lost a couple, uh, a couple of cartons.
So I now have to do all sorts of like customer service and troubleshooting, which is super annoying. Well, what about the stuff that the normal normal the publishing houses do, like, you know, the book like getting them into like mom and pop shops like the McNally Jackson's and all of these things. Is that a hassle for you or no? I simply write an email um with a presentation of the book and a PDF and ask to be placed in the bookstore. And sometimes people say yes.
There's a nice bookstore in Mystic. I forget the name of it. You should get in there. I know people have been recommending a bookstore in Mystic. Yeah, there's only one, so it's the same one.
I forget the name of it. They didn't buy my book, but whatever. What else? Whatever. You still like them.
You know, I'm not like that. I'm not a vent, I'm not as vindictive as people make me out to be, but you know. But it's also been really nice to partner with independent bookshops. Um Kitchen Arts and Letters is this incredible place. And every time you go in there, you just want to walk out with the entire stock.
Um, so that's been really special to have Matt ha have the book in stock. I sign the books and people can pre-order or now order and then get a signed copy, which I think is really special. Um, the same with Omnivore Now Serving, Book Larder, uh, Bold Fork, all of these great small businesses are our partners that I've always have been doing business with, sort of through larger publishers. So the direct contact has been really nice. Well, I noticed you didn't do the pre-order stuff on Amazon.
Are you gonna sell normally with them or no? I am, but I wanted to prioritize independent bookstores and then sales through my website, which has of course the highest margin first. Um and you know, like when you write for a big publisher, you get access to like the back end analytics. And so I know that my books sell very well on Amazon, but I also could justify not putting it out on Amazon right away so I could sort of front load the sales in the smaller um markets. Right, make them make the most money from the people who want the book the most and then put it out, right?
Yeah, and also just you know, being being in contact with readers is super important and super special to me. My books improve because of their feedback. Um, and so knowing that anyone who has the book gets you know an email from me with the delivery information and they can write to me with questions, I think that that's uh that's so special. Now, when you're writing a book like this, which like you know, as you say in the introduction, like, you know, you could have spent just an infinity of time in any one of these like areas, because the the Italian island spans all the way from the extreme northeast down all the way to the extreme southwest. Uh so when you're doing that, how do you like so do you write the book and then go back and shoot it?
Are you doing catch as catch can? Like, how do you organize your life around doing something that's over such a large space and over such a large period of time? So I write the book first and then I shoot it. And I want to have a pretty good idea of what the features are and manage the travel based on that. So, like we did, Ed came to Italy, we traveled, and we did Ischia, we went all over Sardinia and Sicily.
Um, we went to Venice and kind of had to had to figure out how to encapsulate so many disparate areas during a 10-day shoot. I think he did a really special what? Oh yeah. That book was shot in 10 days? Yeah.
I'm a small publisher. I'm I'm on a budget, baby. Okay, guys, guys. Uh I don't know where you can go see a sample PDF. Is there a place they can see a sample PDF?
No, but they can buy the book. No, like don't you have like a sample chapter? Uh on shop.kadyparla.com, there are pages. Like when you especially if you're on mobile, see the cover, and then you can look at the individual pages. Yeah, I would not have guessed 10-day shoot.
First of all, I need to know what kind of meth you were taking during that time to be able to get all of those shots in 10 days. Addie, you know it. I'm just joking. My mom's listening. You're like, I'm just joking, joking, not joking, joking, not joking.
JKJK. Yeah. Uh, but wow, that's freaking impressive. I mean, Ed is such a delightful human, full stop. Like, I would love working with him no matter what, but he's incredible at shooting people, landscapes, and food really fast.
All but a couple of the dishes were shot inside to. I didn't want to do any studio at all. And I I'm I'm always floored by his work, but I was really like the the photos are breathtaking and really transportive. That's bananas. One of my favorites uh near the beginning.
Uh I can't pronounce I can't pronounce it. By the way, you just here's what you need to do. Anytime, which is all the time that I butcher anything, just just tell me how it's pronounced. Just in literally interrupt. And uh what's the island?
Uh is it Iskia? You nailed it. Uh so okay. So this dude, this old dude is sitting on a bench, and behind him is like a mosaic that's like I heart ischia. And he's sitting on this bench like staring off on the side, and I was like, love it.
Framed like there was a uh the whole thing's encrusted with seashells. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All beautiful. But the guy's like got this. He looks like right out of central casting.
It's crazy. And Ed's so good at like finding those moments. And the whole reason we ended up in Ischia is because we were supposed to go to Pantelleria, and we got to the ape uh the Naples airport at four in the morning and found that the flight had been canceled. And not just the flight, but like the whole airline. So we were like, uh, I guess we'll go to Ischia, and we end up having incredible, incredible shoot day.
Speaking of uh the former place, which I always butcher the pronunciation of, you have a whole page on capers. See. They convince me that the caper berry is a good product. I love capers. But why would I why like caper berries like a big watery is it?
I don't know. They're like watery, salty, like what are they why would I do that? Well, you're talking about the big boys, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know anything about that.
I know the Pontelleria and Selena caper berries are really small, like compact, and they're they're dry, they're not dry, dry, but they're not like watery. Right. You buy them salt pack, like you do the capers. Yeah, yeah. And not in brine or anything, just literally layered with salt.
And uh the capers, the caper berries, and the caper leaves are all processed in pantaleria, and they all taste like capers. Caper leaves. That's interesting. I hadn't had that one. I've never had that one.
I saw that on the page. And like, what do you what do you what do you do with those? Rehydrate and like like chiffonado suckers? They're tiny, but is that what you what do you normally do? Sprinkle them on a salad or toss them with a little bit of olive oil and put them next to a piece of fish.
Now, compare, if you will, like the really good salt pack ones that like come into like the little bags or the compare those with the Goya brand brine uh capers in the jar, like just like compare. I mean, the savoriness and intensity of the caper flavor in the salt-packed ones from like Lanikia, which is the place that I visited. Um, it's like tasting the sea and the earth. It's so powerful. There's like a tea there's a tea note that's lost in the brine guys, too, right?
Isn't there? I haven't had the dilutes, it dilutes the flavor. I haven't had a salt packed in a long time. And I mean, probably you know better than I. There's some sort of like osmosis that happens when they're water cured, which is how they're usually cured in the like the jarred ones.
Oh, really? I didn't know that. I just thought they were salted and then just stored in brine. I thought they were made the same and then stored in brine. They're made differently.
Yeah, I think so. Huh, huh? How do you rehydrate the salt, the salt pack ones? How do you use them? Because no most people here haven't used a salt pack one.
So what do you think? You have to rinse them and change the water several times, like bacala. I'm sure everyone's cooking bakal all the time and knows exactly what I'm talking about. I mean, I do. But uh Yeah, you just you taste it, you keep tasting it.
When it tastes not like overpoweringly salty, then it's ready to use. Yeah. You know what's disgusting is uh spilling the soaking water all over the laundry room when you're a kid. It's not great. It's not ideal.
It's not certainly not ideal. Yeah, why didn't we do it outside? Because you know, we have a a fear of a fear of I don't know, everything's spoiling. So, you know, I guess oh, did my mom put it in the fridge and then I took it out to change it and I dumped it all over the laundry room? I don't know.
Oh man. It was just that's gotta stink. It stinks really bad. It seems really bad. But most of the time when I cook with uh saltfish, salt cod now, I I use the thin stuff and it can be soaked really quickly.
It's only like Christmas Eve time that I get the thick stuff that takes days and days to reconstitute. Yeah. You like that stuff on Christmas Eve? I do. Yeah.
Uh all right. Let's get to some of the Patreon. By the way, John, how do they call if they if they have a question uh for Katie, they want to call in live at 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Tell them how they can become a Patreon member and listen live.
Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Get to listen live, you get the call-in number, you get prioritized uh your questions answered. We got cool guests coming. We work with awesome people like Matt Sartwell, get you discounts on awesome book like Katie's book. And we've just got a bunch of fantastic guests coming on.
So sign up and you know, join what all the cool kids are doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do that. Uh all right. So let's I have because I have a I have a list of things from the book that that I could do, but I I have to get to the Patreon questions.
But before I do that, little swipe at the Venetians. You say the Venetians like an overcooked pasta. What's that all about? They don't like it, they love it. Like how overcooked?
Like beyond, like cooked perfectly and then 10 more minutes. So Venice is a s I love Venice. Venetians out there love ya, can't get enough. But uh it's a rice, but mostly a polenta city. And pasta is present in the culture in the form of Beagli, um, which appear on the cover, which you will eventually see.
And so the the way that people cook pasta in Italy really does change from place to place. And the closer you are to Naples, the more al chiodo you'll find it, which is almost crunchy at times. Um, whereas when you head up north, it's not not just the Venetians that overcook pasta, it's northern people in general. Oh, I like the swipe at the northern people. All the north.
Because usually, right, the swipes at the north aren't cultural swipes, where this is a hardcore cultural swipe of the north. I appreciate that. Yeah. They're rejecting Italian identity by overcooking pasta. Wow.
You're like they're trying to turn it back to polenta something. Exactly. They're like, Can I can I just make this into a big stew or something? Wow. Gross.
Yeah. Wow. So I like I like this. I like see this is the kind of thing that I that I like. You know, I mean, or like uh you get lots of choice uh like uh anecdotes in the book, like uh the lady not letting you open the window on the train.
I almost died that night. It's like you said it was like a hundred degrees in this train. It was the hottest day of the year in the year 2000, and I took a train from Rome to Palermo, which takes like 15 hours, but everyone on the train was afraid of a draft, and so I had to be like hotboxed in this sleeper car with these four women without it without any air. And they were fine, they were cool with it, but I wasn't accustomed to that yet. So I thought I was gonna, I thought I was dying.
And what was the phrase is like the the the draft is gonna make my neck break or something like this? It was the something like uh it was some like crazy phrase. I'm gonna get a cervicale, which means like the draft is gonna cause like trauma to my cervical vertebrae. I don't know how that's diagnosed on a train, but anyway, that's uh it's good business. I love I love the kiddy.
Yes, wait, I have a question. Have you ever said have you done the train that goes on the boat? Oh, have I? So listen, I was on this train. I was 20 years old, and I thought obviously the train from Rome to Palermo will cross the Strait of Messina on a bridge.
At five in the morning, I am hallucinating from being so hot in this car, and I hear clanking around me, and all the women get off, get out of the car. And I'm like, we're drip, like I'm drowning. Like clearly, we're in the sea. And they had gone up to the top of the boat to watch the Strait of Messina crossing. Meanwhile, I have no idea we're on a boat.
But the train got on a boat next to another train, and then we like went the two miles across the sea. And I was like, I'm I'm going to die here. I'm out of my depth. It was crazy. Have you done that?
Yeah. I was like, what Italian was like, yeah, we're gonna put the train on a boat. Like it's crazy, it's crazy. Crazy. Bananas.
I mean, I I kind of love it, but it scared me to death the first time. Yeah. Yeah. So you did it again though? I did it again.
Yeah. But I was aware of what was going on. I see. So that's better. Yeah.
Also, like these women in the car, when we get on the car, right? They're like, I don't know, Italian at the time. So they're like, we need to explain to this dummy that it's so dangerous on the train. Someone could gas us and then steal all of our luggage. That's why we're gonna barricade the door to the sleeper car.
And they did the pulling the eye under the eyelid down, be like, be careful, like we're gonna get robbed. And then they still all got out of the car to go watch the Strait of Messina crossing. And I think I'm there drowning, but also protecting all the luggage. Well, they left they left the American to drown. Right.
Like, peace. Bye. Love it. Love it. Uh all right.
Uh let me get to these questions. Otherwise, I'll forget. And then oh my god. Oh my god. One more though.
Let's do it. So you also have had some bad situations. You also don't enjoy TSA people very much, or whatever the Italian equivalent of TSA is. No, it's I'm fine with that with the Italian analog because they oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. Postacchio.
You know what? Sometimes those people treat pistachio paste like liquids when you try to check uh check into a plane, and it's not it's a paste. Yeah. And you said they were bronte's, right? So expensive.
It wasn't just bronte, it was uh Corrado Assenza's coffee sicilia, like basically green gold spread. And I've had more than more than a dozen tubs confiscated at the Catania airport. And it's so upsetting. I'm still sad about it. Yeah, yeah.
And you like you we can't argue with those. But you said that they're eating it, basically. They're like, Thank you. I'm sure, I'm sure. That's not going in any incinerator.
Yeah, I like my worst one with that was with uh with uh meddler paste in in England, and she's like, that's a liquid. I opened the jar, turned it upside down, and nothing came out. I'm like, not a liquid. And she goes, Well, you could melt it and it would be a liquid. I go, you could melt me and I'd be a liquid.
And she said, Yeah, but I have to let you on the plane. I was like, Oh my gosh. Oh my god. You can't get meddlers here. That's crazy.
Anyway. Well, the islands are full of them, so come on over in the summer. Really? Oh, yeah. And they bled them and make them into a jelly and all this crap.
Just eat them. That's and yeah, we don't even really make any paste out of them. It's just like you eat it. No, no, all right. Good to know.
Oh, uh, I gotta get to these, I gotta get to the questions that they have. Otherwise, you know, whatever. We'll be here forever. And I'm not allowed to. Joe's gonna turn off the mic, it's gonna get uh all right.
Uh Wizmard writes in, I'm heading to Puglia for about a week and a half in May. I'll be splitting my time between uh how do you pronounce Monopoly over there? Monopoly. Mono Okay, well, nice. And uh and Leite.
Uh I noticed in a piece you wrote in 2017 that you were quite critical of the food scene uh of Cilento, uh, and quite critic uh critical generally of the area. Do you still feel the same way? Has it upped its game in the intervening years? Thank you. So it this is probably referring to the piece that I wrote for Australian Gourmet Traveler about Puglia.
Uh I have Australian gourmet travelers. I'm just kidding, Australia. Kill on the game. So I think what I it wasn't a criticism in my opinion. It was acknowledging that m most Puglia don't go out to eat all the time, and so the restaurants are mainly geared towards tourists, and also in 2017, that's after crises and people are thinking about margins, cutting corners on ingredients.
So I think I said something that's true for all Italian regional travel, which is you've got to really plan where to go. And I've got a lot of resources, not just in that article, but also on the city guides page of my website that directs people to cooks doing really nice things. And I think a lot of visitors make the mistake of planning a lot of restaurant dining when it's actually a mix of restaurants and cafes and cafeterias and bakeries that will really give the full panorama and introduce you to how people in Puglia or wherever actually eat. So it makes some friends with some locals before you go? Never hurts.
Yeah. Uh Rob L wants to uh wants to know uh are there any noteworthy new examples of uh Pecorino uh Romano, the the the genuine article, which you say most of it's made in uh Sardini, you say. 97%. Yeah. Yeah.
Are there any new uh pecorino producers in Lazio? Well, that they can look for around Rome, or better yet in the USA to spare us from the monotony of industrial uh pecorino. But he said pecorini, but I have to say pecorinos because I'm American. I can't I can't do it. Uh and characterless uh Parmigiano uh that we have available here.
Okay, so um there are only a couple of producers, like literally one percent of pecorino romano is made in Lazio, two percent in Tuscany, 97% in Sardinia. Um Fulvi is a producer near Rome that is exported. Right. They have that here. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I literally got it at Whole Foods last night. Um shout out to that small business. Um and so, yeah, that's the one that that's the one that you're gonna be able to find that's gonna have a flavor intensity that uh mirrors what Romans eat. Romans also mostly eat Sardinian pecorino. Pecorino romano made in Sardegna.
And, you know, I think it's there's a little bit of tension there, right? Because you might have producers that are very large, but most of the people that are giving the milk to these companies are really small farmers and they deserve like dignity and support and and a place to sell their milk. Well, that's like the Parmigiano, it's all the consortio, right? Like all the small folks give their stuff to the consortio and then becomes becomes like mega cheese. But that stuff's pretty good though.
Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Uh speaking of Italian cheese, so no small producer that you can recommend that Rob can look around?
There's no small producer. I mean, there are a lot of people making pecorino, but not pecorino romano. Right. Uh talk to me about this Italian uh craft American singles product that you said that they were using in your book. I'm trying to find the name of it.
I wrote Galbani. Oh my god. Galbani's also exported. So Galbani is uh an industrial cheese. It's I mean, we could spend several minutes reading the ingredients list.
Like there's maybe dairy derivatives in it, but it's used in so many like cafeteria um meat dishes. So like meatballs with little bits of galbani in it, um, or in the case of the book, the brocciole alla messinese, it's little, it looks like little cheesesteaks that you wrap around pieces of really crappy quality cheese and then it all melts together. So when it comes to that, or uh just the sottiletta in general, which is like a craft single uh in Italian, those cheeses, they're super melty, they're super sticky, and they end up in a lot of home food and then like those little takeaway joint foods. Um if you put a beautiful like tuma or caccio cavallo in there, it wouldn't melt the way you need it to. And that's too fancy for that dish.
Could you do like an Italian queso with calabri and peppers and this stuff? Why not? Would it taste good? Sure. I mean, everybody likes queso.
See, yeah, queso is delicious. Uh Christian Sacco writes in, uh, I know double questions are sacrilegious to uh to Nastasia, but hopefully these are quick. Uh I don't even know how to ask you this. Rank the Roman pastas. Okay.
I'm gonna How many are you gonna choose like what like the best Roman pasta is rigatoni with the sauce, leftover sauce that oxdales have braced in. Okay. After which, for my tastes, rigatoni with the intestines of milk fed veal, followed by Griccia, carbonara, cache pepe, and a matriciana. Because everyone says that there are three Roman pastas or four Roman pastas, and that's only people who don't live in Rome that think that. Really, in Rome, the rigatoni dishes that I mentioned with the oxtail sauce and the payata are so much more emblematic than many of the others.
Talk to me about the veal intestines. How are they produced? How are they prepared? So the intestines are harvested with the mother's milk still inside, and butchers will lay out the squiggly intestines and then cut them into maybe six inch long segments and then use call fat to tie those into rings and then cook them like little cheesy sausages in tomato sauce until super tender. And then it's customary to break one open into the sauce so it makes kind of like a creamy ricotta-y, kind of funky uh undertone in the sauce, and then you toss it with rigatoni, and it's delicious.
I want that. I know. Yeah, I want that. You gotta go to Rome. You couldn't even get it in Caglioli or Palermo or Firenze, like it's such a Roman thing.
It's like all the spleen in Italy ends up in Palermo, all the intestines go to Roman. I was just about to, yeah, all the spleen in in uh now you have that all the golden California song going through my head. You're welcome. In a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills. Uh anyway, um, so you have the the sandwich in Palermo, and what's the name of the Palermo Palermi's sandwich bread they've uh Paste Paste.
Looks nice, looks good. It's fine, yeah. I've never been. Anyway, uh, so it's this like uh it's like lard poached uh spleen and lungs. And you're like, you might have a hard time getting spleen.
You can't get lungs, although I've heard that they're changing the law. I heard we're gonna be able to get lungs again in the US. That's great. Now, if we can get horse. Well, yeah, you have a big old horse steak, but you say the beast's pretty close.
I've never had the horse steak. What are your thoughts on the horse steak? Super lean. Yeah. Good if you cook it and real fast and then drench it in olive oil and oregano, and you're good to go.
So when you say cook it real fast, like so like Nastasia used to work for uh Cesare Casella, Tuscan. Amazing. Yeah. And uh, you know, we're all friends, right? And so he used to raise the Keanina cows, right?
Which are these big, big cows? Big boys. Cows. And then he'd get the steak, and Nastasi and I would go, and he's like, and we're like, what? What?
Oh, well, that's a thick steak. When people eat horse in Sicily, it's generally like a super thin pounded steak. I'm gonna bring up cheesesteaks for the for the maybe fifth time this year. Cheese steaks are delicious though. I love them, I treasure them.
Maybe that's why I like this dish so much. But it's a piece of of horse that's been pounded really, really thin, and then just like cooked uh very fast on both sides by ideally a sweaty, sweaty man on the streets in Catania. And then served on a plate so it like overflows the dimensions of the plate. It's amazing. I went uh I hate speaking of sweaty, sweaty men serving things.
I hate the San Gennaro Festival here in New York City. I absolutely hate it. What it's not super fun? Oh my god. Especially if like it's in your neighborhood, you know what I mean?
It's like, you know, or it's in used to be in my transit. I used to have to go through it. Detest it. I did detest it, right? But I went there once and there was a guy, sweaty, sweaty guy running the sausage and pepper thing.
Gotta get the cell seat. Yeah. And he pulled up his shirt and did a belly, like one of those where his belly is doing the waves. And I was like, I couldn't eat sausage and peppers for like like years. That's amazing.
It's horrifying, right? I disagree. This is where we we depart. I think that's really sexy. Oh my God.
So in uh in the uh in the Time Life Foods of the World series, the one with Italy has a spread on Tuscan bread. And in it, the guy is clearly wearing like uh, you know, like boxer shorts that like are allowing everything, you know, and he's wearing like a shirt, like a like a like like a sleeveless shirt, and he's baking the bread, and you can see the sweat dripping into the bread. Well, how else is it gonna have salt? That's exactly what I was saying. That's the only source of salt.
So, like, you know, maybe if you're making a Tuscan bread, really, it's just this dude's freaking sweat that's the salt, and you're getting the stuff up. That's disgusting. Disgusting. Speaking of salt and baking, uh, super interesting uh section towards the well, it's once in the middle in the pasta section and then at the end in the in the appendices. Uh is I did not know this hand pulled Italian noodles.
Uh what's the threads of God? Say it's so fidendeyo. Uh beautiful. It's it's very similar to the there's a Portuguese word also for something similar that's not that, but that's similar word. I forget anyway.
Um I did not know this culture thing existed, but but get this people. Uh so there's a QR code in the book you can scan, and then you can go see the the master making her making it. John Franca de Tori. But so get this. They hand-stretched the hand pulled and noodles, and it's very similar to the Chinese hand-pulled noodles.
Uh, and it requires salt. If you don't salt it, it won't work because you have to overwork the dough to break down the gluten in so that the gliadin's doing its thing, and it's very ex it's very um extensible without being very elastic. Anyway, I digress. But get this, people. She has this basket.
What's the basket called? This like wide, narrow. There's like it's like a basket really. I'm not sure of what the name is, but it's a wicker disc. Yeah.
And she stretches it and then lays them across each other at an angle and then lets it dry into like a big old disc. It's a it's three diagonal layers of super thin pasta made from Durham wheat, which is very uh difficult to make extensible until you really need the the heck out of it. Um see how I'm censoring myself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good family show.
Nastasia also hates it. It's a family show, it's not a trigger, but there you go. Um, and then that disc after it's dried is broken into a mutton broth uh with uh an acidulated sheep's milk cheese. And it's well, it used to just be served around the holidays related to San Francesco, and now because it's such an iconic thing that so many people in Sardinia are proud exists. Now you can find it all over the sub-region of the Barbagia where the town of uh its origin is located, and you can even find it like rest stops and cafes, and you could find it in other parts of the island too, whereas it used to just be one very specific hyper-regional dish.
Yeah. I was like, I want that. I know you do want that. It feels like velvet on your palate. It's it's such an incredible like mouthfeel.
Really awesome. Go to Sardinia, man. I would love to go. I would love to go. Hey, speaking of Sardinia, how the heck did France end up with Corsica?
Oh, that I don't know. Probably something from the Savoys or I don't know. Because it's not French. No. It feels more Sardinian, if anything.
All those, like all those delicious funky cheeses and the knife culture and the band tree. You like the knives, Sardinian knives has a whole page on Sardinian knives. And uh you gave actually uh like a website shout out. You can go, she's like, every town, she says has this like like a not every town, many towns have a culture like like handmade knife folks. Yeah, yeah.
So I mean there's certain knife shapes that are named for their town of origin, but you can go to like I this has not failed me yet. You go to a Sardinian town, you say, I really like knives. Do you know anyone who sells them? And they'll call their neighbor, their cousin, their grandpa. And that person has like a little foundry in their garage where they make knives with horns that they say they find instead of hunting the endangered animals for them.
Found it found at the end of a rifle. Yeah. Exactly. And so uh it's it's really fun, especially if you're into like gardening, you can get grafting knives. Uh I use my skinning knives all the time, not for skinning boars, unfortunately.
Um, but you know, like I take it on a hiking trip and and use it for all sorts of food preparation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, we gotta get to more of these questions that we uh oh, and the second one, uh after the Roman pasta. And I don't know if you like these questions or hate these questions, but if you had to pick the recipe from the new book you'd really like people to actually make, what would it be? Oh my god, that's really hard question.
I do like this question. It's it challenges me. How about that mint pistachio uh pesto? That's actually exactly what I was gonna say, right? Um, but I would say one of the pestos for sure.
There's seven in the book. Why don't you talk about your uh dislike for everyone only thinking pesto is the is the I'm sick and tired of Geneva getting all the pesto attention. So pesto is you know, loosely defined, something that's like mashed up that generally includes herbs and nuts and garlic, sometimes cheese, definitely oil. And there are pestos all over Italy, especially concentrated in Sicily, and there's even one in Sardegna. And I like the pistachio and mint pesto flavor so so much.
It's not traditional per se, but you know, cuisine's always evolving. So once upon a time, no one made pesto and trapponi, and now they do, and so it's a thing. Uh on on Mount Etna, where a lot of pistachios grow, um, you find places are serving pistachio pesto with whatever the seasonal herb is. And I think that one's just really delicious. But in terms of like a super classic recipe, the caponata is really nice.
Um, it's dairy and gluten-free, so it literally can be consumed by almost everyone unless you have a uh nightshade um intolerance. And it's the cu this classic sweet and sour eggplant dish, but it's got almonds in it, which I think give a nice toasty flavor and texture contrast, make it a little hardier. And I I just love that one. Yeah. Uh I like the last the last pesto recipe in the pesto section is get any two nuts and any tourbs.
Just get two different nuts and get two different herbs. Forget about it. Some cheese. Anyway, uh, so uh wait, you eggplants. So you have this one recipe in there, which so it's these small eggplants whole, you slice them on the bottom like they're uh like a like a like a like a tutu, like a dress, and then you salt them for a while, and then you fry them whole and let them go.
Is that greasy as hell or is it delicious? Or both? Both. Okay. Of course.
What kind of grease you're supposed to cook it in? I forget. What do they cook it in? Everyone uses generic vegetable oil or peanut oil. And they have these bubbling cauldrons of oil on the streets in Palermo where they prepare a lot of this stuff.
Some people also have little tiny brick and mortars. Um, but as the eggplant fries, the kind of like legs of the eggplant start to spread out like the wings of a bird. Um, and so that's called uh a quail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Qualia, right?
Qualia? See, yeah. And then uh you also have sardines in the manner of a songbird uh in the in the book, uh, which are like are those good the stuffed sardines? They're so good. And it's it's got a lot of the Sicilian sweet and sour stuff going on.
There's uh orange in the uh in the recipe and currents, right? Currants, yeah, pine nuts. It's it's delicious. Uh so uh what you have a so this book, I guess you say unlike the other books, you're arranging it by like uh function rather than by location. But one of the things that, and there is a fish section, but one of the things you point out several times is that not people aren't eating as much fish on the islands as you necessarily would think.
You want to talk about that, other than the Venetian islands? Yeah, I mean, fish is really expensive. Um, it's a commodity that the small islands sustain themselves by selling. Um, and above all, the cuisines historically, until the 20th century, when ice and refrigeration and wealth came to Italy, um, fish was uh not something that you could count on sustaining you. You would have to go out in dangerous waters and fish it, and there might be pirates out there, literally.
And so the island cultures, whether it's the larger one, Sicily and Sardinia, the smaller ones, Pons and Procida, they had to figure out what they could live off of in an isolated place, regardless of the weather, and really influenced by their terrain. So that that's why you got a lot of like rabbits on Iskia and not a ton of beef, right? Right. You said that the uh you're whoever is running the hotel is like, get inland, get some rabbits, go to someone who has a cave, get a rabbit. Why caves?
Why weighs a rabbit in a cave? Not sunny, I guess they don't die so. It's a sunken pit, really. Oh, so I'm running away. You're glorifying it by calling it a cave.
It's more fancy. It's more like put it puts the lotion on the skin kind of a situation. That's right. Yeah. You wouldn't want to eat it if you thought about that.
That's what we in immediately think about. The silence of the lamb says that is one of the great all-time movie situations. It's amazing, but you're not like, I want Iskia style rabbit after this. I do. Put the rubbish in the basket.
You know what I mean? Like, I'm like, I'm all about it. Yeah, yeah. I'm convinced. All right.
Yeah. Well, next time. Next time when you're, you know, you know, next time you talk about it. Yeah, yeah. Uh so uh a recipe that I thought that John would particularly uh like be interested and pissed off that he can't try the real one is because you have to substitute all different things, is dog fish, which is I guess a charcaloid, right?
Yeah. You can literally go to the Jersey Shore or probably the river and get some. I've never seen one for sale though. I don't think they're sold. You just accidentally catch them here.
So you hack, you you cut up the meat, you cook it in like a in like a broth, I don't remember what kind of broth, and then what vinegar and then and then you then you take its liver and you cook that with walnuts, make a paste out of it, put it back in with vinegar, and let it cure overnight. It's so good. It's so good. It's called burrida, and it's the dish of Caglieri, which is the port town on the southern coast of Sardinia. And when you go to the market there, the San Benedict the market is the largest fish market.
Maybe it's the largest market by area in all of Europe. The entire uh sunken floor, another cave reference, um, is filled with fishmongers, and they all have specialties. Some are just tuna, some are just mollusks, but everyone's got dogfish, and it looks like they prepare it for you, right? It's already sold prepped. So it looks like a bunch of like snake chunks in a bucket, which granted I'm not doing a great job of making this sound appetizing, but it's like it's bony and cartilaginous, and it really absorbs all these beautiful flavors, and the monk, not the monkfish liver, the the dogfish liver just brings like a real uh sweet earthiness to it.
It's one of my favorite things ever. Nice. Yeah. Uh I thought he's gonna be like, I can't have it. That's why I tell that's why I brought it up.
Sorry. That's why I brought it up. Uh all right. Uh Fuck Jack wants to know Will you have another book launch party at Fiorella's when I where I first encountered entrees from Food of the Italian South years ago. You bet.
And it sold out so fast that we added an afternoon signing. So the dinner, which is on Friday, the no, Saturday, the 11th, is sold out 10 minutes after it opened. Uh Rochester people are my people. They've been so supportive from day one. And from 10 to 2 uh on Saturday, I'm gonna do a just a signing.
People can come by, they'll be serving coffee, and uh, I'll personalize your book. I like that. Um, okay. You go to if you go to Rochester, you gotta check out our boy Donnie Clutter book. Oh, I know.
Yeah. I gotta spend more time in these cities. Yeah. I'll probably end up eating at the airport. It's like so sad.
The yeah, I I might end up spending more time in Rochester's great. Yeah, I like Rochester. I love it. Okay, so uh one of the things Nastasi likes to poke fun at me the most is uh a night that I double uh starched booker, my older son, and Nastasi was on the phone with him, and he he's like, Your dad's making too much starch, and that's all I could think of when I saw this sandwich. We got two more minutes, don't worry.
I got this sandwich in Palermo, where it's literally a hunk of bread, a square of fried chickpea, dough, and a square, a flat square, which is kind of weird. Yeah, it's a number of layers of it. And you know what? Not enough starch, some potato croquettes, and then I'm like, well, they gotta slather this mother in mayonnaise or something. Just lemon.
So it's an iodized salt from like the stickiest, sketchiest shaker in the world. But is that good? It's spectacular. Really? It's so good.
Yeah, it's really, really good. Yeah, and the buns, like the Vastetta buns or like the seeded uh germ wheat buns bring like a little bit of like sweetness to it. You've got the acid from the the uh seasoning, and I mean potatoes taste good, chickpeas when fry tastes good. What's what's bad about this? It's just carbon carbon carbon carbon.
That's right, but who so what? All right, all right. Okay. Let the Palermi tiny get their calories, man. Jeez.
All right. Um, to see what I there's so much in this book that when you go, oh, I know. Talk to me about this bread casserole. So you get the you get the stale bread, you put some beef meat bro, meat broth, and I forget which meat. Mutton or whatever you got.
And cheese, and you bake that sucker. Yeah. Talk to me about this. I always put uh stale bread recipes all over my cookbooks, and this is a favorite. Yeah, you just take big chunks of stale bread, layer them in a in a casserole with layers of cheese between them, pour over that broth, more cheese on top, and then you bake it, and it's like the the like bready cheesy part of a French onion soup.
Tastes fantastic. That sounds real good. Yeah. It's like, you know, with not too starchy for you. It's not me, remember.
I I'm the one that committed this thing. And we also, you know, cause uh whatever, like we always like to do the big night. It's a starch, it's a starch. Like um uh and on the way out, raw artichokes, raw artichoke salad with buttarga, huh? R what's come on, raw artichoke salad with botarga.
See, a little lemon juice, olive oil, black pepper. You've got a party. Now it must be real thin though. So thin. Oh my god, yeah.
You gotta risk like a limb on that mandolin. All right, man. Let's ever try it. Don't tell that to my cutting board when I accidentally leave raw artichokes on it and then it poisons everything else. Don't do that.
Do not do that, people. Well, Katie, thanks for coming on. Cooking issues.
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