Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios. Joined as usual with uh John. How you doing, John? Doing great, thanks.
I'm all like, you know, if you're on Patreon, you can watch us right now, but I'm all confused a cat because I'm turned around. I'm not in my normal seat. Joe's behind me, which is making me a little nervous. How you doing, Joe? Joe Hayes?
I'm doing great, man. Nice to see you. Yeah, good to see you. Tuesday. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Every Tuesday. Happy. Always. Um.
We do not have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez today, but we do have Jackie Molecules, right? Yes, we do. How you doing? I'm good. Are you in California?
Are you globetrotting? I'm in California, though. I will be in DC all of May. So. Is that before it turns into a hellhole?
Uh yes. You mean what? In terms of humidity? In terms of just like, listen, I like, I have I like DC, like, I like the things you can do in DC, but DC in the summer is like, oh my goodness. Like, why?
You know what I mean? I know. Yeah. It's alternatively swampy and humid. It's the so you go to DC, everyone hates I say this.
You go to DC, you go to the mall, right? And you know how like all those walkways are all like dust and rocks? How could it simultaneously be so humid and so dusty at the same time? How do you get both? So that your legs are filthy.
Like when you walk around, this is one. I mean, I don't wear shorts, period. But if I was gonna wear shorts, I would never wear shorts in DC, no matter how hot it got, because your legs are just freaking filthy if you go on that mall thing, if you're doing the tourist action, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway. No offense, DC. Uh great city, though. Love DC. Yeah.
I mean, how how many years you live there? How many years do you do the radio there? Uh four years. Yeah. Yeah.
So and uh tacking in the upper upper left-hand corner of cooking issues. Quinn, how you doing on Vancouver Island? Hey, I'm doing all right. Yeah? Yeah.
All right. Uh, good. Uh and today's special guest, which we will introduce before we shoot the breeze too much, are uh Sarah and Caitlin uh Leong from The Walks of Life, the the well-known blog slash the cookbook is out, slash all this stuff's coming to you since 2013. How you guys doing? Hey Dave.
Doing good. Yeah. Excited to be here. Oh, well, uh, we're happy to have you. Uh so I think Quinn was especially excited that you guys were coming on today.
Is that true, Quinn? Super especially excited. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Uh I mean, not that we're all excited, but anyway, so this is the portion of the show where, well, before we do this, let's give out the number, John, right?
Before we shoot the breeze, let's give out the number. People who are listening live on Patreon can call in their questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And if they want to become a Patreon member so they can listen live, what should they do, John? Patreon.com slash cooking issues.
There's a bunch of tiered level memberships. You get awesome perks at every level, uh, cooking issues, Google Map access where everyone puts in their favorite restaurants around the world, uh, access to the video stream, discounts to Kitchen Arts and Letters, um, just a whole bunch of great things. So check it out. Patreon.com slash cooking issues. And I'm considering, by the way, doing a voiding the warranty with Dave Arnold kind of a situation where we put some of it out on the regular internet, but some of it just for the Patreon.
I've got some very good uh uh warranty voiding coming up. Uh I already voided the warranty on my uh well on my uh what's it called? Uh my frozen drink machine. And uh I'm about I'm about to seriously void the warranty on my countertop fryer. Countertop fryers are disappointing.
I feel like is that surprising though? Uh well, also like I feel like like my home uh my home range is ridiculous. So like I can actually do good decent frying on my uh on my home range, but um like everything depends on what kind of frying you do. You know what I'm saying? So like uh I do a lot of like classic uh American frying where the products had been dusted, so it's like it ends with a dry coat instead of ending with a wet coat.
Yep. And any and it, you know, anytime you end with a dry coat, stuff sinks to the bottom, burns. And you end up with all that burnt like flour at the yeah, yeah, and then particles. And then because you're not using enough oil, you're cycling, those particles burn, oil goes bad. Even within one frying session, oil can go bad.
So, like, you know, even home fryers like that aren't donut style, that aren't the fry daddy kettle kind, um, or the wide, you know, they uh they have a little bit of a cold zone, so it can preserve you if you're doing that kind of and in fact, we're gonna talk later when I talk to you about some of the recipes in the book uh about uh specifically the wing recipe. I know that's I think it's your dad credited for that. But anyway, we'll talk we'll we'll we'll talk about it. But um, the power is just too low. You know what I mean?
So like and even a home stove, the power, most people's home stove is only like 20,000 BTU. You know what I mean? If, you know, 25, maybe if they're in a semi-pro, and it's just not enough. So to get a a reasonable amount of power into a uh a home fryer, a wall socket ain't doing it. Right.
It's doing it. Right. You know what I mean? So, you know, I figure what if you I'll give you the basic gist. What if you took two fryer elements and you squished you you bent the fryer elements so that both fryer elements could fit in the bottom of the fryer, and then you plugged it into two sockets at once, and now you're at now you're at 3.2 kilowatts of hour.
Now I can fry something. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know? I don't know.
So I'm thinking about it. Join the Patreon. Uh, and you know, you get such things as a discounted uh the walks of life. Yeah. Nice.
Yeah. I mean, the book. You know, from Kitchen Arts and Letters. So we gave a uh discount to our Patreon folks uh for you know buying the uh whatever the book of the person is coming. Very nice.
And I know they have like they have a cache of signed copies right now. So nice. Aren't they good people? Yeah, they're awesome. Awesome, yeah.
Uh all right, so here's the part on the show where we talk about uh interesting things that have happened to us that are relatively food related over the past week or so. So do you guys you guys have anything? Um, so we were recently in flushing um over the weekend with family, and we went to the new outpost of Woo's Wonton King, if you've ever been there in uh Manhattan, Chinatown. They have a new restaurant out in Flushing. Um, and we had we splurged on a king crab, which I haven't had in a really long time.
Um, because you know, it's pretty permanently expensive. Yeah, but we were kind of celebrating because uh we hadn't seen some of these family members in a while, and steamed king crab legs with just garlic. Um it's like a soy saucey garlic, though. Yeah, but I was I was like, wow, do they do the live? Oh, yeah, it is live.
Oh, yeah. Oh, they bring it out. $600 now. Yeah, it's insane. This one, so the the key move here is to do the set menu, which in this case, it was a table of 10 people.
It was six hundred, it was about six hundred dollars for the crab plus eight other dishes. I mean, that's not so bad. It's too bad. I mean, at least you feel like you're like, okay, the crab is like maybe like three quarters of that. And then show me the body size.
Show me the body size with your hands. Well, that's the whole thing. Well, that's puzzle. So the body size. Yeah.
Good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was seven pounds.
Seven pounds. Not bad. You know, uh, it's gonna make you mad. Uh I've only ever cooked live king crab twice, and they only cost at the time, I think like $150. Oh my god.
We used to get them from True World. Yeah, we used to get them from True World Food. And we maybe I cooked it three or we used to get it the at the I used to teach at the French Culinary Institute. And I used to do demonstrations, and we were, let's say, uh, for a demonstration, we were price insensitive. And so like I could get some messed up, messed up ingredients.
But yeah, so yeah, so how many dishes did they make with it? So they made two. They made the steamed uh the steamed crab with the legs. Right. What was the sauce you say was on it?
It was mostly like it's like garlic, but like soft of soy sauce. Sweet with a touch of soy sauce. Yeah. Um just taste the sweetness of the crab. The other way to get it normally is fried, but I think steamed is just a lot of things.
We had a little table side debate because I was like, I kind of wish it was fried, and Sarah's like, no, no, no, no, no. Do do do all of your fancy skulldoggery with the body. Right. Yeah, right. You know what I mean?
Like all the flavors, all the textures, like, you know, you're paying infinity for this for the meat. Yeah. And then they did, they did a fried rice with the body. Oh, yeah, that's delicious. Stupid good.
It was good. It was good. We have we actually have a similar recipe in the book. Um, we could call it our special golden fried rice. And it was actually inspired by this restaurant.
The one with the egg? Yes. So there's like egg yolk fried. So you get this, like those little like strips of, I don't know, like wispy egg yolk. Threads of egg yolk.
Yeah, threads. Um, I forget. Do you do that one in the oil? Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. With the sound effect. And then golden raisins, which is like a bit of a weird flex. Um, but really good. Really good.
Yeah. Huh. All right. Now I'm jealous. I got some got some FOMO.
It's been so many years since I've had the king crab. Do you think the price is gonna go down or you think it's gonna keep going up? Are we overfishing the hell out of that? I think we are. I think there was actually a king crab shortage recently.
Like they were like, oh, no king crab, which is why I was surprised to see it at this restaurant. Um, but yeah, I mean, we haven't had one in like many, many years either, and definitely reserved for special occasions because it is so pricey and relatively scarce. Right. And you know, the other thing about any kind of crustacean is you definitely want to buy it from a place that has like high throughput. Yeah.
Because, like, you know, if if you're going to like uh I'm you know, everyone knows what I'm talking about, like a pseudo-fancy place where they have like the one and they keep it alive for like, you know what I mean? It's like the longer those things stay in the tanks, yeah, like the they they basically they I'm told, I don't know that much about crabs, actually, to be honest, how they but like lobster tanks, those things are basically eating themselves once they get put in a tank. So, you know, you want them as soon as they come out of the water as possible. But you know, these places they're like it's a business for them, so they're probably coming in styro right off of an airplane into their tank, into your mouth. Yeah.
Oh my goodness. Everything in flushing is just super fresh, like the vegetables, the seafood, like we were walking after dinner, and my dad was like, Ugh, the seafood's just so much better here. Yeah. So well, so do when so he so you're okay. Well, well uh we haven't John, do you have any good uh any good food stories for the week?
Anything? No, nothing really, unfortunately. No. Well, I feel like I have another one out of flushing. So we had it was actually before dinner.
So we we had a little bit of the munchies because we had a book event at the Queen's Public Library, and then we were walking around Flushing Main Street. Go QPL. My wife's designing a QPL right now. Oh, very nice. Or you know, re redesign the redoing.
Yeah, QPL. Um, so we were walking back to the like parking lot, and there's a chuar man. So chwar is like a kebab. That's like the Chinese word for kebab. So it it the characters, the Chinese characters actually cool.
Like it looks like a little like two cubes of meat on a stick. Strong. Yeah. Um must be an old school character. Yes, very old school.
Uh or old school recipe, I mean. If it has like if the character looks like the recipe, it's gonna be a good one. Right, right, right. It's been around for a while. One of the more intuitive Chinese characters out there.
Um, and I was I said to my mom, I was like, Oh, let's definitely get some. And everybody was like, Yeah, everybody was on board, like super excited. And we ended up waiting in line for like kind of a really long time. And I was like standing there and I was like, Did the guys in front of us just order like 40 chwar or something? I was like, what's going on?
And then as I was standing there, I was looking and I was like, you know, this is a philosophical difference on like char grilling because they had, you know, they had like the special little narrow grill. It was all very quote unquote authentic or traditional or what you would expect. But it was taking so long to just like cook a few char. And I was like, I guess they're doing it like kind of like low and slow, or like it's like perfectly golden. Whereas like if I do char at home, which there's a recipe in the cookbook, actually, I do it over a natural, like lump charcoal grill, big green egg, little plug for big green egg.
And like the flames like high, you know, and I'm like, oh, this is great. The the bamboo skewers get a little char. That's fine. That's part of the allure. You're not gonna eat the bamboo anymore.
Yeah, exactly. And then you get little char bits on the edges. But these guys were like so studious about their just like perfect golden exterior. And I was like, I guess. Not gonna lie, I didn't hate it.
No, it was delicious, but we waited forever. Like Sarah bailed out and sat in the car. Strong. And then like 15 minutes later, we were like rolling up with the five char sticks that we like waited forever for. And my grandma was like, oh, it shouldn't have done this.
No, man. You know, so but you're you're like, but what I'm hearing from you is not not worth not worth the no, it's not bad, but make it the fast way. First of all, why not just go three times, have it three quarters of the way done, and then have a giant freaking pile of them. Right. And then go shop, shop, shap, shap shap shap shap, you know, high he high heating.
Yeah, and I kind of was like wondering to myself, I was like, are people complaining if there's a little char to it? Like, is this just like philosophical difference on grilling meat? Maybe. And this is this is in a cart. In a cart.
Yeah, yeah. In a cart in the corner of a street. Yeah, no, a cart is not a waiting stitch. Right. That's why I was like, what is going on?
Cause I I was like blaming it all the two guys in front of us. It's like two Cantonese guys are like sh you know, shooting the breeze while waiting for their tour. I was like, did you people order like 40 of these things? Like why are we waiting for so long? And they didn't even order that.
I saw them get their order. They had like five. Also, and I was like, okay, what's going on here? Yeah. So this is like the opposite of the two hot dogs for a dollar folks.
Where I we used to punk them. How like how many can you do? And we would get like a hundred. And they're like, fine. You know what I mean?
Just go. You know what I mean? Or like uh the the bun guy at uh Sambar way back in the day, Dave Chang's place, Sonido. Yeah, you could just tell him anything, fire and you just make up a number. He's like, fine.
And it just goes, you know what I mean? It's like that's the way to do it, not like even a home that's greeting. Yeah. So I was a little disappointed. And it kind of set me on like a a little odyssey in my own head.
I was like, hmm, is it better to do low and slow? Not sure. Well, you can do low and slow, but just do it before I show up. And then that's the other way, right? So like uh, you know, in John's uh, you know, like uh well, you're not from you're saying do you have dual citizenship?
Do you have any? Yeah, all right. So he's Belgian, right? And uh, so there's two kinds of places, right? The place that makes so many waffles that they just have all of the irons rocking all the time and you get fresh, and that's where you should go.
Right. But they just buy more equipment and more people, you know what I mean? And you wait in a long line for it, but it's a thing you know you have to wait for, or they sandbag them and reheat them, which is not as good, John. Agreed. Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, all right. Uh huh. What about you, Quinn? You got anything? Uh actually, yeah, we we actually fired up one of those little charcoal grills as well.
Uh like a yakatori style, but just lump charcoal, and then we did actually did just big ribey over that. Um, and then we did like a classic sort of steakhouse style dinner for Easter. Oh yeah. Yummy. Steak steak for e steak for Easter, huh?
Not a not a hamster. Yeah, that was sort of a there was like uh no, we we were sort of like a late, late my mom's birthday Easter dinner. Yeah. You know, I once took a whole bunch of Sears alls, turned them like face up, and did like infinity yakitori. It was nuts.
Oh my god, it was so hot. Um what about you, Jack? Anything? Anything, you got anything? I've been in like total goblin mode because my girlfriend's out of town, so it's sort of like instant ramen hours over here, which number one, I have to say I think Bulldog, the spicy chicken ramen has to be the best one on the market.
That's your favorite? That's what you go for? That's my that's the one. And I think I've perfected it to uh American cheese and egg and kimchi supplementing it. So that's the sweet spot.
So, like like you are like how much younger are you than me? There's like a divide. Like when I grew up, there weren't a lot of like white folk ramen doctoring. You know what I mean? Like, whereas now I feel like everybody does ramen doctoring.
I feel like, you know, yeah. I think that that was yeah. That wasn't something that, you know, we did. You know what I mean? Like, you know, we were doing it.
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there were only so many brands, and I have to say it did have a little bit of a reaction when you were like, oh, that's the best ramen. Because you have to distinguish the Korean brands top dog versus Chinese brands. And then if you go really deep, there's like Malaysian and all this other stuff.
But I can respect the American cheese slice. Yeah. Hey, you know what's a uh fair. It's just semi. It's like the black container.
Yeah. You know what's a pre-made sauce that is apparently very popular that I can't wrap my head around as like a northeastern white dude. Is Vermont curry. Man, I don't like that. Vermont curry.
Yeah, I have. I think it's all right. It's a little sweet. It's on the sweet side. Wait, yeah, what is the curry, the curry roux, the like Japanese box curry?
And wrap my head around it. That's one of those things I can't wrap. I don't know why. I also don't like this. I like curries.
I don't really like currywurst either, the German thing. You know what I mean? That's not my favorite thing. Yeah. I don't understand why a whole country is like, yes.
You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. What about you, John? Anything? You like it?
Oh, like it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Oh, like curry worst.
I don't have the Vermont curry stuff. But yeah, curry worst is, I don't know. It's odd, but it hits the spot. Okay. We do have a from scratch uh Japanese curry sauce on the blog that we use SB oriental curry powder.
Have you ever tried that? Uh wait, is that the was that yellow and red? Yeah, it's like a little red job, like canister. Yeah. Um, that one's really good.
Maybe give that a try and see if you're just like anti-curry or if you're anti Vermont. Vermont curry. It's the sweet, it's the host. It's the Japanese sweet. Yeah.
I was like, nah, thank you. No. Oh, you Joe, anything? Anything good? Nothing for me.
All right. All right. I got two real quick. Uh, one, I did a I uh quickly posted that uh what I'm just gonna call it, don't anyone get offended. I'm gonna call it Turkish coffee so that everyone knows what we're talking about, right?
Even though like if you're from a different country in that area, you don't like call it Turkish coffee because you might not get along with Turkish people, and you're like, we also make this coffee and have made this coffee forever. Nice anyway. Um so Special Turkish Coffee is a place, it's a company, and they make the the pots, the uh jezve, the little pots. And so I posted I was with a really crappy one I bought at, you know, the I've got it at Calustian's, which is an amazing store here, but like they you know, it's not like they're selling the highest quality, you know, Turkish coffee pots, right? And he sent me one, and it is the best.
I like you ever buy something, or I didn't Biden's case he sent to me, but you ever have someone hand you something and you're like, oh crap, it feels so good. You know what I mean? Like it was two and a half or like one and a half times or twenty twice over twice as heavy as the one that I had. All copper. The tinning was perfect, like everything was made by somebody that cared about it.
Yeah. And you also need to have the right size. The reason I rebought is because if you if it's too big, it you're not gonna get the foam for the one cup that you're making, and I'm the only one in the house that's gonna be drinking it. So he sent me this whole setup, and I was just like, oh my God. Because it's a lot of that coffee is very ritual based.
You know what I mean? The ritual of making it. And uh, yeah, so he sent that, and I was like, oh crap. You know, and it is more money. Like it's a $60 thing instead of a $15 thing.
All right. But it's definitely, if it's gonna be a part of your daily routine, like as an object, every time I pick it up, I'm like, oh you know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels good. Uh I mean, I don't know, like there's some things I care about, and they're usually hand tools and kitchen tools.
If I'm gonna use them a lot, and if they're something like that, I like them to be good. Yeah, you know what I mean. Speaking of, I noticed in uh that you guys use uh occasionally one of the traditional round chopping block things, you like that's they're pain in the butt though, right? Or do you just photograph on that on that stump sometimes? We usually photograph on that stump, it's just kind of like one of those.
So you don't keep it in water all the time and have it all that. Oh no. We're not oiling it or anything. I will say my grandma has one that is basically I I didn't realize you have to keep them wet, but it is perpetually wet because she just has it, you know, that's her only cutting board. It's like this big.
It could you not. And it's just like that's everything's done on that. Everything. And like I was cooking in her kitchen like a few months ago, and I was like, it's so small. Everything just started falling off.
But there is something about it, it's a very solid, it has a comforting quality. So back back at MoFad Museum of Food and Drink, when we had the exhibit chow up, um, the person who was running the kitchen, his name is John Hutt, and he was experimenting with remember all those experiments he did with cutting blocks? Yeah, it took like three or four of them to get them right, but yeah, and they were so heavy. They were huge. He was he was like I even brought him a stump from Connecticut.
I'm like, you want you want to you want a stump? You want me to rip you off some cookies? And you know what I mean? Like, you know, well, they're they're thicker than cookies, but anyway, yeah, anyway, pain in the butt. Um the other thing that happened to me, John, you might be interested, is we're working on this.
Uh we make this thing, uh spinzall, which is a centrifuge for bars. And uh we've been out of stock for four years, three years because the pandemic and the factory wouldn't remake them, and they finally say, Well, we're making you a product, we're making you the um the pre-prototype so they can I can approve it, and then they can make the tooling, right? For it's a modification because the tooling already exists, right? There's modifying some of the tools. So when you make a prototype, you don't always make it out of what's called engineering plastic, right?
You make it out of like a prototyping plastic that like looks good. And they made a couple of design decisions that uh let's say I don't necessarily agree with. And when they shipped it, those design decisions, they put weights in it, right? And the weights came off. You ever like uh when I was a kid, when you ordered something from uh the mail, right?
It it would say four to six weeks. So you would like you would get a catalog in the mail, you would order something, you would literally put a check into the envelope with your address. You would on a piece of paper, you would write down the the catalog number you wanted, the size and whatever, and you would, and then every day you'd be like, and you'd be like, Mom, has it been four to six weeks? And uh, that's kind of what you know, that's what life was like back then, but that's what it was like to wait for this freaking thing. It's been a long, long wait, long, long wait.
Shows up. The weights they had put in, they didn't bolt in in a way that made sense. So this is the opposite of the Turkish coffee pot. The weights, and they here's what's even funnier, right? It was in a giant box, cost $460 to ship it to me from Hong Kong, right?
So I I pay for shipping from Shenzhen to our agent in Hong Kong, and then I pay $460 for Express FedEx to get this box from Hong Kong to me, right? And you I opened it up and I'm like, ooh, because it's like a layer of a layer of styrofoam, a layer of foam, and then a layer of like the long bubble wrap that you use for like wine bottles, right? So then I'm like, I cut it open, I open it up, and it's shards. Shards. When I say shards, I mean it's like you took a vase and threw it across the room.
And what it happened was is they had these these one and a half pound weights that were like bolted inside the thing. And because they were bolted to not engineering plastic and they didn't have like a big washer, as soon as they hit, like you know, in the airplane or in the truck, they hit a bump, the weights snapped off, and then just started going boop rattling around, shattering everything. Oh I was like, oh, just like a pile of just a pile of like looked like broken glass. I was like, sat down, made myself some Turkish coffee. There you go.
Yeah. Uh but yeah, this was my semi-food-related nightmares. I don't know if I had any amazing food stories. Although, John, I did a reverse you where my parents asked me to bring an angel food cake to Easter. So I made an angel food cake, and then yesterday you used the yolks for a carbonara.
Oh, nice. Good move. Yeah. John has this absurdly large number of uh egg yolk carbonara recipe. Well, it doesn't seem absurdly large when you're just doing one portion at a time.
How many egg yolks? Two egg yolks for 80 grams of pasta, dried pasta. So a pound of pasta is 12 egg yolks. Um right. When you say it the single version of it, that's how I think of it.
Yeah. I cheated yesterday. I put some of that uh that Spanish uh fish sauce, the garum. Oh, how was it? Delicious.
That stuff is so good, but it costs too much. It just costs too much. It's it's like between 20 and 30 dollars, so like um, they're doing like a fish sauce in the style of like a Roman fish sauce. Yeah. So um the only other fish sauce that tastes similar to it to me is the Japanese one, the ishiri, because it's made from uh like fish guts.
Right, right. So it's got a different flavor, it's more like canned meat. It's less like regular fish sauce and more like a mixture of fish sauce and canned, like canned like del what's that company with ham? Um no, the the one with the Satan on it. Satan?
It's say it's Satan, it's like wrapped in paper. It's a can of meat wrapped in paper with Satan. Corn beef? No, it's uh deviled ham and potted meat, but it's all the same. It's Satan is on the can.
Anyway, uh so it's like a mixture of that. I mean, okay, colloquially, like kind of that dog food, that like wet dog food smell, which I love. I mean, I don't eat wet dog food. But um well, okay, yeah. Plug for the like corned beef hash, the canned one.
I do love that. Oh, me too. Hormel? Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, that's my favorite thing to order at a diner.
Same! Yes, yeah. And let's see how far we go. I always order uh two eggs, uh uh sunny setup, runny and rye toast. Not runny, but I used to be runny and for sure rye toast.
Yeah, yeah. What have you moved to? Still fried eggs, or do you go scrambled or poached instead? I'm a scrambled gal now. See, I need the I need I like uh the I just when you break the yolk and it goes into the hash.
But then I feel like it just disappears. And as I get older, I want the like, I want the experience of having the perfect scrambled egg. Yeah. And then also, you know, it's a what's your perfect scrambled egg? I do, I do it the the Cantonese way with a little cornstarch to like keep it firm.
And then just like usually a little spinach because I'm trying to be healthy. And then if I'm not doing like a if I'm doing like a Chinese breakfast thing or like a lunch or like really any time thing, I'll put in Dua Jiao, which is a salted chili. Uh-huh a Hunan salted chili. Delish. So wait, so like uh what level of uh wetness is the salted chili?
Uh pretty wet. It's wet. Pretty wet. So you you you like fry those in oil lightly to just get rid of some of the water, and then you go in with the egg, and then it all sort of just levels out. You don't have to like crisp anything, or you don't have to like really cook off all the liquid.
You actually want to keep that like briny flavor straight out of the jar. Very good. I don't know what it's called, but I buy this uh uh years ago I uh did an event in Taiwan and they had these like preserved chili that that everyone would buy. And then I buy a similar thing, but the one that I get from the mainland, but I don't know what it's called. It might be what we're talking about.
It comes like in what looks like a little pickle barrel, it's like half gallon, it's like bright red, the seeds and everything, it's all hacked up, it's got like a yellow top on it. It could be that's probably it's not that a lot of salt. Yeah, very salty, I think. A lot of MSG, a lot of salt. It's good.
Yeah, it's really the hell out of that. Yeah. It's like that between between that stuff and the lao gamma stuff, like uh although, okay. So in your book, right? Like uh in in the in your book, uh now wait.
Is this uh the the chili oil? Is that a is that a Caitlin thing or a serotonin? That's a Caitlin thing. All right. So it's a mean thing.
So, like, okay, so talk to me because like twenty percent of the recipes contain it as an ingredient. Okay. Now uh I I and I I'm on board. Except, what is the benefit of making it yourself as opposed to buying one of the commercial ones that's out there? Right.
So we just a few weeks ago or so put out a post on like which store bought chili oil is best. Because we get this question often. And the reality is is that there are chili oil equivalents in the market now because it's so popular, right? I think I think you'd be hard pressed to find that if this was like three to five years ago. Yeah.
But now because it's so popular, like all of the Chinese food importers are like hip to the groove and kind of have released like stamp, like you know, a bog standard chili oil that's kind of like similar to what we have in our recipe. But they just don't taste the same. Like there's something about it that has that more like sitting around for a while flavor. You can find ones that are pretty good. And in the post, we do we do dub a victor.
But honestly, the homemade version is a good thing. I like how you're I like how you're like, you gotta go read it to find out. Well, I the brands are kind of convoluted, so it's not like it's like a super instantly recognizable brand. But yeah, I mean, homemade, so much more fragrant. You do have to buy some fiddly things, but we kind of stack it such that like if you have like the bare minimum versus like the moderate versus like the soup souped up version.
Um, but yeah, it just has more fragrance, it has more flavor. You can you get that like sizzly effect, and it doesn't like fade into like the process of like making something like mass produced, you know what I mean? Like the flavor like is maintained. Um and yeah, I think also there's been a lot of like line blurring between like chili oil and chili crisp. Yeah, because I I use a lot of crisps because I like high solids.
Right. I love a high solid. That's actually pretty polarizing. So I'm glad to hear you say that. Cause I like high solid too, but a lot of people are like, no, I just want the oil.
So if you if you only just want if you only want the oil, first of all, you can customize that at home. But um, yeah, chili crisps are just saltier, they have different flavors going on. So it's people will say on the blog that they make like mofo tofu with like a chili crisp, and I'm like, okay, more power too. But like in my mind, that's too much salt. Cause like there's a spicy bean paste that goes into the mofo tofu that's already really salty, so you're kind of pushing your luck if you start adding like super salty, like Lao Ganma in there, also, you know.
Um so that's why we tend to prefer homemade version, because there's no salt. I mean, you can add salt if you want, delicious, but there's no salt, it's more fragrant, it's pretty easy. And it's it's also more designed for cooking, right? I feel like uh what we found in a lot of the chili oils that we tested was that the chili oil cook level, like of the flake was had gone too far. So like when you pull the flakes out of the oil, you're like, oh, that's like almost black.
Right, you know, and so if you're gonna cook it again, adding it to it to another dish, it's gonna be like way beyond cook. So again, another little burnt all the way to scorched. I don't think people appreciate like when chili peppers, like sometimes they're good, kind of burnt in some recipes, but I don't like the bitterness of a burnt exactly chili philosophical difference because of a burnt dry chili. Right, right, right, right. A wet chili, you blister the outside.
Yeah, totally. Yeah. But like if you I did like an experiment, like as my chili oil recipe has been so like through through the gauntlet over the years of like people making it. It's like, oh, it's whatever. It's been refined.
But yeah, like I think a lot of people get like hyped in the the sizzle moment when you pour the oil over the chili flakes and it's like the bubbles rise up and everybody's like, oh my god, so good. And at the end, sometimes it is the case that they are blackened. And that can lead to bitterness. Some people like that. Go gaga for that.
I respect it. But I like more of like a bright red color. And that's what you get most of the time. That's what you get at home. It's what you can get some of the time from the store shelf, but is like hit or miss.
Like a lot of like, you know, artisanal chili oils that are like out now, like they have that like black quality. I don't know. Yeah. Some of the ones I've tried, some of them I'm not gonna call anybody out, but like there's rancidity going on because the heat level's been too high. Like the cardboard aromas, like paint aromas, like weird.
I'm like, no, no. Right. Like we we tried all of them on like the a blank canvas of like a very basic store-bought dumpling. Like very little, yeah, extra flavors going on. And well, yeah, we just weren't impressed.
Like for exactly the reasons you said it was just like tasted kind of old. Yeah, you know. I had one that I tried that my wife was literally like, this tastes like poison. And um, but interestingly, like I let it open and uh the the poisonousness kind of flashed off. Oh.
Interesting. Yeah, I don't know what it was, but weird. She was like, That's not so poisonous anymore. I'm like, that's still not a ringing endorsement, you know. You know?
Does anything aerate? It's like in the 70s, um, people used to, when they said chili oil at like, you know, the Chinese restaurants, it was literally just oil. Does anyone even use that anymore? Is that even a thing anymore? I don't know that that's really a thing anymore.
I feel like on on the table it's usually a little plastic canister with flake at the bottom and you can kind of pick as you wish like what how much solid you want. And then at the dim sum places too actually like we used to only be able to get chili garlic sauce like sambal. And now they're serving chili oil or it's not that hard. Like you don't necessarily have to ask for the chili oil to like put it out. And they're solid in there.
So I feel like they're they're making it in house um I think it's more common and it's less so coming out of a like a an industrial cheating you still see those little bottles where it's just red oil in the store. And I'm like when do we see that? I see it at 99 ranch still. Oh okay. And I I glaze right over it.
Yeah. But they're there. And I'm like how long have those been there? Does your mind just erase it as you pass your mind there's a blank zone there. Yeah I'm just like Yeah.
I bet you some people cheat though. Like in other words like uh you you know Heinz ketchup. Yes. They uh they have an advertisement where they admit that people um fill Heinz bottles with fake ketchup. And I've it was kind of a weird advertisement but I was like passing by and they were like even when it's not Heinz it has to be Heinz and they have a picture of a person squeezing bull crap ketchup into the colour.
It's outstanding advertising. It really is they're they're marrying other ketchups into like Heinz ketchup bottle because everyone wants Heinz. Yeah. So I bet you something's happening with I bet you the because restaurants, a lot of them don't have probably time to make their own. Especially because if other people do a good job.
But you're saying, I'm gonna make your recipe though. Cause like, I mean, I spend a lot of money on crisp. I am a crisp guy, though. I'm a crisp guy. And like, you know, I'll take it with or without the uh peanuts in it, but I am a crisp guy.
Um we're all crisp people, I think we've seen over the past several years, but each one has its occasion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right. Uh all right.
So uh I'll be remiss. Uh we should talk about what the blog is and kind of the um I mean it's kind of a unique proposition, right? Like, so the walks of life, you started 2013. Yep. Right.
In 2013. Right. And then, you know, I'm sure everyone asks you like the origin story a million times, so I'm not gonna force you through that people, you know. But it is incredibly rare, as you know, for a whole family to do a project like this. You know, there's been like, you know, one parent, one kid, or you know, and but to have kind of a collaborative four-person, four people, two generation, you know, two siblings, two parents, like culinary odyssey that, you know, ten-year culinary odyssey is kind of unheard of.
And I'm sure that's a huge part of, you know, a huge part of you know, the appeal for you guys, right? And I know it's a huge part of appeal for your readers. Um, but the other part about this I think really interesting, you know, for those who don't know, go to the walks of life and check it out. But it's uh is that it's got um because you're all different people, like one person had, you know, worked in restaurants for a long time, one person, you know, grew one person's, you know, more from Cantonese side, one person's more from Shanghai side. You know, there's the American-born Chinese experience in it.
And like, so basically anything and nothing can or sh could be quote unquote authentic. I hate the term authenticity as it's applied to American Chinese food. We could talk about this later, or any food in general, not just Chinese food, all foods authenticity. When people talk about it, because what the hell does that mean? People eat food if it's theirs, it's authentic.
Whatever. We'll get into it because people have asked questions. Um, so just I don't know, it's not a question, but why don't you like t talk about this weird amalgam and kind of how you you have the ability to, you know, uh you say that you don't like that you can mess up any recipe. And then on the other hand, is talking to um to um Caitlin, but then you have on the other hand, you know, the the dad who was a restaurant chef, and you know, the mom who's been so it's kind of it's amazing amalgam. You want to say anything to that or just leave it to our lies?
Yeah, I think um, well, the blog started as a family project out of necessity because it kind of it was the case that um we started it because Caitlin and I like wanted to learn the food that my parents uh prepared for us growing up, and we realized that even though we love to cook, we had no idea how to put dishes on the table that uh were Chinese. Um, because they weren't written down, right? And we didn't like to learn by watching, like it it didn't feel as intuitive. And also like our parents would be like, oh, go do your homework and you know, get out of the kitchen. Um, so we started the blog together for that reason, because essentially, like we knew nothing, and my parents knew everything.
That's how it kind of started. Um, over the years, uh, you know, Caitlin and I have become a lot more knowledgeable and proficient in this. And so that has been kind of the coolest aspect of it is to see like it going from this like knowledge passing project to more of just like all of us on equal footing, developing our own recipes. And then like really seeing the sort of like differences, as you mentioned, kind of coming out from that, right? So like my dad did uh grow up cooking in restaurants uh with his father, his stepfather, and uh his grandfather as well was a chef.
Um, and my mom grew up in China, um, and her food experience was extremely different, um, not just culturally, but also, you know, from a context from like a political context. Like she was growing up during the cultural revolution. Um, and then yeah, and then my sister and I uh basically just translating uh my parents' cooking and then also sort of just exploring the dishes that we grew up eating that weren't that weren't even necessarily part of like a Shanghainese or Cantonese uh tradition. So maybe part like it was partially like going out to restaurants, like trying Sichuan food for the first time, like traveling in China. Um, so yeah, we tried to kind of put all of those things in the blog and the book.
Um, and hopefully at the same time expand people's view of what Chinese food is. Because I think that here in the US, it's very sort of at least um up until recently, when we've seen a lot more sort of regional Chinese cooking coming into the US, um, it's been very Cantonese focused because uh most of Chinese immigrants to the US throughout history have been from southern China, um, have brought that cuisine here, and it's sort of also evolved into its own branch of Chinese American cuisine. Um but yeah, we we just hope to sort of like bring uh these regional dishes also to people's attention and really expand people's view of of Chinese food and how varied it is. Yeah, so I know Quinn was interested in this idea of developing recipes with your family. Quinn, what was it specifically you wanted to uh to ask?
Oh, I was just saying that we're not working my family. I think that's most people's natural reaction when they hear about what we do. I mean, well, one of the things that like I was uh you know reading, reading about it, reading the the bio in the book and also like, you know, like food network profiles, et cetera, et cetera. Is that I'm sure everyone, and you you know, apparently you self-claim certain roles within the thing, but everyone I'm sure wants to pigeonhole everyone in the project into their own silo. And we were talking before the program came on.
It's gotta be irritating, right? Being and it's gotta, I mean, like I find that I find it kind of irritating. Yeah, I think everybody's like sort of natural thing is just to like kind of everybody wants to like give you a role. It's like, oh, what's your role in the blog? And we do, I mean, we do like have we have roles.
We do sort of like have like things that we specialize in, right? But um, I think that the sort of the lines between each of us are a lot more blurry than that. Um, you know, I think that we we uh like throughout the the process of writing the book, we switched recipes a lot because it was like, oh, we thought, like, oh, you know, maybe our dad is like the right person for this recipe. As it turns out, I was the right person for that recipe. Um, so we would just like when we were really struggling, we'd just be like, Oh, do you want to switch?
Like, we'll just switch that like you do this, I'll do that. And um it was nice to have the perspectives switching, like, you know, you would think that we would all be pigeonholed. And even when we sort of were like, okay, let's go our default strengths in the process of writing, it was actually like, oh, you know what? Kind of need to like break the script a little bit and see, you know, maybe somebody else can take a crack at it. Right.
And so, you know, in the in the blog, do you do I mean a lot, but you do a lot of revision, like you'll revisit things, you'll say, So, how painful was it to put something into a book that was gonna get written down and then you couldn't change it again? It was pretty freaking painful, I have to say. Pretty scary. It was scary. Yeah, to be like, okay, we're gonna put this down on paper.
We cannot change it. I mean, in theory, you have subsequent like editions of the book, but like it was a lot. Yeah, good luck with that. Yeah, yeah, right. So um, it was just it was scary.
We were very like these tests, these recipes have been tested like to the nth degree. Um, and I was there were a lot of like late nights of just reading the book over and over and over again. I probably I personally probably read it like 10 times from cover to cover, um, just to check for mistakes. And then also there was this aspect of like, there are four people we each like on the blog, there are things that we don't necessarily think about in terms of like our differences in how we write a recipe or how we write out instructions. But in a cookbook, like where you have a lot less space, um, you want more standardization.
There was a lot more like, oh, my dad is like way more wordier than my mom, like than my mom when he writes a recipe, and like, you know, just having to like standardize things, like how you like the order of operations in a recipe, or like whether or not you choose to go into X detail about whatever that was challenging. Right. Cause it is, it's like it's nice to have different people's introductory voices, which is clear in the book, but it would be jarring to have the flow of the recipe itself be different from recipe to recipe because then you'd have to mentally change how you that's a problem I hadn't thought about. Yeah, and I feel like it's not like it's something that does kind of show up that we're a little bit more lenient on on the blog, and it's less jarring on the blog. I don't know why.
Maybe it's just because there's so much more on the blog. We have over a thousand recipes on the blog. Um, but yeah, like just standardizing everything. Um, that was a challenge. And then also just like annoying like little stuff, like like measurements of like we have this recipe.
We have this recipe that like calls for like 20 wall, 20 large walnut halves. And like our editors, like, how many cups? Like, how many? So, like, I'm like in like the well, I think it was cups first, and then you had to count the halves. The fifth pack of editing, and I'm I like run out to the store to buy a bag of walnuts, and I'm like counting the walnuts, and it was just like stuff like that.
Hate, hate, yeah, uh, gramps, everything should everything in life should be gramps. Agreed, true. All things everywhere should be gramps. Yeah. Um so in recipes that so like some of the recipes and stories are attributed, right?
To the one of the four of you, and some aren't. So, what's the story with those? Are those all like group efforts? Or like someone didn't want to claim it, or like sometimes it's like you're like, we got this. Uh, you know, we were talking to the folks at Chan Famous Foods, and like we got so like obviously that one, yeah, you know, uh, but like what does it mean when it's not attributed?
When it's not attributed, well, it kind of goes back to like Sarah's saying about like standardizing, and there were times where we had to like decide when to standardize and how much to standardize, because obviously we didn't want to strip all of the uniqueness away. But you know, our editor did point out she was like, Oh, you know, if you're like constantly voice switching, it can get a little bit tiring. So there were recipes that were just more of like group effort or like recipes that we all felt like we had like um the same level of affinity for almost, or not one of us had a particularly affinity for, like where it was like, oh, we have like a unique story, it was kind of like, oh, this is kind of something that we all can like uh share and like reflect on as like our collective like we voice, quote unquote. So that's kind of how we tried to navigate that. I will say that that every recipe did have like a lead developer on it.
So even though even though they're behind the scenes, yeah. So even though they're generalized or not attributed to anybody, every recipe was like owned by one of the four of us. It would be chaos, right? Yeah, I mean it would, yeah. I mean, so like the way that the development process worked was like you go off, you do your thing, you develop the recipe.
When you feel it's ready, you bring it to the group. So, and that's the way we work on the blog as well. Otherwise, it would just be like constant peanut gallery happening. Um, so how long is the recipe development for a blog? Like how many iterations does something have to go through for a blog where you know you can change it versus a cookbook, or is it the same to you?
I think generally it's the same. It depends on the recipe. Yeah. There have been recipes that there are recipes that I that we do that are just like first try slam dunk because it's something that was built off of something else that's existing or like a technique that we already know or we're already familiar with. And then there are recipes that take years.
Um my dad uh we mentioned this in the book and like the timeline page, but there was a sesame ball recipe. So there's like little dim sum fried sesame balls filled with like lotus paste or red bean paste. That took three years. Um, because it would just be like it was like they were exploding in the oil, like steam was building up and they were just exploding and like yeah. I used to for like when I'm frying mochi stuff, it's still just explodes.
So what's the solution? So low and a you fry it a lot longer than you think you have to over low heat. Yeah, it's like a donut. It's kind of like, yeah, you're you're and you're just constantly kind of moving it. Um and then also the other the other big discovery by my dad was because the sesame seeds would just kind of like fall off in the fryer in the oil.
So his solution was like actually kind of like crazy that this works, but you moisten the sesame seeds before you roll the ball in the seeds. I mean, just like with a mystery with just some water, just like a tiny bit of water, you just like kind of mix them up, and it's not you you don't wet the outside of the ball. You don't, it's the sesame seeds that need to be just slightly damp to stick on and stay on. And what's surprising about that, I guess, is like water hitting hot oil and it being okay. Um, but I think it's just like just that small enough amount.
Um so that recipe took a while. The tarot puff recipe. I did not realize that that was not a separate coating. Yeah. Isn't it mind blowing?
It is mind blowing. The first time we realized we were like, what? You got a lot of recipes where the oil temperature control is very important. Yes. So you mentioned in that recipe that oil temperature control is vital to get the that that you know.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is nuts. John, you seen that recipe? No. You know what we're talking about?
The uh the fried tarot password, they're like it's like a dim summer nuts. Yeah. It's all in the lard, baby. Isn't it isn't it always? Isn't it always?
Uh yeah, delicious, delicious lard. Well, I think you point out a forget whether it was blog or book, but uh, you know, large the new health fat, man. I think I mean it's not that far off. I mean, it's a natural fat. You can digest it, it's not uh chemical.
You don't seem to be turning on seed oils as well. I don't yeah, I don't know. Wait, turning against it? Yeah. Which which seed oils?
Like literally all of them. Like the like defined oil. The like super extreme health crunchy. People are against all refined things. I mean, yeah.
Yeah, you know, it's like whatever. It's uh it's a it's a pendulum. Yeah, it's a pendulum. Uh all right. We have a question in I would like to get to before I just go through all the questions that I have for you.
Uh oh, by the way, next week, you want to say who we have coming on next week, Don? I'm embarrassed to say I don't know who's on next week. Oh my homodashtaki from the Oh right. Oh, the yogurt, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. It's gonna be so good. Yeah. So, you know, uh, for those of you that aren't in, I don't think they ship outside of the New York metro area, do they? I think it's just their local white mustache is like some super fancy yogurt and uh uh Iranian Persian yogurt.
Oh, yeah. So she'll be on uh in the studio next week. Uh her book, Yogurt and away. I'm pretty sure we're gonna have it at Kitchen Arts and Letters on discount. Um, but I only saw that because I was flipping through to the question we have.
Uh so Giuseppe Musk says, and this is an interesting question, uh is cultural appropriation a real phenomenon in food. I think that's interesting because you know, food is constantly evolving, right? Different different people take a recipe and run with it. Um I think that when you claim a recipe, when you claim a recipe is of a certain culture and is authentic, but you didn't necessarily, if you didn't necessarily like do your research or tribute or you didn't attribute that recipe to the source of where you got it. Then I think things get a little bit dicey.
Um but I will say that I think it's all about the attribution game. Yeah. Because there are certain, especially now in like the world of food media, like the lid is being blown off all sorts of things where it's like, oh, this technique, and then it sort of becomes like um adopted as like the best way to do something. So like let's take the example of the cornstarch slurry and the scrambled eggs, right? That's a great technique from Chinese cooking.
And it's like you could just make regular breakfast scrambled eggs with that. And it's like that's not so loaded in terms of like cultural appropriation as an example, but I think it's nice to know that it comes from like a Chinese cooking technique, and to like say that to acknowledge rather than for like you know, X big, you know, big box smart food media company being like, oh, well, we came up with this technique and it's so brilliant. Discovered it. Exactly. Or so like, like uh, so like the question, right, is and I think a lot of us are struggling with this.
I know in the in the book that I'm theoretically writing, I'm also struggling with this because you know, I've spent a long time like trying to learn new techniques, so they come from everywhere, you know what I mean? Um but in the early 2000s, you know, a lot of uh bartenders would, you know, look at certain Japanese techniques, and they would then be like, then they would teach the Japanese techniques to, you know, um non-Japanese uh people, and then kind of like they would make a business out of it. In other words, like this became their unique selling point that they had this kind of thing. Isn't that where it becomes more so when someone's like, I am now the conduit through which you can learn this Japanese technique, isn't it? I mean, that seems to me to be clearly problematic because you're literally saying I can teach somebody else about this technique.
It's not just you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I think it depends. It depends a little bit on I guess it depends on like your level of training in that technique and how like how much it was actually informed by like the culture that it comes from. Um, and also like I don't know. I think the perspective of like having uh respect for that culture and wanting to wanting to share it with people isn't a bad thing.
But I think where rubber beats the road for a lot of people is like who's profiting off of it, and then that becomes like the conflict. But I think and whether that's the only person who gets to talk about it. Right. Right. And I think we struggle with that sometimes because, like, as Chinese bloggers, it's almost like, okay, you want to be the respected source for Chinese cooking, and you want to be like respected as a as a representative, as an advocate, whatever word you want to use.
However, like on the flip side, like a double-edged sword, you don't want to necessarily be pigeonholed all the time of like, oh, the Chinese person talks about Chinese food and that's it. Right. So I think that's what's that's what's annoying. That's what's super annoying about it is that as a Chinese, as a Chinese cook and a Chinese food blog, like I'm largely only allowed to talk about Chinese food, right? Whereas somebody who's not necessarily from that culture, like um can talk about can talk like have their take on a Chinese recipe, on a Thai recipe, on a like a German recipe or whatever.
And I feel like that part of it is challenging for me. If we're not sharing on Instagram like noodles and rice, whatever, people just like tune out almost. And I'm like, we've we've adopted like this policy where it's like, hey, hey, if we're talking about food that's not Chinese, y'all better sit up and listen because that means it's really good, and that's it's just for us, it's just for us for our records, our personal recipe archive records. Because otherwise, people are just like, oh, why should I care if you're talking about banana bread? And I'm like, well, I have eaten banana bread my whole freaking life.
Thank you very much. And and did your core audience get that or not? I think our core audience gets it. I think they do. But yeah, like, you know, it's kind of this broader thing when you look at the world of food creators, like who gets to be like the person that like spans all types of food and who does it, you know, or who gets like kind of stereotyped.
What? Jesus. Uh all right, listen. Uh couple things. Uh salt baked chicken, the Haka recipe, was the only unmitigated disaster of the past five years in my because I ruined the walk.
Uh-oh. I try to do a mishmash. I read you guys' post on it. I but I didn't do it in an oven. I used a boatload of salt.
I tried to get it in like I overheated the bottom of my walk. I didn't so like, and then I realized in the book you published a simpler recipe. Is that the recipe I should use? The salt chicken. Absolutely.
Yeah, so easy. Let's use that one. All right. And also, uh, the uh the the roast pork belly, that what they call in the restaurants down here roast pig. Yes.
That is also an interesting recipe where you give credit credit to uh another blog, and like that is my favorite thing of all to like if I'm walking down the street, the thing that catches me in a window is roast pig. I'm like roast pig, roast pig. And much like who wait, who was it who is it that did that? That was uh you did that, right? Like is that it's like much more so than the than the regular roast pork, the the sauce papery, yeah.
It's my favorite too. It's so good. It's really good. So is that recipe like super on point? I think it is.
You you should try it and see if it's so I noticed you didn't do any of the baking soda or any of the other stuff. You would add vinegar to keep that's keeps it blonde, right? That keeps it from getting too dark when you're doing the roast, a little bit of vinegar. Yep, and I think the the the key for me in the book version of the recipe is this the very short blanching of the skin because it's the skin is so leathery, it can be really hard to poke the holes into it to get it to the puff up in the crispy, but if you blanch it really briefly, it'll it'll helps out a lot. All right, so listen, I thought I was gonna be able to talk more about more stuff with you, but like, you know, if you want to read about the white-cut chicken or the by the way, the chicken wings, how are they?
Because they're a wet on wet, and I was gonna talk to you for 20 minutes about like you know, Willie May's Scotch house and how like wet on wet. Is that a working recipe? You like that recipe a lot? Absolutely work. Very good.
Um, yes. Generations old. And and sorry, sorry. The uh the the duck that is basically like halfway to confit and you steam it, which reminds me of what Nathan Mirvold used to say. He's like, you don't need to do confie, you can just steam your confie.
He doesn't talk like that. And uh but like that, but you only steam it like 30 minutes, so is it still chewy? Well, what would happen if you did it for like an hour and a half? I mean Have you tied it? I mean, in Chinese cooking, this like fall off the bone meat is not really.
You want a little bit of like toothsomeness to your meat, so you could and try it. I personally have not tried it. But I I like my meat to be a little bit like have a bite to it. Okay. It's really good.
That's the one your mom got from her buddy. Yes. Yes. From from her, like her actually, my grandmother's co-workers at the the w the dress beating factory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Midtown, yeah. Uh I used to live in the garment district. All right, listen, uh, go by the walks of life, check out the blog uh for what's interesting is sometimes the book has a simplified version that's not on the blog, and sometimes they're different. You point to the blog back and forth. So it's a good it's a good thing to have in your home to point back to the living document that is the blog.
Sarah and Caitlin from The Walks of Life. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much, Dave. Cooking issues.
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