Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking YouTube's coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New Stance Studios, New York City. Join as usual with uh John behind me. How you doing? Doing great things.
Yeah? Yeah, people? Yeah. Not lying to me? No, not lying.
Yeah. Actually good day. Sweet. All right. Got Joe Rock in the panels.
How are you doing, Joe? I'm doing well. Great to see everyone. Everyone's in a great mood today. Yeah?
Yeah. Nice. All right. In Vancouver Island, in the way upper, upper, upper left-hand corner, we have Quinn. How you doing, Quinn?
My mood is just okay. Why is your mood just okay? Aren't you feeling better? Aren't you aren't you? Are you just trying to be on this on?
Appointment day. Yeah. Everyone loves an appointment day. And then in Los Angeles, we have uh is Nastasia with you today, Jack. Yeah.
Yeah, we got Nastasia the Hammer Lopez and Jack Jack Molecules. How you doing? I'm good. Freshly back from Japan, finally. Oh yeah.
I mean, he's literally freshly back from Japan. Oh, yeah. Anyway. Uh, and I'm super delighted to have. So uh again, we're we're going to the new style where we all shoot the breeze together as a group.
Uh uh glad to have JJ Johnson, who's here to talk about his brand new book, The Simple Art of Rice. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, everybody. Yeah, well, it's a super pleasure to have you.
Uh you haven't been on the show before, right? Now it's my first time. It's a shame. I have a restaurant here in Rockefeller Center. In Rock Center?
Yeah, right downstairs. Field trips there. I didn't know you had a branch here. Yes, I do. So your restaurant field trip uh up in Harlem.
I didn't know you had a branch here. What's it like have you had the same was that where you were having the problem with the rationale? Uh no, that was at a different location. Uh yeah. Yeah.
You know, I I I have never And it wasn't rationale, let's not give them to give them heat in the streets. Uh yeah, or not heat as the case may be. So before we get on, we uh we came on, you know, it was the standard, like uh, you know, people who cook uh commiserating over crappy equipment, not crappy equipment, but crappy service to equipment. So it wasn't rationale is a different combi oven. You want to tell them what happened?
Yeah, we opened our location right in front of uh Columbia University, 114th in Broway, was running for two weeks, and all of a sudden the combi oven started saying gas pressure issues. Going back to the company, had them come, they blame the plumber. The plumber then blamed them. Then they said call Con Ed, tell them to turn the gas pressure up. You can't just call Con Ed and tell him it's not.
Con Ed to shut the gas down. And then they come to find out the machine had its own regulator that's supposed to regulate the gas pressure, but they told us to put a right told the plumber to put a regulator on the other side of the combi. Right. And that regulator blew out the other regulator. Yeah, because it was choking it.
Correct. So they had to replace the to they had to replace their own $25,000 combi oven, which they didn't want to do. Yeah, so so for those of you that like don't use professional equipment, the way so like a home oven, you just attach that to gas and you're good to go. But like 99% of all commercial stoves, right? Ovens and stoves, you put a separate like regulator.
It looks kind of like a flying saucer. Yep. And you can see it. You know what I mean? Because it's like the the bit, and we use big old pipes.
We're not using that little pipe that you guys have at home. We get a big old pipe of gas coming out because they want to maintain a very even accurate pressure up to the oven. So it's a big pipe coming in, and then they regulate it right before it goes into your equipment. And you actually have a separate regulator for each piece of equipment, and each piece of equipment sometimes has a slightly different regulation, but apparently, the person who sold you their own piece of equipment didn't know. Didn't know that whoever made your not rationale, but whoever made your combi oven already put a regulator in it.
And you can't double regulate because you drop a certain PSI each time you go. But this is the crazy part. So they come to take out the combi, put a new one in, and they go, hey guys, what do you want us to do with this combi we're taking out? We're like, I don't know. He's like, What is yours?
Oh, I'm like, I can fix it for you. Should we keep this big old piece of combi oven? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They have the combi oven for us. I gotta figure out what to do with it.
Yeah. You gonna fix it? Oh, hell yeah. Oh, great, I'm gonna call you after this. Yeah.
Well, if the electronics aren't toast, right? So if it's just a regulator, you could replace that. The problem with a lot of let's just assume it's European. I don't know. Let's just assume it's European.
So German. German. Okay. It's German, but it's not rational. So we're we're we're we're we're digging down into where so um some of the problem, like for instance, uh, with uh Paco jets, right?
So we'll just pick on the Swiss for a minute. When you open up uh one of those uh Paco jets, none of the parts inside are standard. Like, yeah. So then you have to like do a little bit of hunting. Like I have a German fridge and it's a pain.
But once you find the actual part numbers and you can get them, then you can just swap that thing out. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean I don't want to build I want to build more restaurants, but I don't want to be in control of construction anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been beat up way too much.
But that's a big piece of uh equipment, yeah. Yeah. I gotta, yeah, maybe I'll tell we'll talk. Or yeah, or if you don't want to make it, I'm sure there's someone listening here who'll be like, you know what? I'm I'm that knucklehead who has more time than good sense, and I'm gonna fix that and like, you know, right, you know, make some sort of deal with you or something.
You know what I mean? Uh all right. So uh we started right into that when we didn't get a chance to shoot the breeze. I'm like, has it have any of you had anything over the past week in food and or beverage that was uh interesting or uh you know you want to talk about? So, Dave, in Japan, I ended up having um whale sashimi whale bacon is what they called it, and then horse sashimi.
Okay, was it smoked? The bacon? The well, the whale meat. Was it smoked or no? Yeah.
No, no, it wasn't. Then it's not bacon. Right? I mean, like, like that's that's all there is. I mean, this is this I'm going off of like a really loose Google translation.
All right. I don't know if they're actually calling it bacon. That might have been the closest English word to what they were trying to say. All right, so so that part of the weirdness, I'm dialing back down. Now let's talk about the fact that it was like whale meat.
Uh yeah. So uh how was that? How was your uh how was your whale? Was it as uh unpleasant as I'm led to believe, or what? No, I thought it was pretty good actually.
How thin was it? It wasn't thin at all. The it was just kind of like chunks. Sounds like a bad price. Yeah.
You ever had any anyone else? Anyone else here ever had the whale? I never had no right. All right. What about a horse?
I hear horse is delicious. Horse is good. The the well, I actually had it two ways. There was a smoked horse that was actually really good. Um, and the horse, the horse sashimi was like a little too much.
Too much kind of in which way, like too like fatty, like muh. Are you a huge tartar guy? Are you a tartar guy in general or no? Like when's all right. So it's I am.
I like raw things. It was just too fatty. Yeah. How thin was the was the horse? Not thin enough.
That's the thing. When I have a raw piece of meat like that, I don't want to like, I'm not like a cave person. I don't want like stringy stuff coming out of my teeth, you know. I want it to be thin. Yeah, that was the issue.
Exactly. Exactly. How about you, JJ? Are you a tartar style of person or no? I love tartar.
Yeah. I love crude, shoshimi. Yeah. But I don't know if I'm eating a horse. I would definitely eat horse.
I hear in Beijing, donkey is like big. I I can see that. You know, I like donkey that live animal, but I also kind of want to eat donkey. It's gotta be tough. I don't know.
Here's delicious. I heard it's delicious. You know? Best meat I ever had that I've only had once or twice was yak. I said that on the air.
It's like yak delicious. Uh so yeah, so whale, don't do it again, I'm assuming you're saying, or you would have the whale again, but you wouldn't have the one kind of horse. It's weird to do generally, right? But like in Japan it is accepted in the world. Was it quite you know, one restaurant that did both?
Yeah, it was one restaurant. No, I wasn't going on a whale flight around. Yeah, yeah. Did they did they wear did they wear a hat that said crap on the world? When you Google translated.
It was like the kind of pla it was like the kind of place that like old men were smoking cigarettes at and they were like watching Japanese sports and shit. But it was like a win and roam kind of thing. I am kind of curious how over a hundred years after the horse has been economically as important as it once was, right? And for you know, obviously, you know, generations and generations and generations, the horse was an important animal for us, not just culturally, but like literally. You know what I mean?
Uh so like I want I don't I wouldn't, I don't I would never order dog because like I wouldn't. I just I just I know it's illogical considering that I eat other animals that are as smart as dog and as and are friendly as dogs, but I just would I just wouldn't enjoy eating a dog, put it that way. But horse, I just don't have that many feelings about I don't know. You wouldn't eat horse shaving? I don't know.
There's just some things out there, like would I before I eat like what I would I eat or would I cook it? Those are two different questions, right? You know, would you eat it, would you cook it? Would you order it? Those are the three qu those are the three questions.
Would I cook it? Would I order it? And if someone handed it to me, would I eat it? Yeah. I mean, like, I'm in Japan, like I don't know if I'm eating horse and whale in Japan.
But what if so, this is the predicament I found myself in when I was traveling in Vietnam. What if you get invited into someone's home and they serve you that kind of ball of wax and we're like that's how I ate dog. Unknowingly, you know, so different ways. Yeah, they didn't tell me. Like, what's the line though?
Like, I don't think like if someone, if someone was like, This is a monkey, I'd be like, Oh no, no, you know what I mean? Like that's sort of what this was because like I said, it was like it's like old place where old men were, and there was no English, no English menus, and they're just kind of randomly pointing at things, and I'm like, oh susume, which is basically I'll have what you would, and then that's just a smart array that comes out. It's a good order, by the way. In general, that's the order. Yeah, I mean, I think we can all agree that that's what you want.
Like, you know, I want whatever one, whatever you're having, that's what I want. You know what I mean? But yeah, right. I hear that uh the most interesting thing that happened to Nastasia Lopez is she's basically shadow dating Pauly Shore right now. She keeps running into him at the coffee shop and whatever.
It's like it's open. It's like it's like Nastasia Lopez takes us to the saddest show, the saddest quote unquote comedy show that's ever been done. And then, like, you know, every time, it's like, oh, you know, the coffee shop happens to be like an hour and a half away from where she lives, I'm sure, right? Just happens to run a Pauly Shore there all the time. You know what I mean?
No, it was two, it was two different coffee shops. So it was weird. Okay. Same town, same, same, same town. Same Los Angeles.
Yeah, but like it's a big place. I think the same neighborhood or what? Uh like West Hollywood, yeah. All right. All right.
Where I live, where I live. You know how many times I've run into Pauly Shore? Zero. Zero. I mean, I almost ran into him when we saw him when we were the three people at that show, that super depressing show that you took us to.
Oh my god. When your crew doubles the audience, it's an issue. You know what I mean? Not of the cooking variety. Yeah.
Uh I mean, look, I'm not anti-Pauli Shore. I'm not, I'm not anti-Polly. I'm not anti-Pauli Shore. He actually just misses, like he just misses, like when he was most popular was when I wasn't really consuming that kind of culture. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Uh yeah. Uh what about any any food? What were you ordering? What okay?
Do you go to a coffee shop because it's got the worst coffee available in the neighborhood? Because I know you. Yes. Yes. Okay, so this is something you must share with Pauly Shore.
You're like, who has who cares the least about the quality of this coffee? I'm gonna go there and get a stale Danish. Mike Close. No, I just got a coffee. Like I just got a coffee and then I sit in work.
Oh, wait, whoa. So you do like you do your coffee and your breakfast pastry in different places. You don't like to, you don't like to double that up? No, I do oatmeal at home. Oatmeal.
I do I do coffee out so that I can sit and work for like a couple hours. You ever uh you ever instead of oatmeal tried like maybe like uh overnight like uh like a rice, like a more of a rice based instead of oatmeal? No, no. Maybe JJ can change your mind on this. Wait, wait.
Did I tell you what I said to him though? No. Oh. I'm curious. I said, hey.
I said, hey, you used to have a nice smile. Oh damn. Wow. Wow. And everyone thinks that that's mean, and it wasn't meant in the nicest way.
What's the what is the nice way? What's the nice way? You used to have a nice smile. Yeah, but okay, what's the nice smile? But someone help me out here.
Did you how did he respond back though? Don't ask me. How did he respond back? Did you smile? He said, Oh, thank you, thank you.
And then, like, yeah. Because he was dissociating. Somehow, somehow I'm depressed even more about it. I don't know. Like, you know what I mean?
It's like, somehow I feel even worse. I don't know if I didn't know that was possible, but thanks. Uh speaking of uh uh next week, uh speaking of next week, we have Han from Cato, uh, where she's doing uh some fabulous non-alk work there. She won uh bartender, what, like best bartender in the universe, 2023 or something like this? How does it work?
Uh, one of the best new bartenders for Punch Mag. All right, right. Punch, uh oh my, I heard a funny story. So yesterday I was doing um I had to do Robert Simonson came out with his like, what is it, like 33rd book this year? Something like that.
He comes out with like literally like the way that like, you know, some people cook dinner, man writes books. Anyway, so like I was in this book and uh on like encyclopedia cocktails. And so, like, because I was in the book, he wrangled me to do cocktails at Porchlight yesterday. I did, for any of you that went to my old bar, Booker in Dax, uh, I did a drink that was on the opening menu uh called First Date, which was with uh Elijah Craig, which I think is still a good, I think it's a good value in in uh bourbon. And uh yeah, yeah.
Your bar was solid. Oh, thanks. Thanks. Um, so anyways, so I did uh that and oh, and we were and then I also did an event for Kampari same day. So I can't really tell, you know, Heaven Hill and Kampari don't really mention them in the same, you know what I'm saying?
You know, you just did though. I did though, yeah. Uh it's the end of old fashioned week, so that's why like uh you know anyway, whatever. So like I was talking about it, and they were saying this is going back to Punch that this guy used to try to break into um so when you sign up for an event, let's say you let's say you're gonna pretend to be a bartender and you're gonna sign up for a bartender outreach program. They're usually limited, right?
Because that's how they work. So it's like and same with chefs when they have chef things, right? Like, you know, these sign up, like I used to do Gohan. Did you ever do any of those old Gohan society things back in the day? I know you're talking about no, but I never did that.
Oh, they were sick. If you could get into that, I got into it because I was working at the French culinary, so like they would like invite me, but then they get like these awesome Japanese chefs to amazing demos with with everything, with fish, and so I used to go. But people would try to weasel their way into it. So this one guy who was trying to weasel his way into one of these events. Like, I don't know if I didn't know this was a thing, but the person who was vetting was looking up like their social accounts to see whether or not they were legit or not.
And this guy was only posting rando stuff and then racist stuff, right? So they were like, the guy was like, where do you work? He's like, I write for punch. He's like, What have you written? He's like, Well, I submit articles to punch.
So, not yeah, so punch, like, I because I was like, he's no way he writes for punch because punch is a legitimate thing. I like punch. Yeah. Legitimate folk. Yeah.
I don't always agree with them, but legitimate folk. Uh, what about you, John? Anything in the world of food? Um, I think I'm gonna be switching up the food menu at Temperance to have it be more Belgian, which I'm kind of excited about. Oh.
So, yeah, thank you. It's gonna be exciting. Going back to your roots. Exactly. Okay, you know what?
You spend all this time being freaking like, you know, like love the Belgian. You you'd love Belgian stuff. Why not be more Belgian? Exactly. So are you gonna you want to buy my waffle iron?
It can be upgraded to 220. I uh it could be upgraded to 220. So if Ray Waffles, Ray Waffles, I told you this, Ray Waffles was extremely sick with the COVID. I have not reached out to him since the pandemic. But if Ray Waffles is still alive, you can convert my waffle iron to 220.
He said he could do it for like 300 bucks. Oh. Ray Waffles. We're trying to get rid of your waffle iron. I have a 90, okay.
So my the my kid, Booker, who still lives with me, doesn't eat waffles. My other son, who's like waffles, is like he's already in college. I have a 90-pound, like, I have God's waffle iron, 90 pounds of it sitting on my counter, eating up space. I don't have a lot of room and I don't make enough waffles to justify owning that waffle iron. Well, would you replace it with a beautiful rice cooker?
I already have a beautiful rice cooker. My rice cooker, though, is 20-something years old. Every once in a while it dies. And so like I unplug it and I put it in like a place of honor and I wait for like a week to see whether or not it'll come back to life. And the two times that I have done it, it has come back to life.
I have like a I have a 20-something-year-old Zoji Rushi, like one of the first like neurofuzzy induction ones. And um the the pot is like the the fake Teflon coating is all coming off. And so it's like, you need to replace that pot. I'm like, nope. It's like a hundred and fifty dollars just replaced a pot, and they haven't made my model in like a million years.
And so like I'm like, you know what? I'm not worried about it. I'm not worried about it. You know what I'm saying? I love that thing.
And I like that you like rice cookers too. Yeah, now I got 10 times. You're cooking rice 10 times. How many of those times is a rice cooker in your real life at home? I'm cooking rice ten times.
You're 10 times. How many of those 10 times are you in a pot on the stove? And how many of those times are you in a rice cooker? Me? Yeah.
I'm probably eight times on the stove, two times in a rice cooker. Really? Yeah. Do you ever cook it in the stove and then use the keep warm in the rice cooker just so that it stays? Yes.
Keep warm on the rice cooker is a genius thing. I I use a lot of things in the keep warm in the rice cooker. Because I have young kids, so it's like pop it there. It's like my holding area. Rice cookers, I love it because it's super versatile.
You can do a lot in there. Are you all what what brand are you? You also Zojirushi or no? I do have a jojirushi. Yeah.
They're good. They're great. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I played around with a lot of rice cookers lately. Like I played around with very cheap $34 rice cookers.
I played around with uh the Korean brand, I can't think of the name right now. Play around with them, great rice cooker. Um but yeah, I've had this one for four years. It's been great. Yeah.
I uh if I was gonna get another one, I don't even know whether it's worthwhile, but I kind of want the one that has like the light pressure setting. I don't even know what I want it for. I don't even know what I want it for. I have no idea, JJ. I just kind of like it's like, oh, you can do that?
And I was like, I want it. You know what I mean? I don't figure out something I can use it for. I don't know. So when I first started um with the the company who makes the I make centrifuges, so the company that makes these centrifuges, the the factory that makes it, they also make some extremely high-end rice cookers.
Like these rice cookers are like, they're not like a couple hundred dollars, like they're like seven, eight hundred dollar rice cookers, but they're not available in the US. And they have like incredible pots, like pots that like you would bring to the table, like just nuts. And I was like, I don't know if it's gonna make the rice any better, and I'm definitely don't have two twenty, so I'm not you know what I mean. Dave is gonna he can convert it to two twenty for you. Yeah.
Well, well, so like I almost considered so get this. So uh oh, so ask you a question about the book. So when you're doing aren't you, which you say you do a lot for your family, uh I forget who in your family really likes the arrangines. Your wife likes the archini. My wife loves aren't chini.
Yeah, yeah. Cause you know why they taste good. That's the thing. Yeah, right. And so you do uh you do a mix of uh mushrooms and goat cheese in with the rice and then a fontina cube in the middle, some bread crumbs in the rice, roll it in breadcrumbs.
Am I good so far? They're great. Okay. So then uh uh but you do a it's not like it's shallow, shallow fry, but it's not a deep fry either. It's kind of like a halfway up the ball fry.
Yeah, and the cast iron. Right. So um is is the advantage of that for you just that you just don't have to use as much oil, or even if you had a deep fryer, would you do it that that way? I think when you're at home, frying makes people nervous. Right.
So my wife is like, okay, the whole house is gonna smell like oil. I love this. How can you make it happen? So the shallow or the semi-shallow fry works. If I had a deep fryer, electric deep fryer on the countertop, I would use it for a lot of things.
Yeah, and just drop those bad boys in and it'd be really quickly. But I do like the way it comes out, rotating them and staying with them on the stove top. Um, and then you don't have too much oil to throw away, or you can use it again for something else. But do you think that the do you think that the the end result is roughly similar when you do it that way versus like let's say you're at work and you're gonna drop it into a deep fryer? Do you have deep fryers at work?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because you know why? They're awesome. I would say that the the great thing about the deep fryers, they're gonna fry evenly around together at the same time. This when you're sh when you're doing the sh the semi-shallow fry, you have to I do the counting method or I put a clock on to make sure I'm frying it evenly on both sides.
Yeah. Um so I would say that's the disadvantage. You know what I whenever I'm even even deep frying, like stuff that floats that's round. I hate it when okay, let's say you're doing something like this, right? And you put it in and the bottom sets, but because it's moist, that the top part that's out of the oil slightly inflates.
Yes. And now I can't flip it over anymore because as soon as you flip it over, it flips right back up the other side again. So then you gotta start using a spoon to the top of it. Is there a way other than just using something to weight it down, which is what I do when I deep fry? I I always have like, you know, like fish racks and I boom, I drop them on top of my stuff to keep them under.
Is there like if I if I spin it before it sets, can I stop that from happening? Is there any way to stop that from happening? Shallow is a good way because it's actually resting on the bottom. It's gonna stay where it's put. Yeah, I was gonna say probably you need less oil.
Yeah. So then when you flip it, it it it can't it can't flip back over. It's just gonna stay right down there and deflate and fry. Yeah. So maybe this is actually a point where the shallow fly fry is actually helping you because you can rotate it unless you have a deep fryer with the with the grate on top, like which is what I a hundred percent of the time do when I'm deep frying.
Do you have 220 in your house? Yeah, I got 220. Okay. If you have 220 in your house, Dave got Dave gave a shoulder shrug, 220, shoulder shrug. If you're gonna do it if you're gonna do it, I don't have 220 because I live in an apartment building that's wired from the 50s and I don't have 220, and I can't have it thousands.
I asked thousands and thousands of dollars. I have to, I have to pay off everyone between me and the main breaker panel to run wires through their house to get to my thing, and plus I have to pay a real electrician to do it because I can't do it myself. Thousands. I can't do it. I didn't say that it was done properly in my New York City apartment.
It's fine, man. It's fine. I'm I'm just you know, whatever. I'm jealous. Whenever I say things, it's because I'm jealous.
But the point is is that you then, if you have 220, I highly recommend you buy the Belgian fryer. Going back to John's thing, because they have a three kilowatt home fryer that's less than like less than 150 dollars on Amazon dot whatever it is, B. Yeah. And you just all you gotta do is chop it off and put it on a US 220 plug, plug it in, and it's the same size as our crappy 1700 watt things that choke. Because I've been testing it because I was before I was working again on my cocktail book, I was working on a cooking book, so I was doing a lot of frying because I my culinary life growing up, I fry.
I'm a frying guy. I've had a deep fryer in my house for 20 years, like a commercial 40-pounder in my house. I had to get rid of it because the hood didn't work as well in my new apartment. So I took it. I for a while I had a place I was.
Oh Dave, he said he was gonna bring he brought you tried to bring the 40-gallon fryer to his New York City apartment. Where what kind of apartment do you live in? Well, I had it. I had it in my apartment. Oh but then I moved apartments and then my extraction wasn't as good.
But basically all I cared about is frying. I gotta come see this. Here's what I did. I bought, well, I don't have it anymore. So I bought my fryer.
I bought my fryer in an auction. Okay. Right. In like 2000, in like two it was before 9-11. All right.
So I bought it like at an auction in a snowstorm, which is a great time to go to a restaurant auction because nobody goes out. The equipment dealers, like that crazy guy, Avi, who always buys the thing that you want, that guy. You know what I mean? Like, and but in auctions, it's you pay now, you take now. Pay now, take now.
Like, no choices. So I I I brought a hand cart with me. And I hand carted it from right by the World Trade Center up to my 38th Street loft. And in a loft, it's easy, right? We were, you know, maybe we were stealing gas.
I tried to get hooked up legit, but whatever. This is before a gas was a thing here. Right. You know what I mean? Anyway, so I hooked it up, and then when I moved to my apartment downtown because my kid was too old to live in a loft anymore, the way we were illegally, uh I my I built a hood, hood in quotes, air quotes.
Not safe. I don't recommend anyone listening build their own hood. And uh yeah, I fried for years and years there, too. I've always built a hood in my kitchen though, like in my apartment, because we live on the wall, it goes to the outside. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it was like I can run this pipe and then cut it in and slide it. Wait, you cut a whole. Do you want to? No, no, no, I didn't do this. I was gonna have somebody do it for me because it was like, I'm tired of smoking out my apartment.
And then I was like, yeah, I'll probably cut this hole. And next thing I know, I have like raccoons rolling in. You know, somebody like who who do you call then? You call the super, like I gotta call back the guy that put it in for me. So this before I had kids and uh you gotta do that.
You gotta do it. You gotta do it. Like, listen, it's like uh no, you just get a little okay. The reason I don't recommend it on the air is because somebody's gonna do something effed up and burn their house down. Yeah, yeah.
Sorry, Dave. I can't allow that. Right. So I I don't, I don't like, especially like the older I get, and the more I realize like how close I've come to like really getting effed up with some of the stuff that I do. I don't recommend it to other people.
But you should totally put a good hood in. Anyway, so get the yeah, get this Belgian fryer because it's three kilowatts instead of 1700, because there's 1700 watt fryers. It's like it's great if you want to make one piece of chicken. Who wants one piece of chicken? Nobody, nobody, and then you have to sit there and put it in a keep warm forever.
Hell with that. Speaking of frying, you know what's something? Every year for the past like 15 years, except for like one or two years, I have to go to New Orleans for this conference, right? Cocktail conference. I've been there a zillion times.
You know what I've never had? Kala's. Oh. So talk to me about it. Like, how did I miss it?
Where should I get it? You know, I I I think it's I think it's one of those things that are lost. So callus is in New Orleans. Um, it's an item that would be eaten for breakfast with your leftover rice and then fried, super delicious, cinnamon, nutmeg, all those flavors in it. And I think everybody when they go to New Orleans or Louisiana, they're like, I gotta get a beignet, I gotta get a beignet.
And they forget about everything else. But I think that's the most beautiful thing with rice, is that rice is so layered in history that you start to learn about places around the world that you never nobody taught you this. And I learned a lot about about callus. Women would have it in their heads and you know, walking around in the morning time, selling it to people going to work, or if you were coming out of the club or doing jazz fests. So I don't I was down there for Essence Festival and I was looking for it and I couldn't find it.
People tell me you you can probably find somebody like really, really early in the morning. Um but I went to Essence Festival like that was that year, like right after the pandemic. I'm sure you could probably get it now, but you gotta get up early, five, probably like 5 a.m. to catch it. Yeah, you know, uh, I don't get the beignets because it's the powdered sugar.
I like it, but then I always inhale when I'm eating them and I choke and then it's all over my clothes because I'm messy. Yes. But the collas don't have that much, they don't it's not like hyper sugar, right? No, no, I mean if you you can put it, you can put some like hit it with a little powder sugar, but you don't have to have the powdered sugar on it. Right.
Crispy outside, soft inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, really good. All right. So that's like that's one I was like, oh man, I feel so stupid.
Uh speaking of that, but that's a long-grained rice, though, right? Mm-hmm. Right. So uh interesting, like um like from the Delta. Yeah.
So some of the like like recipes that I thought were interesting, like you do a so again, the book is Simple Art of Rice. And for those of you that like, why don't you give the pitch on the book since it since you wrote it? The the book's called Simple Art of Rice came out October and September twelfth. And um basically it's it's a book that can help will help you cook rice. It will make your rice life easier.
Oh, I like that. Rice. So it's not, don't think of it as like, oh, I can't make all these chef-driven rice recipes. It's like the book first starts off with like how you cook long grain, how you cook short grain, how you cook medium grain, um, with what my re what my ratio is to rice, water ratio is to rice. And then as you master that, then you can get into these other rice dishes, but they start off pretty easy, everyday rice, you know, um, that takes you all the way to celebrations and dessert.
And the head notes will take you on a journey where that rice is from, the origin, who the people are, why it's delicious. Um, and that's what a lot of the stories do too. We interview people like David Chang, Dr. Jessica Harris, rice researchers, Glenn, Glenn Roberts from Anson Mills, to tell these other stories. So it's not just me telling you that rice is the greatest ingredient.
Right. It's these other people also letting you know, like, oh, I am connected to rice. And it and for me, what the book does, I think it's a thing that can connect us all, right? Rice is that ingredient that can really connect people because it could teach you about um, it could teach you about a region, could teach you about people or history um by just that one rice dish. If it's eating biryani or if it's having purloo or if it's eating gumbo, um, or realizing that wild rice is rice.
Um, all these things. You mean like you eat it like rice? No, it is rice. I mean, it's not the same genus. It's the grass.
Yeah, yeah, it's grass for sure. Yeah. Uh all right. So a couple of things to get out of the way early before I even start talking about um well, I'll say this first. Like uh what I like about it is one of the things I like about it is that um there are like a bunch of recipes for day old rice.
There's a bunch of recipes for like right, in other words, like any time you would use rice or have rice, whether it be already be cooked or not cooked, it's it's there. Like when there are beans, sometimes you're gonna use a canned bean, sometimes you're gonna use a dried bean, and I'm guessing like a lot of times you would let people be a little bit flexible. So it's like it's more about building rice into the way you think about what you're doing and not worrying about having it left over because you know you can use it the next day in X, Y, or Z. Would that be That's great? And I think a lot of people don't realize like they always have leftover rice, and they're like, ah, what am I gonna do with this rice?
I already made my rice dish for the week, but it's like, no, you can make a rice salad, you can put it in your waffles, you could do so much with it, you could drop it in your soup. And that's what we that's what I teach you in the book is like you want to have leftover rice so that you can do more with the rice, and it makes that's why I say it makes your life easier. Because I mean, when I cook rice, I'm cooking two cups or four cups of rice. I always have some leftover that I'm doing something with it the next day or or two days later. Now, question for you.
Uh when you say cup, you mean cup, not a rice cup, cup, cup, real like you at eight ounce cup. Eight ounce cup. Yeah, not like the Zoshi Rushi cup. No. See, my mind has been poisoned by the Zoshi Rushi Corporation to think that a cup is that a cup of water is still a cup of water.
First of all, my mind only thinks in MLs and grams, right? Unfortunately, I've been Europe by folks like him and by working at the French Culinary Institute for years. I mean, it is a better system for cooking. But uh, in terms of rice, I still think of liquid in terms of like cups, but I think of rice cups in terms of that uh, you know, whatever the Japanese measure is. I never really used it.
I kind of was like, okay, whatever this is to decide. And you actually like the finger trick. It makes me so nervous, I will never do it. Why? I don't know.
It works. Try it. Tell me. You you describe what I'm talking about. I mean, that's why I don't, when you're like, do you measure rice?
I'm like, okay, rice doubles in size. Most people don't realize that. And you need a large enough pot or your rice cooker to make sure that the rice can grow. It's gonna grow double that size. So before you put your rice in, if it has enough room to grow double the size of what it is, you're good.
And that's why the finger trick works. So you put the two cups or the four cups in, you put your finger on top of the rice, you bring it to the top of your first knuckle on your on your third finger, and um you put the top on, you let it medium heat, and it'll be good, it'll be ready about 22 minutes. So like I'm like, because whenever I think about it, like okay. You're like, it doesn't matter how big your hands are, I'm like, fine, that's good. I guess it's all like roughly same whatever.
Yeah, anyway. But I'm like, well, if the pan is wider, then like, but then if the pan is wider, you do need more water because more crap's gonna evaporate off the top of the pan. So I don't know. Like, I don't know whether all the variables are actually gonna always add up. And you're telling me just don't worry about it.
Don't worry about it. And maybe that makes my life better in the long run, but I'm not about my life being good. I I don't know. I don't I I have it all written down somewhere. I've done all these things, and I'm just an it just it just again, like I'm not most of the time actually, I am I'm using like uh I'll do like open, I'll do open pot for a long time and reduce flavors down.
Most of the time I'm cooking with stock. Okay. You know, when I'm cooking white rice or brown rice, when I'm using non-flavored rice dishes, I'm usually using whatever the Zoshi Rushi telling me to do. Like a Yeah, I just try to make it. I'm it is a big debate.
During the process of the book, people like recipe testers before they even tested the recipes were like, oh nah, you don't have two to one. Two to one what? Yeah, yeah. No, nobody cooks rice two to one. That is wrong.
You're getting mushy rice. Right. Or you're gonna, or you're gonna the rice is gonna stick together. That's why people don't like the rice when they're eating it, because it's like, why is it why is it sticking to my hand? Why can I throw it against the wall?
You want it to be, for me, I believe rice should be like pearls, it should separate. When you're cooking jasmine, long grain, California grain, Caroline and Gold, uh Delta Rice, Blue Moon, New Jersey rice, whatever it might be. I'm not talking boxed rice here. What about New Jersey rice? Tell me about that.
Oh, Blue Moon was beautiful. It's a I mean, Dan Barber introduced me to Blue Moon. Um, I didn't even know there was a rice far grower in New Jersey. And they are, they're not using the flood method. They're uh they're revitalizing crops.
And the north, the northeast used to grow a lot of rice years ago. And then it stopped. So Hudson Valley, Martha's Vineyard, New Jersey used to grow tons of rice. And then that rice crop kind of started that those that moved into like Arkansas, who produces the most rice in the world. So yeah, really?
Yeah, they put produce the most rice in in the country. No. They even make they even make rice for sake growers. Really? Mm-hmm.
So like they make good rice. No. Oh. So you're saying the sake people are using some. I'm not saying that they are not, but that that method in Arkansas is that flood method.
Right, right, right. Which a lot of people are asking them, a lot of those rice farmers to stop doing that because it's tied to climate change. Like, you know, at Anson Mill, they were pioneering that. Correct. Yeah.
Uh all right. Wait, where was okay? So another thing that you mentioned in your in your rice stuff, and this is another thing that makes me incredibly nervous. And it goes back to like years ago when um what was that? What was uh what was Rich and uh Jeremy's Koji book called again?
Koji Alchemy Alchemy, yeah. Koji alchemy. So Koji Alchemy came out, and uh uh Omansky was on the Jeremy Lansky was on the on, and he's like, Yeah, I cook all of my rice in hotel pans in the oven. And I was like, oh then you have like a you actually like can you actually make as good a rice in the oven as you can in a pot on the stove? Yeah, what rice peel?
Rice philosophers. I don't want to mean like just regular though, like regular rice white, like just make it like rice. I don't know, it just makes me nervous. You like the oven method? We can you could I I mean I do the I think the reason why I included the oven method was like some people cook so much on the on the stovetop, like thinking about Thanksgiving, and you're like, oh my god, I'm gonna make rice, I'm gonna make rice, I'm gonna make rice.
You can uh go to the oven and you can wrap it tight, plastic wrap, aluminum foil, and cooking in the oven. It's something we do have filter when those combi ovens aren't working. Right. Well, listen, I guess my my reac my reaction was because I think I'm pretty sure I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure he comes from a similar like brigade cooking background that you you know come from from, you know, um, you know, education wise, culinary education wise. And if you were taught by, unless it's one of a very few French people.
If you were taught that old French way of like like a lot of water in like a pan in the oven, it's just gonna be an I mean that's just like come on, man. Right? I mean, like, at the at this point It's not my go to method. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it is a method.
Right, right. But I mean, like, yeah, you know what I mean? Like dry on top and wet on the bottom. If you do it wrong. If you do it wrong.
Yeah. But I'm not telling you. I'm not telling you. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that.
Uh all right. So uh what am I missing? Oh, yeah. You grew up in the Poconos. Yes, I grew up in Poconos.
So like Northeast PA. Although, like it's so weird, like you go from Long Island to the Poconos. Those are two separate groups of people, yeah? Very two maybe, yes, two separate groups of people. Yeah, my grandfather was in World War II, and he uh he said he couldn't afford the taxes anymore.
Sold his house really quickly, and that one house became three homes in the Poconos. And we lived, so it was my mom lived with my parents around the corner was my Aunt Lisa and Uncle Donald, and then around the corner was my grandfather and my grandmother. And at her house, at my grandparents' house, my mom would drop us off before she went to work. She was a school teacher, my dad would drive to New York City. I don't know, he was crazy.
Yeah, that's crazy. And um that house was filled with my two great aunts, my grandfather, my grandmother, and they would just cook all day and have a blast. Yeah. And so uh, well, you describe it in the book. I don't I won't spoil it too much, but like until you were seven, you like the family had this like Sunday tradition of dinners with your with your grandma, and then you know, when she passed, you you do you already kind of, I guess she your nickname was fish?
Yeah, my uncle Donald gave me fish. I'm a very good swimmer. Yeah. You still go buy fish with some people at your family? Yes, actually, this weekend I was with some of them, and my uh my uncle's brother was like, fish, what's up?
I was like, oh, what's going on? But you know, everybody has like these kid nicknames. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're still a kid to the adults, it doesn't matter how old you get. You know, I've never had I've had epithets stick to me, but I've never had a nickname stick to me.
Uh it's weird. Anyway, um so for those of you that don't know New York area, right? There are a couple of like well-known, nice places that people would go who are from the New York area. So there's like the upstate New York Catskilly people, there's that like outer Long Island kind of people, and then there's like Poca nose kind of people, and they're like three different directions to go, right? And um, my mom actually wasn't any of those, like she we used to just only go in the summer.
She we would go up to Cape, she was more like a um like coastal kind of, but not Long Island coastal, like more anyway, whatever. So I never went to the Pokemon. You never went to Heart Shape Um Bathtub. No, and like so like, but I grew up watching you know New York TV. And so if for anyone who like grew up watching New York TV back in the day, we we knew about the everyone knew about the Pokenos and beautiful Mount Erie Lodge.
I knew you were going, I knew you were going there. Beautiful Mount Every Lodge. Yeah, uh what it's epic. That song is you ever been? Of course.
My high school's right down the street from it. No way. Yeah, yeah. What was it like? Uh the beautiful Mount Air Lodge.
Yeah, yeah. I was when I when we went, it was towards the end of like the Mount Erie Lodge days. Like when you were a young kid, you knew about Mount Airy Lodge. It's not a place you would go to. I mean, they say Frank Sinatra sang there, like it's freaking crazy.
Um, but then in high school, when we would be done with high school, we'd go there and play basketball or go ice skating. It was a place that's legendary. Now it's a casino. It's it's still it they brought it back. Oh, they did.
Same same building, same all that. Same kind of building. I think they added on to it, took some stuff off. But yeah, they brought it back. There's a casino there now.
I hear some of the bath rooms have heart-shaped tubs, but it was known for. Um, but yeah, we would go there, we would get kicked out as kids. Like after a while, they figure out that we weren't staying there, and then we would get kicked out. Was it like growing up in like vacation land? Like, is it pretty?
Like, so I've been to like Delaware Water Gap area, but I've never like that's different from my life. That's different, yeah. So you gotta go 20 20 minutes more. Like, I lived in the heart, like I lived in Mount Pocono. Many people say this area is the Pocono.
Scranton, Pennsylvania's not the Poconos. Wilkesbury is not the Poconos. Why is Scranton the electric city? Hello. I have no idea.
Sorry for everybody from Scranton. Um the Poconos, you know. Yes, when I grew up there, when I mean that where my parents still live there now, the the street is full, filled with houses of I don't think people are vacationing there. But yeah, I mean, Billy came up on the weekends from Philadelphia. Tommy was from New York Stand Island with the seven dogs that he would roll with.
Uh Tony Cole, like I know every, you know, and you would four-wheel, you would play hoops. Some people were gun owners and they would shoot guns. I mean, I remember my first time shooting a gun as at a young age, coming home telling my parents I shot a gun and my dad went and knocked on that person's door, and I never went back there ever again. Um, but it is a different life, different lifestyle. I think I loved living in the Poconos because it kind of rounded me out.
Like I was very close to nature. Uh I was very close to climate. Also, also you was you couldn't like if you got in trouble, it's because you did something dumb. Um, and you really were close with people because where people where you would hang out were at people's homes. So yeah, you would hang out at Paul Calavito's home or Matthew Davis.
So I talk about in the book, going to his house as a kid and eating Korean rice and it being the best rice that I ever had, and his mom like telling my mother, like, oh, he could come always come over here and eat the rice with us. Um but it was great. I think it's changed though. You know, after 9 11, the Poconos shifted. After the pandemic, it shifted.
I think in five years, like I go there now, there's so many developers there. There's so many indoor water parks. Oh, like that lone wolfy stuff. Yeah, like whatever that's called. Yeah, camelback.
Like I used to work there. Like, you're gonna see a huge change. You're gonna open something out there? I think the o I would. I probably will.
My mom, my mom is like on me about opening a field trip out there. Um I would open up a full service restaurant out there, but there's the liquor license is so hard to get. Like it's county by county. If you own a liquor license, you're going to sell it for like two million dollars. Let me ask you this though.
Like, is it the kind of situation where there you're allowed to like just like pay someone to be your quote unquote partner, and all you're doing is just giving them some like well, that's what a lot of people are trying to do now. They're they're like, okay, hey, I'm and they're putting it in like these develop like the hot they're building hotels so they could have multiple restaurants, and then that person that owns a liquor license is a partner, and that and this is going from generation to extortion. I hate this crap. Yeah, I don't I don't get it either. Um, I said you mentioned field trip.
Why don't we talk about the oh by the way, do you like um you like pictures of cute kids at your restaurant or you hate it? Pictures of cute kids? At your restaurant. I got it. One of our listeners.
Why not? Well, yeah, all right. How about that? This is from Vengroff question for JJ. Uh, what is your preferred method of rinsing rice?
Do you rinse once or twice and call it good? Or do you go on and on until the water is actually crystal clear? It's never crystal clear though. Come on, let's be honest. It's never crystal clear.
No, it's not crystal clear, but until the water's clear. Yeah. And how much do you alter even skip the rinsing process based on how you'll be cooking the rice? P.S. My daughter and I love field trip.
We have been going since you first opened whenever we're uh we don't where we are in or anywhere near Harlem she insist we stop in so there's at your at your I love that listen I I do love when I see the kids show the picture. I d what oh to where? To what? What the hell man it's not a good printo I do love when the kids when the parents come with the kids and the kids are eating Filtrip it makes me believe that the brand will be around for a long time. Like when I see high school kids eating at Filtrip I'm like, ooh, you have field trip or tourist kids in Rock Center eating at Filtrip.
But yes we rinse the rice always except for in the risotto that you say so yeah yeah no risotto sticky rice I tell you to soak overnight if you can but like if you're cooking just call it like steam like not steam rice but a pot of rice I recommend you rinse it so the water looks clear. Yeah I'm that's another one that gives me because okay you do it smart in a colander. Yeah so you can lift it out I do it dumb. And you'd go like this? Yes.
I do it like that sometimes too but when you're in a rush but I think I like I what I'll do is I'll fill up the thing and then I'll swish swish my hand in and then I'll and I'll pour it off but when you do that it's never clear. Do you like the re like the pre-rinse stuff? I don't ever use it. No, there's no such thing as pre-rinse. But you know what I'm talking about?
That's it. If I never use it. I just don't think, like, even if like Char here, I'm gonna ask you a question. Do you eat the pre-rinsed uh the pre-five time wash mixed greens right out the box? Hell no.
Okay. So that's what I want people to understand is like you the rice is grown in the farm. There's dirt, there's transportation. Like, if you don't want to wash it till the water runs clear, it's cool. Just wash it one time and then cook your rice.
Does anybody does anybody think that it's okay to eat those greens out of the bag? Oh, a lot of people do. All right, okay. So you you've just done a you've just done a public service, JJ, because like here's what I want everyone to do. Uh because no matter how long that bag sits in the shelf, it it's there.
It and so like I've opened so many bags of those things, and you smell it, and it's got that little bit of swamp. Yeah. Yeah. So you gotta pick through it, get rid of the swampy ones, wash that off. Come on, right?
I mean, yeah, I mean, I did it with spinach yesterday, cracked it open. I washed it out of like prep cooking. I was like, um, I call it like I'm a prep cook for my kids. Like, and I'm like picking through the spinach that I'm about to saute because it's swampy, and I literally just got it two days ago. Yeah.
Um, so you can't trust it. No, you can't trust it. I mean, so like, you know, we had uh the we had uh the crew from uh you know that show Risky or not, that podcast risky or not? No, it's good. So the the premise of the show is that people ask them, not like they won't tell you is this safe?
Because that's not what they do, but they're like, you know, they're food scientists, right? Uh and so, but they're like, is this risky? Would you eat this or not? And so like I asked them about the greens, they're like, Yeah, it's not risky. But I was like, Yeah, but it's not good.
Hold on, we see this happen every year, though. This is the problem. All of a sudden there's this salmonella outbreak. And they're like, oh my god, where'd it come from? Where'd it come from?
Always in Romaine. It's the it's the romaine or the mixed greens that you that are saying six, seven times, twelve time wash. And it's like, you gotta walk like you gotta wash the the the vegetables. Sean Oliver just covered this on last week tonight on Sunday. No, what do you say?
Did you agree with us? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's it's it's so like I tell people you gotta wash the rice. And I I actually let go of a recipe tester because she was arguing with me during the cooking process that was like, well, the bag doesn't say to rinse the rice. I was like, it doesn't matter what's the recipe, recipes.
Yeah, what are you saying? I'm like, you're not the right person for this job. Thank you very much. Let me ask you uh if you don't want to answer this, don't answer this. But I'm curious because like with the cocktail stuff, I I just make it a billion times, and a lot of the you know, ones I've had like the recipes from bars, right?
So like it's still it's good to get people to make them who aren't bartenders, but whatever. How expensive is it? Because I'm sure there's somebody listening who's gonna have this question how expensive is it to get like recipe tested? Oh, it's crazy. Like, I don't think people really realize how much is a a cookbook or beverage book, how much how many people are involved.
So, like Danica's a co-writer, so it's me and her. There's there was two recipe writers for this book, like to because I really wanted them to be where people can feel comfortable making it at home. Then there was two recipe testers because there's the debate about the water and the rice and the texture. So there's one recipe tester, then once another recipe tester, then there's an there's a co uh copy editor, right? And then there's a bunch of other people.
There's a designer of the book, there's a bunch of other people in between. There's a lot of people. If you put if you want to put out like a really premier book or something very thoughtful, so and you gotta run it like you run a business. You know, I say it all the time. Like, if you have a cookbook deal, it's like being a musical artist.
Like they upfronted you the money. Yeah. Now you gotta figure out how to make the money. Right, but yeah, they're they don't pay for anything, they just upfront the money and then you gotta do the budget and stuff costs more than what somebody told you it was gonna cost and all that. Nightmare.
Uh yeah, but it's like I was like, this is so much money. If someone was on the show, I forget who it was, who did cookbooks, and so she her fan base basically tests for her. I'm like, that's genius. Well, a lot of people do that. They'll tell their their other friends' tests or fan base tests.
Um, I think I don't I don't think she was totally self-funded. We gotta have her back on because I want to see whether she ended up making more money. She self-funded her whole book. And how did you do? I mean, she has a really big fan base and like her book's really pretty.
Like, she's a machine, man. So she came in. I forget the name. It was it was the it was cooking of the Italian islands, all the Italian islands, and it looked gorgeous, right? Gorgeous.
So she hired this, like, because she paid for everything, right? So she hired a photographer, I forget their name, and I was like, and it the book looks like it took months to shoot. Like yours looks like it took months and months to shoot, right? Because it's all different places and different stuff, different food. Uh, you know, you have like illustrations, like it.
So it looks like it took you up, but like uh, I was like, How long is this shoot? She's like, week and a half. I was like, what? Like all over Italy, like a travel book she did in like a week and remember that. Is it that blue book?
Uh the the I don't know. It was really pretty. And the picture's really pretty. And it was self-funded, completely self-funded. Like completely self-funded, self-published.
It's a little pain for like uh what's it called? Things like this, because it's harder to get copies because you don't have like a you know a publisher who's just sending crap out. But you know, but I'm I really want to have her back on the road. I do think a model though for me, not to go off topic here, but on the on the book side or even the TV side or on podcast side is like really getting investors against what you can do. Right.
Like if you're gonna get an investor you say I'm gonna write my book and then you're doing the deal with the cookbook with would McMillan or Flatiron random house like oh the book's done already do you guys want to publish it and how here's the book how much you want to pay me for the book. Right right I think there's a new there's gonna you're I think we're gonna see a lot of that. So you'll see some self-funded stuff that then are getting picked up by by big uh book houses. Yeah I mean she I she did everything including the printing. Wow.
Yeah. So I mean I'm I'm super curious. Also uh we're gonna run out I have a bunch of questions to ask you. Uh so you actually like spores it actually makes sense for rice stuff but I don't like eating like things that I actually want to stab with a spore. Yeah I like I like a sport because the debate about it like what's the best way to eat rice with a fork or with a fork or a spoon.
So spork works. Yeah. Also speaking of debates uh you uh did not wish to get into a fight about uh Joel off rice which I appreciate so instead you went like third part like a different one than than we're doing here. Still didn't save me. Yeah really still getting hollow the Liberians are coming for me.
Really? I have to say that that recipe looks delicious. It's got so much it's got it's got a lot it's like a very very flavor packed I mean I didn't make it but I mean looking at the recipe like very flavor packed recipe so they uh they said I I left out the mixed vegetables. I said it's my style on Joel off. All right so yeah so like uh so I like that you specifically are like I don't want to get into an art and and in fact you you know you say listen like I'm you know you've traveled all over the world you've tasted this stuff all different places you have your own rice culture from growing up and you're like I want to present like kind of this like world as you said earlier I think or maybe it was before we were on air like kind of like like the world of what's kind of possible with with rice and so people are gonna get bent people are just gonna get bent if you don't do their particular thing oh no people people have words like I've been on cookbook tour for a while and recently this past weekend the lady was like oh you make the John the Jean John I was gonna ask you about that oh wow I was like what do you mean because you're supposed to put the aluminum foil on the top of the pan at the end the last 10 minutes I was like but hold on does this anything happen with the cooking method like does it look right does it oh it tastes it tastes good but I want you to I just want to let so like people really come at you and it's cool I think that's what is great about rice that it has a lot of personalities a lot of people a lot of comments yeah when people grow up with stuff they get real bent speaking of that recipe uh so you're referring to uh a Haitian recipe and now I have super hardcore FOMO for this freaking John John mushroom it's hard to get spelled with a D folks DJ uh but like so anybody Haitian I mean yeah but like not I have uh not from a food world not like you know they don't need to be from a food world that's that's the people that know how to get it yeah all right yeah uh no it's really hard to get um that's why we did it with the bouillon cube and it even was that during the recipe shooting it almost didn't make the book because the bouillon cube took forever to come really and we were trying to figure out how to like make the rice this color what can we do?
Do we go get black trumpet mushrooms? What's it taste like to John John? And you don't you don't eat the mushroom, right? It's just in the broth and then pull. Is it right is the texture bad or is it like taste weird?
Or is it like slimy? Like why? Slimy. Yeah, yeah. It tastes great.
It's like very like if you love mushrooms, like mushroomy, lima bean, punch flavor rice that goes with a lot of great things. Um that's like one of those dishes where I talk about like learning about somebody's new culture, because then you'll make the Jean Jean and then you'll be like, okay, so why is it so significant to the Haitian culture? And then you go back and start doing your research, and you're like, oh wow. Yeah. So yeah.
And I've super FOMO on that. I'm gonna get that. I'm gonna get it. How close was the cube and flavor to the to the reel? Uh it's okay.
I would say five out. Like a six. Six? All right. So again.
But you know Haitian people, so you or somebody listening. Yeah. I'm gonna go hit up Merlett, figure out where this stuff is. Anyway, uh, all right, so some more stuff like this. Uh, first of all, I didn't know Pierre had a source he could ship Pierre Chiam.
I didn't know he had a source of the Glabarima rice. You went on a quest to get the glaberum rice. I have serious FOMO. I want some Glabberim rice. Is it everyone wants the Glabberima rice, man?
I have it. Everyone wants it. I have it. I haven't got it since then. Pierre says he can get it, but he lives in San Francisco now, so like no, he's everybody wants it.
Everybody wants it. How good is it? It's good. It's like very starchy, nutty, rice. You could feel when you touch it, you're like, oh, this is this feels pure.
I want the glaverine. And it was like we washed, we didn't wash it for five to the it took a long time for that water to run clear. He took us to Senegal. We didn't have the Glabberima rice. You know what I mean?
Anyway. Uh all right. Another soup, and we're gonna go more FOMO stuff. I can't even pronounce it. The sorghum leaves.
Pronounce that for me. That dish with the sorghum leaves where you with the the Oh, the whi the wake. Wake. Oh my god. So sorghum leaves.
Yes. I never I never cook with these boards. It's another like steep in, get color and flavor, and pull. That recipe is actually also interesting because when you use, like I think I mentioned earlier, like you know, you use canned, use dried. One of the recipes, uh, the tomato goes in at the beginning with the beans when they're dry, but there's baking soda to counteract the acidity of the tomato.
If you leave out the baking soda, that recipe's probably gonna be a pain in the ass behind for you. Yeah. But then on this one, so like that's like a standard like eighth teaspoon. Like I had some old beans in my house I've been cooking. Like they're old and they were stored high in my kitchen, so they're hard.
You know, they're never cooked. You know what I'm talking about? So I use them mainly for refried, even though they're not that kind of bean. But still, I have to add extra baking soda. I do not like the smell of heavy baking soda cooking beans until I neutralize them later.
Anyway, I digress. But the on this recipe with the sorghum, it's more baking soda than with the um other recipes with the dry beans. And I'm wondering whether that's because the sorghum needs more or not. You can pull out the more of the color of the sorghum. Yeah?
Yeah, just it's like active, like reactive moment that helps the sorghum color come out and with the beans. It's kind of like when you make Caribbean rice and peas, like you need the you need the bean juice, that pinkness to make the rice pink. Um that's what this does in the wake. And the wake is like hill rice in Ghana. Do I need to have do I need I need to try this rice?
Oh my god. That's another FOMO. And then some more FOMO. Golden Mountain sauce. What's Golden Mountain sauce?
I've never had Golden Mountain sauce. What is this? John, have you ever had Golden Mountain sauce? No, I've never even heard of it. We gotta get the book to know about the Golden Mountain sauce.
Oh man. And another one uh from Costa Rica uh in the Galapinto, uh, Lozano sauce. What's that all about? Oh, lasagna, you never had lasagna sauce? No, I never had lasagna.
You, John? No. Come on, hook me up. What is it about? It's like a tomato spicy-ish kind of sauce.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's good. Yeah, it's really good. You might use it as a condiment.
All right. It's not hard to find. You could get it. You just can't get it. Like, you gotta think about the grocery stores you don't shop in anymore.
Like the Sea Towns. Yeah. They'll have those sauces. They'll have those things on the shelf. Yeah, my sea town.
Like Whole Foods ain't having that lasano. Are they gonna cut they're gonna cut us off soon? Okay. You don't love okra, which is funny, but you do cook it because you have to. Yes.
All right. But you don't like the sliminess. I don't like the slimess. And but your gumbo is okra, not filet. Yes, because you know when you uh put go when you put okra in gumbo, it comes from Mississippi.
All right. And they don't use filet in Mississippi? And your grandpa is from the border. From the border, yeah. All right.
Uh but they're gonna cut me off and I have more to ask you. Salt, you don't like adding salt to the rice if it's plain, but obviously if it's one with a stock or something, it's got in it. But you really think it takes that much longer, or do you really think the texture's that different? The salt in the water slows the cooking process down. But do you think it also changes the texture?
You kind of. Yeah. Uh when you're making your uh the chowal uh roti, it's like a rice dough, but it's with long grain rice. How's it is that dough it makes it seem like the dough is gonna be hard to come together. Does it come together easy or no?
It comes together. You gotta press it. Because it's fully cooked and then needed hot. Exactly. But it's an easy-to-do recipe.
It's easy to do. All right, I'm gonna do that. Do it with the kids. You didn't do anything, all right. I didn't do a lot of rices, so you probably wouldn't ask me why I didn't do it.
No, no, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that to you. Your your TV gen, no gedge. Do you don't have any like no sort of fermented geggy stuff in it? You didn't uh I didn't want to add anything fermented to it.
I wanted people to feel comfortable making it. And then they can then branch off and learn about more of it. Because I love all that fermenty stuff in there. That stuff is great. Alright, I was just a curious.
I had to ask you about that. Talk to me about uh I don't even know how to pronounce this in Afrikaans, yield rice the with the sugar in it while it's cooking. Oh, yeah, South African yield was it good? It's great. You got that from a you know what?
Don't I like them in your book, you're like, I learned I learned this from like the family meal at a restaurant where I was cooking. Yeah rice always rice at every family meal in a restaurant is delicious. You know that yeah man I wish I had time to talk to you about freaking champarado and bico oh I'll say this uh it's not so much a question as a as a as a statement uh cheese rice grits yes yes yes I saw that recipe was that's the chili oil you had on the side I did chili on the side you know what that looks what'd it look it looks delicious I was like that is a smart move I wanna make cheese rice grits anyway uh I hope you had an okay time I had a lot more questions to ask you I didn't get to because I'm slow and I uh go around but anyway JJ Johnson the book is simple art of rice if you're a Patreon supporter please buy from Kitchen Arts and Letters and get the Patreon discount uh we love those folks and we'll be back next week with more cooking issues
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