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. Not joined with uh John as usual. He is on vacation. But we do have Joe Hazen in the booth.
How you doing? I'm doing great, man. Good to see you. Yeah, Jackie Molecules is sick. So we're down uh a Jackie Molecules.
We do have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez in Connecticut land. What's up? Hi. Okay. That's uh sounds uh good.
Yeah, yeah. And uh over there in the upper upper west west, Quinn uh from Vancouver Island. How you doing? Hey, I'm good. How are you?
Good. Now see, that sounded legit. Not like Connecticut. And uh today's special guest, uh longtime friend and friend of the show, uh John DeBerry, who just wrote a new book called Wait for It. Well, didn't just write it, just publish a new book called Saved by the Bellini.
Saved by the Bellini. And uh yeah, if you don't get the reference, then probably you won't get anything it's gonna get saved. That's the filter. You know, if you don't know what their title means, then just buy it anyway. Yeah, buy it anyway, and then uh and then just stop listening.
Uh and uh I'm sure I don't Quinn, do we have that one uh at Kitchen Arts and Letters on uh on discount or no? Uh no, unfortunately not. Did they did are are we going to for our Patreon folks? Uh no. Okay.
Okay. Well, we can talk to Matt about it next week because Matt Sartwell from Kitchen Arts and Letters is going to be on here next week, and I will ask him uh kind of what's going on. So, uh since last time you were on, John, which was I think it at the old Voldemort network was the last time you were on, right? I mean, I remember calling in from my closet. So it was like 2020.
It was probably around the same time my last book came out, which was June. Yeah, the first time live was for Proto. Could have been that, yeah. Yeah. That's true.
Okay. But you know, uh, so this is nowadays what we do is is we shoot the breeze for a little while about anything interesting that happened to us last week. And Nastasia's favorite thing to say is nothing. Nothing. Right?
Do you have anything this week, Stas? Or is it or is it or is it your favorite again? No, I haven't I have not done anything interesting in the last week. Come on. Okay.
It was, I'm not gonna say what she did because I don't know, she wouldn't tell me, but it was her birthday. So happy birthday to Nastasia. Oh, happy birthday. Yeah. Yeah.
Happy birthday. No. Thank you. No. Um, but I'm not gonna ask you because then you'll get bent at me if I ask you on air.
So I won't. Okay. Uh, but what I did send her uh from uh my position for her birthday was we got the new spinzall prototype working. So that's good. You know, so I got this got the snap, got the poetry snaps going from John.
Um so it's working, and everyone can expect to see a lot more about that next week, and it's actually working pretty well. I just have to make a couple of changes. So that's good news, right, guys. Yes, it's awesome. Yeah.
It's why don't you talk more about it? Well, for those of you that don't know, Booker and Dax, uh the company, which is, you know, uh Quinn and Nastasia and myself at this point was John before he decided to go chefing it up. Uh, you know, we built a centerfuge called the Spinzall that is for bars and restaurants, and uh nobody wanted it because no one knew what to do with it. And then we actually built a market for it so that people we built a market for it, so people really wanted it. And then as soon as we were like, oh, this is gonna be a real business again, the factory changed hands and they stopped the ability to make it, and then we spent the last like three years, Stas, three years trying to get it built again.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so finally the factory's like, okay, we'll build it. And so we're changing like a yeah, yeah.
So we're changing a lot of the stuff. Like, for instance, like a bunch of people in Europe and Asia bought not a bunch, some people in Europe and Asia bought them, and then it's fine when they used it, but when they handed it off to their crew, they would plug it directly into 220 and explode it. Oh. And they're real expensive to ship back and forth, right? So that we fixed that problem.
So we fixed a lot of those kind of problems, you know. Like, you know, just better all around. It there's an i an old interlock on it that was a solenoid for safety reasons, and people would kind of burn that out. And so now we have a mechanical interlock, which can't be burnt out because it's mechanical. What is the interlock do?
So when you well, you know, the old you're just saying that to be nice to me. When you have the centerfuge, the old centrifuge is really so when you when you close a centrifuge, you remember Booker and Dax. When you close the centrifuge, I do, you couldn't open it when it was spinning because you would die. Right. Right.
And so even though this is inherently a lot safer because it doesn't have giant, you know, buckets spinning around uh, you know, something that looks like a propeller that could like take your arm off. It's a lot smaller. Still, we don't want you to touch it while it's spinning. Right. Right.
So we actually had it physically locked shut when it was spinning, and then it it would wait until it slowed down, you know, and then all of a sudden you could push a button and a solenoid would go ching and then unlock it. And you but it's all it always was a pain in the butt that that interlock. Um it wasn't designed that well because the the company that did it didn't really understand why we wanted it or safety. So this time or safety in general uh so this time around we um built a an actual mechanical thing. It works like it works like it's like a it's like a hex that fits through a plate and so when it's spinning you can't pull it back off because it's like it'll it'll lock yeah it's like trying to put you know a round peg through a hexagonal hole you know and then uh when it stops you just use a little wrench pop it's the action of it spinning is what locks it yeah cool.
Yeah that I used to do this um at home when I was like you know nine years old I would hold open the the um the the washing machine and I would turn it to spin cycle and I would find the little button that keeps the that clicks when the door shuts. Yeah yeah I would let the thing go and I'd let it spin in the just put coins in there or whatever it is. Yeah that sounds super fun. Yeah yeah nice and like so it's like that do they I don't remember it's been a long time. Do they have a the S is about to hit the F sensor in them so that they stop walking acr across the room or could could you get it really like Oh I don't know.
It never my my my the one of my parents' house never actually went anywhere but it did bang against if it if it went like if it hit the side too hard it would stop. So when I moved out of um when I moved into uh my illegal loft in the 30s this is in ninety ninety seven we moved to an illegal loft in the in the 30s on 38th street nice 20th floor, garment district. Spent the first week and a half scraping gum off the floor inside. Okay. Because it was, you know, legitimate, like all the workers were being horribly exploited.
So they're like, I'm just gonna spit the gum out here. Why do I care? You know what I mean? Like poop in the so people used to go poop in the there's a fire stairwell, right? So there was a regular stairwell and then there was a fire stairwell.
And because the the companies in the building weren't supplying adequate facilities for their workers, they would just go into the fire rest well, uh uh uh stairwell and pee and poop. So like Amazon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically like Amazon from like if but in the 90s, you know what I mean? So um so much has changed.
My one of my great regrets is that one, I I don't do pot or grow it because that place was the perfect place to grow pot. Why? Because uh the sweatshops were still going and they were using immense amounts of steam energy. Oh, so the heat was heat signature was all there anyway, and everyone had all of their windows blacked out anyway, so that their workers wouldn't know what time it was. That's great.
Yeah, well, I mean, horrible, but yeah, yeah. But i if you had wanted to be a pot grower, right? It would have been, you know, ideal. All concrete floors, like 10 and a half foot ceilings, like, you know, open, it could have just been like one massive amount of power. Maybe that's actually what they're doing now there because it's legal.
So there's probably some tech bro with some yeah, but like can you make as much money now that it's legal? Yeah, I think so. Really? I mean, I don't know. I don't know.
Not my not my thing. I guess more people are buying it, so it the you know the revenue, like the the pie gets bigger. Yeah. Are you uh do you are you a uh a pot fan? I do, I am a pot fan.
Do you do pot cocktails? Uh not really. I mean, I do. There's like so there's a few legal uh shops that have opened up in there's like unlicensed stores in New York City that have been around for like a year, and then there's like actual literal licensed places that are there's only like three or four in the city, and one is run by housing works, and I got some like a little grapefruit soda. Yeah, it's really good, but I don't like mix with it.
Like are you allowed to? Like in other words, can you you can't probably serve probably not in a restaurant? I don't know. I don't know what the rules are. I don't know if there's like a if there's like a SLA for weed.
Do you know who would know? It's our friend Don Lee. Probably. Yeah. Yeah.
He knows all of those things. Yeah, he would know that. And he knows all the workarounds. Yeah. Yeah.
Um I know they cracked down on CBD, the DOH did a whole C B D thing. Like, why? Isn't it like unregulated? I think it had to do with like the labeling or like had the claims that people were making, and they were like, you couldn't put in something like that. I don't know.
There's some sort of weird crackdown where they were like telling you you can't mix C B D into your drinks. All right. Well, whatever. Maybe you couldn't have health claims. I don't know.
Anyway, yeah, something like that. So back to this loft and your washing machine story. Uh so we, you know, there was no laundry around there because it was not a residential neighborhood. You know what I mean? Like, and I didn't like it.
Ironic for the garment district. Yeah, right. So like you like, I didn't want to walk down to you or walk up to what we know, Proper Hell's Kitchen, you know what I mean, with my laundry. So we got a laundry, you know, like a used like laundry uh washing machine, and um we only had one drain in the entire apartment, and I wasn't allowed to do any real renovation to it because we weren't there legally. So our tub was up on cinder blocks, and I cut into our sink drain and like this is all like 1927 piping too.
So like, and I cut into it, so our tub was way up high, a completely unaccessible nightmare, right? And then I just wheeled the washing machine next to it. We kept it on casters, and I would just take the drain thing and stick it right in the bathtub. Yeah. The drain tube right into the bathtub.
Only like once it walked, like I'm talking on the casters, and the drain thing pipe came out of the thing and started dumping, dumping water. And Jen and I, my wife, we were out doing something, and below us had just because it was switching when we moved, it's fancy photographer started coming in, and it went all into the dude's studio below us. Right. It's kind of a nightmare. Oh wow.
Yeah. Oh well, well, you know, illegal living. Yeah. You know? Get what you pay for.
You get what you pay for. Although I don't think he lived there. There was only one other person who lived there full time and a creepy dude in the mechanical like tower like next to us. Super creepy. That's kind of fun.
Yeah. Well, that's why, yeah. Do you remember old school New York Fox police locks? No, what's that? So if if you went to an old school loft building, the the guy who sold them died in the 90s to apropos of this.
But if you see the old doors where you pull on a central knob and it does the little bars come in, yeah, come in and out. And so we had one. I've installed one. And as and as soon as that thing was closed, I was like, I'm in here. You're not going anywhere.
No, yeah. Like, you know, no one wants to kill me badly enough to make it through this door. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so I felt okay.
As long as we never answered the door and never answered the telephone. Didn't lose your keys. Didn't lose your keys. If you long, you toast. You're toast.
Unless you know someone's inside to let you in, you know. Yeah. Anyway, good times. Illegal living. Uh so do you have anything interesting this week, John?
That uh well, this week I had my book came out today. Well, so there's that. Well, okay, but like in the kitchen or like in the kitchen or mixing or foods. Well, I um I'm doing a consulting project out in Brooklyn for this place called Cafe Mars, and we did a I had a little RD session last week, which is very I used to do it all the time from Mofuku. That was like my job, I was going and just make drinks and do menus for for the restaurants, and so I haven't done that a lot recently.
So I actually was like behind a bar, like making drinks. And how that's like make the drink, and it's like, oh, let's do a quarter ounce instead of a thing. It's like I was like, wow, so it was very like blast from the past. So how do you like that doing versus versus doing development at your place? Um it's nice to do it with someone, and also it's nice to be the person who just gets to walk away.
Be like, boom, yeah, like oh I'm finished. Like, here are your specs, and then you know there's like a restaurant that has to deal with it. Yeah. Well, uh like how many times do you have to go back and and make sure they're not hosing it too bad? I don't know.
How how hard do you bulletproof stuff like that? That's a good question. I mean, so I did another I did another consulting gig. Have you heard of this uh restaurant called Ursula in Brooklyn? It's like a Tex Mex kind of a new Mexican burrito breakfast burrito place.
Good. It's great, it's amazing. It's this guy, Eric C, who's in anyway. So uh we did a I did a cocktail program for him that was like he didn't want to hire bartenders, so he just wanted to keep all his existing staff from this breakfast burrito place. So we basically did a fully like batched program.
With but so so so but it was the regular FOH staff is pouring it from a batch stitch. Okay. So it was so that all pump and dump, straight pumping. Exactly. Yeah, so that was like you know, you just build in all that kind of like you just have your sort of manager expectations around like what kind of you know, bells and whistles you can put in the drink.
You know, you're not doing bar spoons, you're not doing you know, fancy stuff. It's just like what is this gonna how is this gonna like batch out and then just be portable and still be really good? So you're like, but then for the something like that, it to me, like my mind is always like they're not going to regularly put their thumb over the bottle and go chung gunk, chung gunk, chung gunk. You know what I mean? Like that, like it you could work your whole life making a great batch drink, and if they're not just gonna like put their thumb and junk.
No, they're I mean, they only need to do it a couple of times a shift. How many times a shift do you think they need to do that? Twice, three times a shift, depending on how often they're pouring it. I mean you're just bored. You're just like yeah.
Yeah, but see the like I'm natural fidgeter. So for me, everything's gonna get mixed around. Like spin, spin, twist, you know, ling, ming, ming, ming, ming, you know, they're like, you have to stop me from touching things. That's like uh actually it's kind of a problem. My next Booker Index uh lab product is like a batch bottle with a built-in agitator.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you remember um I remember uh Southern from uh who is you know doing he was at Booker Index, but he was also doing something at a more amargo. He uh he was like getting hassled. He wanted to keep things uh, you know, not to not stratify in a keg situation.
So we actually built a magnetic. Magnet thing, yeah. I heard about that. But there was also because the the the city government was being a pain in the ass about rebottling. Remember when for a minute we thought that the uh that they they were gonna come in and nuke us all for uh for batches.
For batches. Yeah. And we were all like, what are we gonna do? What are they gonna do? I'm like, I'm just not gonna worry about it until we get completely hosed, and then it just kind of went away.
Well, it was like when everyone was starting to do everything on kegs, like keg G G and Ts, it was like this huge collective crisis that we had to figure out how to like make it agitatable. Yeah, yeah. But I don't even know why that gets you away from it. As long as it's constantly okay, I remember the argument. You ready for this?
You ready? Yeah. This is how dumb it was. As long as it's being stirred, it's being made. Yes, that's right.
Yeah. That rings a bell. Yeah. Yeah. My argument for like the box.
Actively being prepped. Actively being prepped. My argument for our bottles is like I'm making the drink and pouring it into a glass. And here's your glass. Yeah.
You know what I mean? It's like. Well, what if what if the recipe includes letting it sit undisturbed for 12 hours? Right. Right.
That's my point. Like it's all dumb anyhow. Like, I get that. Okay, so I probably shouldn't say this, but when we opened, I maybe I said it on there already. It doesn't matter.
It's like when we opened existing conditions, um, we took over an existing place, and with it came their inventory. Oh, right. A hundred percent watered. Because I had always kind of a hundred percent watered. So I had gone through life thinking that that was something from the past.
You know what I mean? And even like the whiskey and stuff? Especially the whiskey. But like anything that costs money was watered. Jeez.
And like anything. Oh, like unusable. Unusable. We dumped it all. That's so insane.
Yeah. So like I was like, what the hell is this? And I was like, is it me? Am I just a super booze hound? And I and I can't tell what's my broken?
Yeah. And so like I poured it for other people. I was like, what do you think about this? And they're like, this tastes like water. Yeah.
I'm like, wow. Wow. Yeah, real bad. Wow. Real real bad.
Yeah. Anyway, uh, so I see why they have those rules, but like if you're not selling a pour, in other words, they that you should be allowed to put anything into a bottle as long as you're not saying it's something. Like you can't pour someone. You can't misrepresent what you're selling. Right.
You can't be like, this is this whiskey, and in fact, it'd be like something else. But like, but like we never did that, obviously. Right. Anyway. Uh Quinn, you got anything interesting this week?
Anything? Uh yeah, I made a nice carrot reverto the other day. What does that mean? What does that mean, carrot risotto? Carrot instead of rice or an orange rice?
No, like a carrot flavored risotto with rice. Juice. Like vegetable stock. Okay. Um, basically vegetable stock and then a batch of roasted carrot.
Some of the roasted carrots got blended and then further strained into the stock. Okay. And then also pieces of the roasted carrots. When you say pieces, like peas and carrot size pieces, I like peas and carrots. Don't even talk nasty about peas and carrots.
Cubed cubed little carrot pieces? Pro. Very pro. Yeah. Uh can I tell you something that just reminded me of?
You know what doesn't freeze well at all? Like at all? Chicken salad. Horrible. I was thinking frozen peas and carrots works.
Yeah. Frozen chicken salad. Is it the chicken? It turns like spongy. That makes sense because the free thing is.
It's like that. But the frozen meat's okay. Like steak. Yeah, but once you cook it and then mix it with you cook it, you mix it with the mayonnaise. You can even cook it at whole and do it, but like once you mix it with the mayonnaise and the celery and the onions, no, no coming back from that.
No. Yeah. And I know it was a good chicken salad because I ate it and I was like, you know, I'm trying to get ready. You wash off the mayonnaise and put it back in there. Uh no, I wouldn't.
But I'm trying to get ready for this whole, you know, not like only cooking for, you know, two people again. And uh I was like, so I'm gonna try to freeze this. Cause one, we're not gonna, you know. Right. Yeah.
Anyway, doesn't work. So back to the carrot risotto. How was it? Uh really good. I also cheated a little bit on playing around with umcleotides.
You know, um, inosinate and guanolate. Yeah, it's a terrible name, guanolate. It sounds like guarano. Yeah, guano, guar. Guardi, yeah, yeah.
Guar's the band, right? Yeah, guar's the band. Yeah. Never listen to uh well spelled differently, Quinn. Guar the band is G W A R.
That's true. And guar I uh they're both pretty metal sounding. G-U-A-R is also pretty metal sound. Guar. Do you use guar?
Oh no, you just said guarantee. Guar Hey, this is a public service announcement. Anyone out there using guar, please get the flavor free guar. Flavor free guar. Do not buy standard guar.
Standard guar tastes bad. Tastes like what? It's like tastes like ground up bean junk, like bad bean junk. You know what I mean? Like no good.
Get the flavor free guar. You know what I mean? Tastes like the stuff that guar the band might spray on you in a concert. Okay. Right.
Tastes like it tastes you know that taste of uh glycol smoke at a at a at a concert. I kinda like that face. All right, well, maybe you like the regular guar. Maybe. Yeah.
All right, cool. So Quinn, back to your saying. You cheated and you added these uh these uh nucleotides and whatnot. Guanalate. Okay.
Your words, Quinn. Your words, not mine. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, true.
All right. So so uh what happened? Did that jack it up? Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm I'm experimenting with, you know, being very delicate with those sort of things.
If I with anything that's supposed to have like a brothy flavor, it really works. Yeah. Anytime someone says delicate the way you did, uh the wicked witch of the west goes directly into my head. These things need to be done delicately. Remember that?
Or it breaks the spell. Remember because she's trying to kill Dorothy, but if she just kills her, she doesn't get the shoes back. The Ruby slippers. Is no one here in Wizard of Oz land with me? Son of a God.
Alright. I mean I've seen the movie. I just don't have a apparently she was a nice lady. Yeah. Yeah.
She was also the Maxwell House lady. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And she almost burned to death doing that sh doing the doing that shoot.
Yeah she did. Yeah, yeah. Like legitimately almost burned to death. Yeah. Like there's like the like the movie you see her like burning.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm gonna say? Worth it. Worth it.
I mean like iconic. I mean we all die. There's only one Wizard of Oz. You know what I mean? Original Wizard of Oz.
Time is the fire in which we burn. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, uh so do you feel that you overuse the broth machine or uh the uh the uh nucleotides or do you feel like you you hit it on the money there Quinn? No I'm pretty happy with that I though I do I usually I do and this time I just told my dad to add like a little tippy like teaspoon. I should have measured it.
Yeah yeah did you say tippy teaspoon? Like the like you know like a like the very tip of a spoon. Wait would you say just would you say just the tip? I maybe Family show your words not mine. Yeah yeah yeah all right all right so uh okay all right and what was the color was it dirty or or orange?
Did you saffron it too? Well, it was. No, actually, what I what I pumped the color with was a little tomato paste. Okay. And added some uh added some umami.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Fair.
Fair. Uh is does anyone like uh parsnips more than carrots. I think they have their place. I didn't say do they have their place? I didn't say should parsnips be exterminated.
I said, does anyone like them more than carrots? No. Yeah, right, Sas. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm talking about.
Stas is like, no, because why would you? It's like a parsnip is carrot minus. Like, you know what I mean? It's like, you know what? Like, I'm not in the mood for something that's kind of as good as a carrot.
And a little bit or yeah. Yeah, let's go with parsnip. I'm not anti-parsnip, I'm just pro carrot. So what's the benefit of parsnip? Is it easier to grow?
I don't know. Less water. I don't know. I don't know. I like a parsnip with my carrots.
Okay. When they're uh blended together. Hey, you know, when you buy a lot of those multicolored carrots, a lot of those uh yeah, they're basically flavorless. They might as well be parsnips. Yeah.
You just get a CSA box and there you go. Yeah, yeah. Someone's gonna hand you a parsnip. Yeah. I mean, when was the last time you were like, oh, okay.
Also, like whatever. I tend to add a little bit of sugar to my veg, like you know, the old way they used to teach us is you know, you salt and sugar with the water, and then you steam it down, pull it and glaze it off, and the sugar kind of caramelizes out. So I always tend to add a little sugar anyway, so why would I want to start with something that is like so neutral? The carrot has like a good amount of sugar in it already, plus carrot flavor. You know, it seems like a win to me.
Anyway. Not anti-parsnip. I know someone's gonna be like, parsnips are really, really good. Okay. You know what I mean?
All right. How dare you? How dare you? How dare you go against my parsnips? Uh so the subject, uh anyone else uh anything this this uh this week?
Anything else we want to talk about before we get into the the meat, the meat of the week. No? I cooked a lot of meat the other day, actually. Yeah. Uh it was my wife's birthday last week.
So I did the, but I had to, I had to go, I had to do all the stuff pre-cooked because I had to walk in and do like dinner for 10. I had to walk in at 5 30 and have dinner done by seven. So I did all like pre and like and stuff and then yeah, blasted through it, just like freaking ripped through it. But it's good. I mean, like, you know, my steak is pretty standard at this point.
So I didn't do anything interesting to talk to people about. Unfortunately, if you've already heard me say how I make steak a million times, then it's pretty much the same. You know, I bought it though at Albanese. Have you ever been there? Where's that?
That's that butcher shop on Elizabeth Street that is like just south of Houston, and it's like has been there for like almost like 80, 100 years, something like that. And it was Mo who was I remember Mo. You remember Mo? Of course I remember Mo. I mean, he eventually died, as like I said, like we all do.
As one does. As one does. Uh, and now his granddaughter runs it. So you go in there, and his granddaughter is like, you know, she's the butcher, and it's like it's like you're walking into somebody's like living room kind of, but there's also a meat case. So it's like it's like half living room, half meat case.
What kind of living room? Like, you know, there's like a like a chair you can sit in, and she's got like some chotchkis there and like upholstery, like wing chair, like what we were talking about. My memory of it is that, yeah, that it's like, yeah, that it's like, you know, that like chair with the with the yellow kind of like maybe it was fuzzy at one point, upholstery that you can kind of sit in. It's got the two arms, and you're chilling while she's talking to me about the meat that she's gonna sell me, you know, and she has a w cooler in back, and uh, you know, her scale is from like nineteen fifty, and I think it's still legal for trade. I didn't care because I was gonna pay whatever she told me anyway.
I don't care. You know what I mean? But it was a good experience. That's nice. Yeah.
I should go. Yeah. Uh right. Support some like weird, like small movies. I mean, I've lived in Lurry Side for like fifteen years and I had no idea it existed.
Yeah, it's been there. Yeah. But where do you live before that? I don't remember. I lived on Eldridge Street.
Oh, okay. Well, by the way, John and I are practically neighbors. We live in we used to be in the same co-op, but there was a fight about you're in the Splinter Co-op. Wait, so you consider yourself the the OG co-op? I mean in the split book.
I I consider it unf I wish I was in the splinter co-op because the co-op board is a mess, but well, all co-op boards are nice. Yeah. And our particular neighborhood, so th so basically there is a six-block chunk. Yeah, right, between um between uh yeah, Essex Street in the lower east side and the river. Yeah.
And along Grand. And it was all built in the fifties, right? And it was built for the women garment workers union and others. But it was these they were called Mitchell Llamas, and there's these 20 story high right. They first built a lower one called Amalgam.
Amalgated. So it's amalgamated bank, it's the same group. Oh, really? Yeah, it's the same guy. Oh, awesome.
Anyway, so they so man. Well, so Hillman was the second one, and then yours, East River, and mine, Seward. Yeah. But they were all at one point, not the amalgamated. But the East River was Hillman ever part of us?
Yeah. Hillman just broke off from East River like last year or the year before. So all of these co-ops, this entire They had to move the office from Hillman to our building. Really? Yeah, because they got kicked out.
They were really bitter about it. Why? They're a whole different vibe. To me, the big thing is that our buildings have lobbies and they're building salobbies outside. Oh, in the in Hillman and Amalgamated, the older ones?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, point is is that this whole neighborhood was one big co-op and then they all split up. So, you know, now we're mortal enemies. Balkanized.
Yeah, yeah. Mortal enemies. Yeah. Like the way they do in the Balkans. You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, yeah, very much so. Uh anyway. Uh so talk to me about uh talk to me about this book. Uh what to say? Uh basically, um Before you start, yeah.
How the hell did this happen? That's kind of what I want to know about. So, first of all, John DeBerry, for those of you that don't know John DeBerry, John DeBerry uh was at PDT, one of the most famous like cocktail renaissance bars. Did you open it? Oh no, but I open I I started within a year of opening.
So that's opening. Whatever. Right. So uh before it was big enough for for me just to like waltz in with no experience and just be like, hey. Right.
Yeah. And and by the way, the the the people who were there at that time were like Don Lee, John Darragon, who else was there? Jimmy and obviously. Jimmy and yeah, I mean, yeah. Um yeah, that's kind of yeah.
And no one else had been like, I'm gonna you're gonna have to walk through a phone booth. I mean, first of all, so many genius decisions in that bar. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, the f the the getting like chefs to like give you products so that you could put out hot dogs at like, you know, infinite margins and like I mean getting fried mayonnaise from WD50 every six days.
Yeah, nuts. Come on. I mean, crazy. Anyway, huge, huge influence. Uh, very like for the for those of you that haven't been to New York or for those that are I don't know, 30 this year, like that you can't understand uh you can't really understand uh it was a big deal.
What it was like back then. Yeah, it was a big deal. Uh anyway, so from there to uh another tiny restaurant group, uh the Momofuku. Yeah. Tiny.
Yeah. Yeah, no one's heard of them, no one's heard of Dave Chang or anything. Under the radar. Under the radar people. So you kinda decided to go into the radar for a while.
Yeah. Uh and then while you were doing that, started writing. Kind of, yeah. I was at I was at Momofuku for nine years. Uh so I was the bar director for the group and I opened 10 of their restaurants, um ish.
And then uh as I was sort of like, you know, nine years is a long time to do anything. So I was sort of like, hmm, like how long am I gonna do this? Uh a book, a book deal came along. Um that was my first book that came out in 2020. Came out on the day that everyone was posting Black Squares to Instagram.
Um that was my pub day. Oh yeah. Um so that was great. Yeah. Um and so that that and that book was more of like, hey, I'm gonna take everything I learned about like teaching people how to make drinks and make it really accessible to people, and very much like, hey, it's not actually that scary.
I almost like it's almost like the exact opposite of your book. Uh yeah, yeah. Uh funny. Uh and at the same time you were working on um your you you were doing a a non alcoholic. Yeah, I was developing a non alcoholic drink company.
Protect and R I B and oh, it's so hard to make a product. We could talk about it. It's so yeah. It's impossible. Yeah.
Especially a product that is consumed that you have to ship around. Yeah, and I I made a heavy, heavy bottle that costs like twenty dollars to ship. Ridiculous. So it was like nuts. Right.
So you can sell locally, but then as soon as you try to distribute and it, you know, we had to go direct to consumer because of COVID. So it was like that whole not being on a hand truck and just getting loaded into your bar. And then it turns out that if you personally have to do everything, then uh it sucks. It's a pain in the ass, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It sucks. Uh and then also you want to talk about your uh charity work? Yeah. So I started it's actually this this actually started way like before all of this, but in like 2016 or so, um uh Momofuku colleague of mine, uh Alex Pamulia, we she had left at the time, but we were you know what we call her? What?
Tara Pamoulier. Tara Pamoulier. I don't even know that doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah. Is what's what's that what opera is that from?
I don't know. Okay, anyway. Stas, is that accurate? Yeah, you came up with that. Yeah, I don't know what it's from.
Cosy Van Dutino. Anyway, um like I know about opera. What am I doing? Uh uh and we were kind of despairing after the 2016 election, like you know, things are gonna be worse before they get better, and like how are you know, rest people who work in restaurants are so vulnerable as it is. Like, how do we kind of shore up the kind of power of uh workers in the industry?
So we came up with the idea of having of creating a community foundation, um, which is basically an organization that raises money and then gives it away. So it's sort of like a fundraising operation at at its core. It does other things, but that's basically the core of it. Um it's called Restaurant Workers Community Foundation. Uh we just had an opening board of people you've definitely heard of, like Southern is on it, Lynette, my husband Michael uh was on it, um, and some other restaurant people and some other nonprofit people were were included as well.
And um we launched in 2018 and it was pretty quiet and we didn't expect to do very much. We just thought we'd sort of slowly build and then nothing happened, and then absolutely nothing happened. It affected the restaurant industry in 2020. And so uh so just out of nowhere, people started sending us tons of money because it was like, well, how do we help restaurant workers? How do we support this this community?
Um and so in 2020, when everyone was like, Oh, what do I do? How do I, you know, do I do sourdough? I'm me and my husband and uh, you know, our board of all volunteers at the time we didn't have any staff, we were just like cranking money out to other organizations that were doing like direct that were directly interfacing with restaurant workers. So um So you're telling me you made no sourdough. I actually did buy a hundred pounds of uh bread flour by accident from like Balb.
Okay. Okay. Well, you know when you you know in like in like April of 2020 when you would like when like Chef's warehouse would do like retail like home delivery. Yeah, and when Amazon was like a week away. Exactly.
And then you would so you'd you have your cart, and by the time you got to the checkout, half the things on your cart were gone. Right. Remember that? Yeah, oh yes. So I would just was hedging my bets.
I th I I knew I was like, there's no way I'm gonna get both of these. I might as well just get like and I was like, how big could a 50 pound bag be? Like whatever. Yeah. And then they both showed up.
So I had like, you know, yeah, the thing over my shoulder, and I had all these cameras in my in my uh in my kitchen that had to get worked through. And people are asking me, like, oh, do you still have the bread? And I'm like, I mean, you still have the flour. I'm like, no, I used to do like six months. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I went through it. So I actually did develop a very good power recipe. Oh, there you go. So at the at like was there a moment when it showed up where you were like, can I use this as toilet paper? Because that's the thing, you know, we never knew whether for a little for a little while, it was like that was the thing, TP.
True. True. That was never really an issue in our household. But why you have a you have enough space for TP storage? I I don't think we ever had a problem finding it.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it was just the first couple of days. It was like, yeah. Yeah.
I also like to order a bunch. I ordered a bunch, you know, we have like all these cabinets everywhere that are underneath benches in our living New York City. Yeah, there was a strategic reserve of TP. Oh man. That helps us out.
But I guess I didn't think about you could bake flatbread and turn it into emergency toilet paper. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway.
So anyway. Uh yeah. So okay, so it comes, you're giving direct uh money to people. So yeah, we're not, but we're we're giving we're we're granting out organization. So like a lot of a lot of like liquor companies sponsor us, like you know, Dave Chang went on Jimmy Kimmel and shouted us out.
So a lot of like individual people were giving us money, and so we found the the the best places to give that to, whether they were large national organizations or more local ones that were like directly doing like you know, food and food security or like you know, covering people's medical bills or all sorts of different things that people needed help with being out of work. Um and so that was uh uh a big chunk of my my time in in 2020 uh handling that. Um but and so now I mean we're still here. I mean, I think COVID isn't going anywhere, it's still here, and so I think the restaurant workers still need they needed support in 2016, needed support in 1995, and they still need it now, and so now we have staff, and so we're kind of like gone legit, you know, we sort of proved our our uh our reason to for being, and so now we're just kind of trying to get settle into more like actually having to like ask people for money rather than just sitting back and letting people hand it to us, which was a really you know great great position to be for a couple years, but now it's like okay, well now we're like really really really cranking. So all right.
So all of that was to kind of lay the foundation for people who don't know you, who you are. So then you write a book that is called Save by the Bellini and other 90s inspired cocktails. So this is you always like like like fun tongue-in-cheek stuff. Right. But um I'm just gonna go ahead and say it's because people need to people need to check this book out because you're like, oh, it's just like some cocktails that are named after things from the 90s.
And while that's true. Sort of. While that's true, you have gone 100% bonkers. Okay. Like I'm not talking about the references.
I'm talking like the drinks. You've got you have gone Looney McTunes. Yes. And so like we need to talk about it, but why don't you describe how this book happened? Completely unhinged.
And how you have disguised as like I mean, I don't you just can describe the disguise that the book is, and then just some real off-the-wall combos and and ideas in it. So to I mean, is there really I feel like it's mask off? I mean, if you look at it, it's like a it's like a it's a cosmopolitan in a sparsity jacket holding like a Zach Morris phone on the cover of the book. I mean, it's like I'm not trying to like fool anyone here. It's like a Tamagotchi.
Uh it's right there on the cover. I mean, it's basically it was the it was the title. And it was the fact that the fact that Saved by the Bellini wasn't taken. So you're like around one day, you're like, so uh what we're gonna do, uh smoking the cigar. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, save by the bellini. Google it. Is that a book yet? No. Let me call my agent.
I mean, more or less. Yeah, that's pretty much what happened. And it was like, I I looked, I looked like the trademark thing. I like I looked like that, like you know, all that stuff, and it wasn't it, it wasn't used, and no one no one has made a save by the bellini bellini before. Oh man.
And it was just like too good. And then every and then from there, it just everything fell into place. Cause you just because the my first book, I don't know if you counter this when you were writing liquid intelligence, but like I didn't know what the book was gonna be until I finished writing it. So I was just writing, and I was like, well, well, maybe this will be good. And I ended up cutting like 18,000 words from the manuscript in order to get it into like a real book.
And I almost had to rewrite the entire book before I could like actually finish it. It took like at the last second. I was like, oh sh. But this is like I used to sold it right away, right? You didn't you didn't have a proposal.
Yeah, and it's sort of like, hey, I'm gonna write a book that's explaining cocktails to people, but based on my experience. But it wasn't like the whole idea and like the in the first book, it's like all about objective deliciousness and like subjective and like you know, drinks have to be appropriate and also structurally sound. That didn't really come about until like literally like the day before my like the final draft was due. Like that, it was like I was about to lose my mind. So this one was like, okay, I'm writing a book about the 90s.
I'm gonna pick 60 something 90s things that I love that are like reasonably relatable, and then from that develop drinks that refer to them somehow. Um and either they were based, you know, the you'll well, I'm sure you have some examples because it seems like you've read the book, but like but like you know, sometimes there's like, oh well, like this particular uh reference incorpor like calls to an ingredient, or like this movie, these people drank these things in this movie. So that means like I have to include that in order to make the reference work. So it was very like you know, people always talk about like how like you know, confinement and like restrictions and um like boundaries create like a lot of creativity because you're forced to work within a certain kind of space that you can then be really crazy within that space, so you're not, it's not totally overwhelming. So that was definitely what was happening here, where it was just like, okay, I know I have to make a clueless cocktail that includes Diet Coke and coffee.
Yeah. That's how do I know Diet Coke? Yeah. So it does it. So my question is because here's what I think people first of all, two things.
One, everyone who was sentient during that time, it has a slightly different 90s, right? So like I was in college and early adulting in the 90s, right? You were in high school in 12 to you're born in 82. 82, late 82. So I was I had turned eight when New Year's happened to from 89 to 90, which is technically still the 80s, but whatever.
Uh and then I was uh 20 when so I was like I went from like third grade to college in the decade. So that's like that's like the decade for me. Right. But for instance, Saved by the Bell, I was in college when that came out, or like was about to go to college, and so I wasn't watching it because that would have been because that would be really weird. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, imagine a college kid watching Save by the Bell. I mean, now that makes a little sense, but back then, no, no. And speaking of it, you got one of the cast members to write your foreword. Tiffany Thiessen. Yeah, and she's also a food person now.
She is. She has a she has a um her her um cookbook that came out already, and she's got one that's coming out in the fall that's all about leftovers. And I love that. I'm like so excited for it, actually. I mean, I I like leftovers, yeah.
Uh and uh by the way, uh the screech not related to Mike D. Not related. There's Specie Boys, yeah, not related. They're both named Diamond, but they're not related. I didn't even realize that they were.
Not related. No, yeah. Yeah. People used to say that they were related. That's funny.
Remember that, Joe? Everyone would say that they were related. Not. I mean, whatever. And you know, rip rip screech.
R.I.P. Yeah. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, poor guy. Uh, but yeah, so that's not part of my 90s.
Like my 90s, um, you know, to me, the the big switch in the 90s was when everyone started listening to what they called alternative music. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like when Nevermind hit. Oh, yeah.
That was like, oh, now everybody listens to this kind of music. Yeah. It was so it was it was so amazing how like big like Nirvana was. Because considering how not poppy. I mean, it would they it was pretty poppy, but it was just like just imagining like that nirvana being like that's like Taylor Swift, you know, if that's how big they were.
It was huge. But they and impossible to to like it was just nuts. I remember like listening to like jamming out to Nevermind at like my friend's like fourth grade birthday party. Okay, so as like a you know, a college student, right? Who was in a bunch of like alternative bands, so like all listening to, you know, we were listening to like Fishbone, my guitarist was Dinosaur Jr., like Primus, like all that kind of stuff.
You know what I mean? Um, you know, we were listen that's the kind of stuff we were listening to, right? And uh, you know, the people who in high school, you know, had never heard of Jane's addiction, but uh, you know, listened to Steve Winwood all of a sudden. You know, that all like they were like Steve Winwood, like, you know, which I like, you know what I mean? Or like, you know, song Josephine?
I don't remember any of that, like all of his like 80s output like have erased it from my head. Yeah, or like you know, fine young cannibals, all that like those those people who were listening to that, all of a sudden, I'm like, what are you doing? That's like what? You know what I mean? It was a weird moment, you know what I mean?
It it was good because I think those bands deserve to make a crap ton of money, but I was like, you know. Well, it's just so it goes to show that what if something is good, it transcends genre and you just like can't control it. Maybe. Like good music is just good music. I don't know.
Are they just commodified stuff that anyway, whatever, whatever. We'll figure it out. So, like we we come from different 90s, but we fortunately don't have enough time to talk about all of that, all of the new ins and outs, the new in nuances of the 90s. But it's basically you use it as a kind of a it seems like it's giving you license to just kind of be nuts. So, you know, on the one hand, you'll do an apple teeny by literally blending a Granny Smith apple with uh what was that spec again?
Blending the Granny Smith apple with lime. With lime. I would have called for like a sorbe or citric acid, but it's like doing that. Yeah. Right.
And then straining straining it and then letting the whole thing chill for a couple of hours. Right. So you have that level of bonkers. But then you also have drinks, very, a lot of very spirit forward, like no acid stir drinks, like uh you have one that's like whiskey. Is it whiskey, Aquavit?
Oh, yeah. It's the AOL Instant Messenger uh cocktail at A I M. And it's Aquabi, Aqua V Irish whiskey and Midori. Yeah, because you love Midori. You love anything.
First of all, like you and Nick, you and Nick Bennett are the are the kings of blue in New York City. Oh, how is he? He's great. Yeah. So you like, you know, I've whatever.
You're you like your famous blue drink is the shark. Shark. The shark. You want to give the spec for the shark? I don't remember the spec for the shark.
Oh, give me a break. I mean, I remember what the ingredients are. Okay, what are the ingredients? So it's uh butter-infused uh white rum with Ray and Nephew, Frangelico, blue curacao, cream, pineapple, lemon, and uh the bitterman's uh tiki bitters. And the oceans of that at PDT.
It's still on the menu. Really? I think so. Yeah. I haven't been in a while, but if I have trouble getting in, I'm like, hey, pass me a menu.
And I pass put my license through. I'm like, look, it's me. So uh anyway, so like Midori, Aquavete, and Irish. Actually good? Actually good.
I was surprised. I was really relieved. I was really relieved. So what I what I think people need to see because of the because like also some of the you go from being kind of like in terms of money spent for the liquors in this kind of high and low at the same time too. Yeah.
Depending. So like and it depends on kind of which recipe you're going to, but these were all tested approved. Yeah, I made them all. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And you had and you said in the back that you had like a bunch of people make them. Well, I made that I made it for a bunch of people. Yeah. I had I had some I had some. Because like uh let's talk sometimes you can get a little bit in your own head, you know, when you're making drinks, you know, and you're like, Am I just lazy or is this good?
Uh yeah, that's it. So you need to get check, yeah. So a couple things, uh so some of the stuff is like, yeah, I'm gonna throw the apple in the blender as a way to get the apple flavor in, but not have to do a bunch of intervention, right? And strain it out. I'm sure it tastes good because of course and grannies, by the way, self-clarify pretty quickly, and so it's gonna be good, whatever.
Uh but let's talk about some of the stranger or the different kind of things. In your uh bellini, right? By the way, uh Stas, you remember that time that we went in the back of house at that event at Chipriani's and they were had the big bladders of peach puree. Oh yeah. Yeah.
And they were just like, and I think I was at that event. I've never had a bellini since then, 'cause like seeing the peach puree be like And then them just like dumping that cheapy cheapy cheapy cheap, cheap, cheapy, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheapy prosecco over the top of it. I think I I think I worked at event with you. Yeah, uh maybe. Like downtown, like way downtown.
I think, yeah, yeah. We were like, I was just like, uh. Well, you know what I mean? Like goo clarified goop, like uh sorry, carbonated goop is not my carbonated goop is stuff. Yeah.
Anyway, your Bellini, didn't you put bananas in it? Yeah, because I white peach puree is hard to find. Yeah. Right. Again, I'm not trying to again, and even I thought my my last book was pretty accessible in terms of ingredients.
Even that, or even if I have to do another recipe, you know, I do Food 52 recipes every month. And like I have an ingredient that I think is like reasonable. And people are like, I can't find this. And it's like, so I'm like, okay, what's like, how do I make this so that you can like go to like a 7-Eleven or like the gas station and find these. Oh my god, gas station bellini is your next book.
Yeah. And so I thought, like, you know, canned peaches always in season. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's an old video.
We used to say that to each other all the time in Booker Index. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so I sort of took that idea of like, well, canned peaches are great, yeah, for them, but they're not that like kind of fresh and puree-y, they're just kind of syrupy and out of honey. Well, also whites have a floral note.
So I guess bananas are estery. Exactly. So I just wanted to like um what is it? Like, what's the fancy word for it? But like doctor it somehow to make it sort of kind of read more of like a white peach puree, which actually isn't even white.
But I figured like, what's like the what's a really easy like easily findable fresh fruit that you could throw in that would like kind of give you that? And it works? It works. What was the other thing you added? You added another, you had a uh did you add a spice to it?
I can't remember. There's another thing that wasn't. There's one more, I think there's one more ingredient in your, it's called uh no ID peach puree or something like that. Like I or like what's it called? Like fake ID peach puree.
The fake ID peach. Fake ID peach puree. I shouldn't know this. It's my book, but whatever. Yeah, it doesn't matter.
I mean, how are you gonna remember all? How are you gonna remember every turn of uh phrase that you put into a book? Because it's the the entire book is turn of frizz. It's sure, yeah. So you can't possibly remember it all.
Although fake ID peach puree, you should remember. Yeah, I like my I my favorite is the heart in the blender or simple syrup. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So six songs. Yeah, because it's just simple syrup.
It's a simple syrup, but in a blender, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're like, if you must heat it, you can, but why? But why? Why? So let's talk about the then you do have some flavors that are more complicated than normal, fancier.
Let's talk about this. I was kind of intrigued by your ultra grenadine. I love the ultra grenadine which comes up. Yeah, which comes up like uh in at least four, three or four recipes more probably. Yeah.
So talk about ultra grenadine. Okay, so here's the thing about like a lot of sub-recipes in cocktail books that I find to be a bit irritating is that you will have a recipe for like a syrup or an infusion or whatever that the yield is like five quarts or whatever or a quart. And then there's one recipe in the book that calls for a half ounce of it. And it's like why am I doing this? Like why I'm I'm not gonna I don't want to ask someone to go through all this trouble to make this ingredient if they're not going to use it a bunch.
So I did that for this book where I was like I'm gonna create a bunch of like kind of basically make a meeting pasta for myself where I have like fancy grenadine, fancy honey, simple syrup and a few other things that you can sort of make and have on hand and use them in a few different ways that however you want. So one of them is the ultra grenadine which if you just want to make regular grenadine with pomegranate and sugar, you can and the drinks will work fine. But I did a uh cold infusion of black tea in saffron into the water that you then use that gives it a little bit of a little it makes it fancy like the depth it's like the weird saffron I don't know what the hell saffron tastes like but it's good. Plastic like luxurious plastic it's the best I can super plastic. Yeah.
Um and so it creates this really deep really rich like really super like kind of concentrated grenadine flavor that I use in um and you jack the acid too because you put unsweetened crayon, which is as we know, is every like the the the coolest new ingredient of the past 10 years. It's so good. Yeah. Yeah. Um and actually the the fun thing about elder grenadine is that um you know April Watchtel?
Yeah, cheeky cocktails. Yeah. She made we did a limited run. Oh yeah. So you can just go out and buy Altra Grenadine.
Ah, and they it's called that. It's called that. It's like branded, it's like a whole thing. So she's selling it. It's it's on sale now.
And so if you're if you don't even want to make it yourself, you can just order from her. Oh, nice. So it's amazing. It's super fun. Um and then it's a it's uh the recipe that you have opened to is a dark phoenix, which is based on one of the best X-Men storylines ever.
I mean, again, I was not during this period consuming that kind of stuff. So yeah, it's it's it was on Saturday morning at like 11 30. So I don't I don't blame you. Um but I actually went on an actual, there's a podcast that does recaps of the of the X-Men animated series, and I went on and talked about the the Dark Phoenix storyline. So are you gonna like do endless ones of those?
Like I saw that you got called to like some save by the bell reunion or something like this. No, I went to the I went to 90s con. Um in Hartford, Connecticut. Oh yeah. Oh my god, Hartford.
And I I handed copies to Mark Paul Gossler, Mario Lopez, Elizabeth Berkeley, and Alicia Silverstone, and two of the guys from InSync, uh, Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone, and Jeff Timmins from 98 Degrees, and I handed a copy of uh the book to Thora Burch's like manager because she's in I mentioned her in the Hocus Pocus Cocktail. Oh, you should check out uh JDB. That's what we call John. Check out JDB's uh Instagram account and look. You've not I've never seen a smile on his face as big as those pictures where he's just like all these people in the book.
It was like it was nuts. All right. Uh, what else what else do you want to? Oh, here's a strange one. Uh it's prune juice.
So this is based on um uh the Whoopi Goldberg character and Wharf uh Wharf, right? Wharf. His that is a warrior drink. Warriors drink. Yeah.
Yes. So you want to say what's in this? And it by the way, I actually kind of, even though like the idea of tonic water and prune juice, because of the bubbles and gloop problem, bubbles and gloop is gonna be like my maybe my you know, the book that I write that's published after I die. Do you love it? Do you not like how the bubbly gloop like sticks to the side of the glass?
There's yeah, all aspects of it, yeah, I find troubling, but that's fine. It doesn't mean that it's not good. So the like I like troubling. As I've gotten older, I realize that you know, uh, like just because I have a problem with it, it could it's most likely my problem. It's a you problem.
It's a me problem. And that's part of growth. That's fine. Yeah, yeah. So why don't you describe this uh all right?
So the so Gynan is uh this bartender from Star Trek the Next Generation, like Whippy Goldberg lobbied Gene Roddenberry to be on the show because she was so inspired by Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura for you know, being like her on the show, uh and make inspiring her to be an actress. And so uh, and I was weirdly not, I don't know, like if I if gyne like made me want to be a bartender, but Gaynan like made me like love bartenders because she was this awesome bartender. So not Isaac. That's too young for it. It's too old.
Isaac from the Orvo? No, Isaac from Love Boat. Because I think that that's my generation. Love boat, yeah. No, I love over yeah, what's past.
That's old people stuff. Yeah. So um, and so I was being in one of my first interviews I ever did with any press. It was like a New York magazine, like QA or something like that, in like 2010 or something. Person was like, What is your favorite on-screen bartender?
And I was like, Gaynan from Next Start to Next Generation. And she was like, I have never heard a person answer that question as quickly as you just did. Um, so that's the level of like where I hold Gaynan in my heart. Um, and at in one episode uh of the show, she uh she's sort of like consoling Wharf, who's this like Klingon, it's a species of people they're very like warrior-like and sort of he's very dour. All the other Klingons are actually like kind of like you like them anyway.
And he's like, he's kind of a grumpy pants, and so she gives him a glass of prune juice, and he's like his eyes light up, and he's like, This is a warrior's drink. And so this is gag for the rest of the show where he's like drinking prune juice all the time. Um, and so I figured that there's like there's gotta be a fancy sort of like uh cocktail, you know, alcohol version of that. So uh so I turned it into a cocktail with uh with wine and tonic water. Yeah, yeah.
It's like it's like Pinot Noir, prune juice, angle, and tonic. Hell yeah. You know what? It sounds like it's delicious though. Is it though?
It is sounds delicious. I wouldn't have put it in the book if it was gross. But what I've yeah, well, what I'm saying is is that like this is what I'm just picking some random recipes out of here to just show that if you get this book, which you know, you should check out this book, it's not just like it's not so a lot of people will write a book and they'll read they'll they'll just relabel some standard beverage with the name of a movie, right? You know what I mean? Yeah, like uh, you know what's really good at that actually the so-and-so mojito.
The bet the best one of that is actually the Star Wars cookbooks. Have you seen them? I've seen them, they're really good, but they're basically just relables of regular recipes. Like the Moss Isley taco salad, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean they they they'll gussy it up and make it look like Yoda soda, I think is a little weird, it's got like a sherbet in it.
It's a good name. Okay. Anyway, but like this is not that. This is like I was inspired to use these kind of ingredients, and then I made this cocktail that has been tested and I like it. And you know, here's my pedigree to prove that I know what I'm talking about.
Yeah. And it's off the rails. Yeah. You know what I mean? So like that's the kind of vibe I get off the book.
What's uh I feel like one of my favorites that you'll appreciate is this one. Oh yeah. So I was gonna talk about this. So you make whey, and uh you so we had uh yogurt person last week, Homa Dashtaki on, and you know, she makes whey, and I was actually using her whey in a shaken drinks, right? So you using the whey here, and it's you know, it's got a gold bloom picture and the Tyrannosaurus Rex is gonna drink some and it's a blender drink with whey that you make in it called Life Finds a Way.
Life Finds a Way. Uh I actually had a question about this drink because um I know people blend with pineapple all the time, but like I always tend to under ice my blender drinks so that they're not too tall to keep as much backbone in as possible. But the problem of under icing when you're doing something like pineapple or something like whey is that it foams up it gets too frothy. So like is it just that I need to just just suck it up and throw enough ice in the blender? Yeah.
Also depends on the ice you have. You know, if you're using like the the larger, like I have the half moons from my ice ice machine, yeah, versus like this cubes or whatever. I feel like it's and also the blender, it's like I I didn't worry about that too much when I was speaking. It just sort of works. I think if you I think it's I think it's it's better to use like more ice than less.
It is because it can't froth up as much. So it's whey, it's a boatload of whey, and then rum, creme de cacao, and mango. You're a lunatic. Yeah. You're you're isn't it that crazy.
I mean, no, but yeah. I was trying to make something Costa Rican because the island and we gotta get these questions in for you. And uh by the way, uh also I'll say we have two minutes, don't worry. Uh I'll say that uh there's plenty of non-alcoholic uh drinks in here as well. It's like 13% non-alcoholic.
I like how you give it as an AV. Something like that. Yeah. Uh Droogie says, For JDB, uh, where would you recommend somebody start learning how to make pear non alcoholic cocktails? Is it easy to get into without having to buy expensive non-alcoholic spirits and the like?
Yes, that's a good question. Uh the spirits are great, but they're also they're all very specific, so it's hard to like call for a recipe that works for a lot of them. I would suggest getting a book called Good Drinks by Julia Bainbridge. And it the recipes are a challenging, but it's from an inspiration standpoint, they are great. And then you can sort of get used to that and start to like get the idea of how it works because it's a totally different structural ball game with non alk versus elk.
It really is. Yeah. Uh from Delicious Spear, uh, does anyone have experience making floral infusion syrups? I live near several groves of wild plums. The blossoms of which I'd like to turn into a syrup or cordial.
I see some recipes call for steeping the flowers first in hot water. A lot of infusions in this book, by the way, including prunes, and then you use the prunes as a garnish. Then adding sugar over bamery while other recipes call for making the simple syrup first and adding the flowers to infuse. Would you expect a difference between these? Are they mostly interchangeable?
I I'm passing to you. We'll come back to it because I don't have time to go as a into that as I want. Now, lastly, uh for you know, for you today, Casey High Smith, who's a food historian, you should check out her Instagram. Yeah. It's good.
Uh not explicitly cocktail, but I'm curious about the cocktail flavors of wine coolers. I remember my grandparents drinking these in South Texas back when I was a kid in the 90s, probably early 90s, because they were on the down trail in the in the 90s. St. Ides. Well, see, like real wine coolers like Bartle and James, everything in the 90s switched to malt beverages.
Right, right. So uh, how did these come to be? So what happened was there was oceans of wine in California in the 80s because there was a huge glut. And uh the California cooler was the first one, and they bought up a bunch of like Thompson Sea Less like grape wine that was stored in tanks and mixed it with fruit and it just exploded. And then because that exploded, then places like Ernest Julia Gallo, which is who made Bartles and James, thank you for your support.
Remember those guys? Yep. But then by the time you get to the 90s, that that wine glut was gone, and because the taxes increased on wine, everything switched to malt beverage, and then it just became like all these crazy flavors like you have now. Strawberry, which is good. Yeah, it used to just be like wine and some fruit.
Yeah. But I don't I you know, like, did you ever consume that stuff? Yeah. But it also has a huge negative, a huge negative connotation in the 90s because that's when people started worrying about our, you know, like candy cigarettes and things for kids. You know what I mean?
And obviously, wine coolers are they're not difficult to drink. They're not not for kids. Yeah, they're not not for kids. But now they're kind of back. Trader Joe's, they basically those things they sell in champagne bottles are wine coolers.
Yeah, it's true. It is. Yeah. Yeah. You ever try one of those?
No. Why am I so resistant? I'm also resistant to hard cider. Because I don't I don't believe it's a word. I don't like it's like I don't believe it's a word.
Like it's a cider or it's just not real. No, but yeah, not hard cider, hard uh seltzer. Oh, yeah, hard seltzers gross. I don't believe it's a thing. I haven't had one that I find delicious yet.
Yeah. Yeah, there's some bad ones. All right. So next week we have M Matt Sartwell getting your questions for classics in the feed field. Meanwhile, we have this new classic in the field, saved by the Bellini.
Thanks for coming on, JDB, as usual. Cooking issues.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.