Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arrow, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City, News Dance Studios. Joined as usual with John behind me. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks.
Yeah, doing well? Yeah. Got Joe rocking the panels. What's up? Hey, hey, hey.
Hey, hey. Hey. No Nastasia the Hammer Lopez today, but we do have a Jackie Molecules in from uh Los Angeles. How you doing? Good.
Jet lagged, but good. Okay. And uh holding down the upper upper left, we have uh Quinn, how you doing? I'm good. Yeah?
That's great. And special guest today, right on what is it? What do you call? Right on the tails of releasing his new book on meat is Chef Jeremy Fox from Los Angeles. So we got Los Angeles in New York, we have LA in LA and one LA missing.
So we're all around. How are you doing? Great. Thanks for having me. Yeah.
So uh this is the period on the show where um where we discuss happenings in the last week. But if I may, oh by the way, uh this is not our normal day, but uh hopefully uh the Patreon people got the message and they know that we're recording on a Monday instead of a Tuesday. Uh calling your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And usually I have John or I have uh Quinn say why you might want to join the Patreon.
But I actually just posted my own calculator today. So those of you that are on the paid subscription on Patreon, uh, and where do you where do you where do you go to for that, John? Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Yeah, uh, so I finally made a calculator where you can enter either the density and the bricks on a refractometer of a liquid, and it'll tell you both the sugar and the alcohol. And or uh you can enter the bottle listed ABV and the bricks or the density, but no one has a refract.
No one has a density meter, not a refractometer. That's not a thing. Nobody has that. So anyway, so like any of you now who are Patreon members, and we're still working out the deal, so let me know uh let me know what works and what doesn't. But any of you out there who are Patreon members can use this calculator and uh go to any liquor on your back bar and figure out how much sugar's in it.
Am I bleeding? No, you're just what? All right. Uh so uh the reason I asked if I'm bleeding is aside from that. Oh, by the way, what else can they get on the Patreon, John?
You get access to our Discord where you get to connect with awesome people like Kevin Young, who just left a message for you, Dave. The eggplant is called Mizunasu. I know I I have it have it on my uh on my thing. Well, we'll get into it. Gotcha.
Um, but yeah, you get uh discounts from uh Kitchen Arts and Letters uh where Jeremy uh just uh signed some books today, and you can get that stuff there. Um yeah, just a whole bunch of other things. So check out patreon.com/slash cooking issues. Yeah. Uh okay, so today, first of all, it's it's not model you, it's real UN week here in New York, which means like everything around Midtown is is a nightmare.
So actually, I left in time to get here, which is unusual, right? I even paid the extra money to get an electric city bike so that I could like really hoof it over here. Zipping down um, what is that? Zipping down First Avenue, coming up first avenue. Right, there's a bike line.
It's green. For those of you that have never been to New York, we have green bike lanes, right? Poof, going up First Avenue, zipping up towards Rock Center. I see about a block distant liquid on the ground, and then a tiny, one of those little freaking like piece of mojado caution signs draped over the pipeline that is going across, you know, the the the tube that's going across the thing. So I assume then the liquid looks kind of reddish.
I assume they're power washing something, and that's why they have that hose, and then you know, it's water. I assume it's water, right? So I hit the brakes, and then as soon as I enter the puddle, I realize, guess what? It's oil. It's oil.
So I still have the brakes on. So of course, instantly my back end slides out from underneath me. I go flying. I land on my feet miraculously and then slip and fall and smack into the pavement because of course it's oil. Then the freaking people who are spilling oil, oil all over New York City streets, right?
And not shutting the not shutting the bike lane down, but just putting a tiny caution sign, right? Saying saying caution, which by the way, hitting the brakes, does that not count as caution, John? Yeah. Yeah. That's caution, right?
That's caution. That's caution. In a bike lane? That's caution. They start yelling at me.
Why didn't you slow down? I was like, I did. That's the problem. I might have gone through this goddamn thing if I hadn't hit the brakes, if I had just gone straight, I probably would have rocketed over it and then maybe skid it out like at least not in the oil puddle. Instead, I'm completely coated in, I smell like you got doused in WD-40.
Have any of you ever worked in a garage before? I smell like the drain pan. I did actually. Yeah, right? I smell like the drain pan.
Like, which isn't unpleasant if you can get away from it, but it's like it's horrifying. Everything I'm wearing is soaked in oil and it's all ruined. Anyway, so they started yelling at me. And so I started yelling at them. I'm like, are you freaking nuts?
I was like, this isn't water. He's like, does it look like water? I'm like, I'm on a bike going down the street. I hit the brakes. Am I supposed to diagnose that just because it's colored in this city where everything is filthy?
That I's supposed to diagnose that this is oil from a bike. Also, so I'm an old man. Well, how do you know what I can see and what I can't see? I'm good enough to bike. What the hell?
So they start yelling at me. So I pick up the freaking uh, you know, the the compost bins that are on the sidewalk. And I'm like, I'm I'm closing the bike lane. You're an idiot. And then they're like, you can't do that.
We need to clean this up. I'm like, you're an idiots. And then they move the things back off. They start yelling at me. They start dropping F bombs on me.
Meanwhile, other bikes are coming, and I'm like, stop. Don't go in this lane. And they go around so they don't spill, so that's good. But then I try to get back on the bike, and of course, my feet don't stay on the pedals anymore. I can barely hold on to the bike.
And in fact, the traction on the bike doesn't work anymore, right? So I can't bike for at least a block until I blast the oil out of the transmission of the bike. And the whole time I'm slipping off the dance, the damn bike. I want to murder, not you, Jeremy. Not anyone in this.
I didn't do anything. But I'm in a murderous frame of mind. You know what they call this? Covered and smothered. Yeah.
You know what they call this though? New York City. Welcome. I'm sorry, Dave. I can't remember that.
I broke my glasses, so. I want to tell what else that happened. Took the wrong bag from the airport and got gout. So those are my uh that's what I've been doing on my uh summer vacation. Yeah, well, you know, I was saying, like, you know, you got a little get a little bit of gout when you come out with the on meat book.
Yeah, especially with the appreciated but high level of fats that you I've been eating sweetbreads and foie gras and anchovies the last few days. Well, so you know, before we get into what everyone else has done this week, why don't you tell us about your wedding terrain? The wedding terrain, yeah. Um it's it's in the book. It has foie gras on it.
We can't actually serve it in um in California, unfortunately. You can still give it away though, right? Can't give it away either. Oh, yeah. It used to be the workaround.
Yeah, like you could charge for a glass of sauteern. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it comes with a free foie gras. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They they they killed that loophole.
Yeah, yeah. But it was um, it's just uh a really rustic terrine. It's based on the Chichuli from um uh Paul Bertoli's cooking by hand. Who wrote the foreword for the book, by the way? Yes, which was a huge treat.
Although he didn't hire you when you first asked him for a job. What the hell is that all about? I think he knew what he was doing. He's a smart guy. I mean, I went on to do a vegetable to do a vegetarian restaurant, so uh yeah, he must have he must have realized something.
But you wanted to work at the butcher at the Fermani. Yeah, he was hiring um in 2007, he was hiring for uh uh head of production. And I think I I assumed that it was gonna be like just a bunch of people in Berkeley on like a big wood wood table making salani, and but it was very it was a USDA facility, so everyone's in like coats and boots up to their knees and stepping in gel before they go in, and it was um uh way outside of my comfort zone. He was the first like chef chef, I think, to do that, right? The first who had like really standardized recipes for uh cured meats, I I I think before the charcuterie book, the rule in uh uh Poulson book came out.
Um cooking by hand was the only thing with a followable recipe to cure anything in the case. Exactly. I mean like the Greeks and everyone loves it, but you couldn't really cure a salami from it. No, that was very much Elizabeth David, like you know, a handful of this and 10 of this. Um I digress.
Wedding wedding terrine. Wedding terrine, yeah. So um when I uh when I got married um to my wife Rachel, who is the co-author on the book with me, um, this was in 2014. Um we didn't cook, I didn't do the food for the wedding. I was smart enough not to do that.
Um being smart, yeah. Yeah, uh Jessica Koslow from Squirrel did our did our dinner, but I made a I made a tureen, um, which is uh that that country, you know, that really uh rustic terrine with the log of foie gras down the middle, and um everyone devoured it. We didn't get to try it, but um my wife has a really soft spot for that. You got your pork, you got your foie gras. What else you want?
But the picture on the next page is green all around the outside, but unless I scanned incorrectly, you didn't green the heck out of the fat in that, right? That is that a different terrine, or is that the terrine you just green the heck out of the fat? That's the terrine, yeah, yeah. Um purity, the some of the solid fat um and some of the the rendered fat with uh with uh parsley. Yeah, looks good.
Looks green. Thank you. You know what the thing is? If you just have big chunks of fat, although I do appreciate that in all of your mortadella style or chunk fat style recipes, you don't just use cubed up fat, you use larda, which is sick move, by the way. Uh but yeah, so like if it's green, people are like, oh, it's green, that's healthy.
I could eat that. Oh, yeah, it's healthy. It's got it's got vegetables in it. Yeah, yeah. You know, by the way, is there anything on earth that can freshen something up faster than parsley?
Lemon zest. Lemon, lemon and parsley and lemon parsley, olive oil. Yeah, it's good stuff. Uh all right, so back to where we're going. Uh, what do you guys got uh over the past uh week?
Anything? I have too much. I mean, well, give us some save it up, save it up, and we'll do it, we'll do it bit by bit. What do you got? He was in China.
Jack was in China recently. Let's maybe let's stick with meat. So the the braised rabbit head, or like you know, the the Chengdu rabbit head. How much meat you getting out of a rabbit? How much meat how many rabbit heads are on the plate?
How many rabbit heads on the plate? The twelve? One. Uh we won. We want one duck head, one rabbit head.
Yeah. Like it's kind of an a la carte place, right? Unless they give you gloves and you gotta work for it. I mean, I mean, you could work all you want. A rabbit head is still the size of a rabbit head, though.
Remember the monkey heads? It's not a full meal. It's like part of the brain, chilled monkey brains. Yeah. All right.
Wait, but is so you're eating the brains. I don't eat brains anymore. I don't mind brains, but you don't see them anymore. There's only so much. As a matter of like spongiform and sapphalopathy, I just stay away from it.
Until they cure all that stuff, until they can figure it out. I don't want to be the next mad cow. You're really smart, so I'm gonna go with what you say there. I'm gonna I might adopt that now. Um I mean they're good.
I don't love them enough to override my you know what I mean? Now, sweetbreads, good. I I suck it up, I get I I get the gout, but I gotta eat sweetbreads. Yeah, get the gout. You gotta get a t-shirt.
Get a t-shirt made. Yeah. Get the gout. Get some money. Yeah.
Is that Trump? Yeah. Get that gout money. Uh so the rabbit head came, you said braised? Yeah, like you know, uh split a bunch of sauce sauces and stuff.
No, no, no, just a whole it's whole. They give you these, they give you gloves and you're just kind of picking at it. I have never been served other than fish. Uh uh, sorry, I'm bleeding. Uh, never uh other than fish been served whole heads, always split, like the couplet cell and stuff like this.
Even bird heads, I've always been served split. I see the draw in this though, because like I always when I cut break down like uh mangoes, I always want to save the the cores and serve those to VIPs to just kind of pick up and eat like corn and lacob. Yeah, it is pleasant to do that. It's the take it takes the right diner to to want that. So here's something.
See whether you like it or whether a lot of people are not necessarily familiar with it. It goes by many names. Mom and see. Did I talk about this last week or two weeks ago? Momancillo, Spanish Limes, and or Kinepes, depending on which culture is growing them.
But they they're lychee-esque, but instead of having like a crisp flesh that comes easily off of the giant seed, it's a thin sour flesh that stays incredibly adhered to the seed. So you have this giant like uh well, which candy is that that's this big? The one that's this big, this round, like the jawbreakers. It's like having a jaw break in your mouth that you're just sucking on for a couple of minutes, getting the thing, and then you spit it into the grass and then you keep going. So I find it pleasurable even though I'm not getting a lot out of it.
And that seems to me like the mango thing, because you get that fiber and that you get to bite on it and pull it. Is that what you like about it? Yeah. It's got that that that primal, you know, experience of you know, maybe what how cavemen ate. Yeah.
Yeah, except for they probably had not good mangoes. Not the yeah. Not the best mangoes. No, not in prehistoric times. Yeah, they were all they were all heat treated so that the fruit flies didn't uh propagate.
So they were all picked under ripe and then killed before they made it to my market. That's how the caveman ate mangoes. I read that. Yeah. Uh all right.
So you had your braised rabbit head, and uh what w uh what was the the spicing on? I'm assuming this is more of a sauce situation than a meat situation, because there's like literally like one tidbit of meat in a rabbit head. Yeah, yeah, true. And I mean, you know, like I said, you have to work hard for it. And you know, the the thing is that what you get to wash it down with is some of that famous warm Chinese beer.
Oh god. Like bootlegging. Yeah, that was one of the things. Because I've had that over there, too. It's not like a sing sau or something.
It's just like unless you specify, especially some of the places that don't have tourists, which this was one of those places, they just don't drink cold beverages. Yeah. So you know what doesn't work though? American style lagers, no matter where they're made, like room tap, just doesn't work for me. I don't think any beer really works.
You don't like those, you don't like that British style of like mildly cool um yeah, that that kind of works. I don't think so either. Jeremy's when you're when you're traveling down a spicy rabbit head, uh you know, warm lager doesn't really hit. No, warm lager, like I say, almost never what I want. Warm water also almost never what I unless it's tea and then it's hot.
Like hot water. Yeah, that's yeah. By the way, exactly. Can I just say for anyone that can hear my voice who is never bathed in like automotive oil like stuff before? So strong in here.
Yeah, listen, for those of you that never done it, it's noticeable. Just don't don't do it. It's like you you can check it off your bucket list before you do it. Just take it off of your bucket list. It just does not something you need to do.
I feel so stoned right now. I feel I feel yeah. My next show is gonna kill you. I feel both high and horrible. I feel both high and horrible.
And like I said, in a little bit of pain. But just open the door. Uh yeah, okay. Yeah. Um, Quinn, what do you got?
You always wait, wait, Jack. You want to do more? You want to do a little bit each week, or you got another dish for me? Yeah, yeah. I'll s I'll save I'll save more for a no guest week.
All right. Quinn, what do you got, man? Uh let's see. I got two things. By the way, before you go, Jeremy has a guanchali recipe.
Hold on a Jeremy has a guanchali recipe in his book. I know you like guanchali, and yours is bundled tightly but not rolled, right? Yeah. And Quinn, like what I forget, you said your uh your uh your loss on it, measure before after is like 30 or 35%. I think you said something in that range of weight off the off the house.
Yeah, I mean I mean Jeremy's. I shoot, I shoot more like oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Now what do you do, Queen? Yeah, I shoot.
I think I yeah, it depends. Some I've gone all the way to 30. Lately I've been pulling more around 25%. Okay. So Jeremy, is yours, because I I like I can't like mentally do the math.
Is that like a relatively dry guan? You like a relatively dry guanchali? Not really. No, it's it's it's kind of the texture of uh maybe a little bit firmer than panchetta than pure panchetta would be, but um you know you can actually start using it fairly after pretty soon after it comes off of uh cure and and hangs, like it it hangs and it just kind of gets a little bit better, still loses some moisture. But um, you know, if you're cooking it, it's still you can you can go ahead and use it.
I don't like it when they turn it into a like a board. I just don't I don't I don't roll it just like I don't roll panchetta just p just uh for uh ease of use because when you're slicing it then when it's rolled and it it's not you know solid frozen, it just starts unraveling and then it's hard to slice, so having it be in uh just a slab makes it makes it easier. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right, Quinn.
What were you gonna say before about what you cooked this week? Well, actually, I I I used some of my guanciali on Friday. I made a risotto, but with the flavor of a matriciana, so tomato, guanciale, a little white wine, and then finished with uh pecorino. It's pretty good. Yeah, good.
Nice. Uh and uh we did pizza on Sunday for my birthday. Oh, yeah, happy birthday. Yeah, yeah. Nice.
And how is how is the pizza? Also guanchali? That's God's pizza is guancially and eggs. You know, we had like eight types of cheese, and then uh three corn line of pizza with a big hit. With everybody, we had some greens, uh homemade sausage, crumble.
Uh yeah, that's pretty good. Uh, speaking of sausage, I was looking, because there's obviously in the on meat book a lot of sausage. Does anyone who eats meat sad when someone hands them merguez? I love merguez. It's so good, right?
So good. It's so good. Yes. That one, I'm I really love the merguez recipe in here. Um I always uh first time I had Merguez was actually like the D'Artagnan brand um burgues, and that's kind of that was kind of the benchmark for me in terms of like uh getting the recipe to taste like that.
Yeah, there was an old French guy who had lived in North Africa for a while, who used to work at the FCI, French Culinary Institute, back when I was there. And like every week or so he would just bang out a big, you know, a bunch of mergues, and everyone was like, yes. Because on French bread. You know, it's also one of those things that can tolerate overcooking a little bit. It's good.
It's a good product. I I'm gonna say this like lamb in sausage form, delicious. Yeah, it's e it's easy to uh control the gaminess, which I mean, I don't mind it, but that's what some people are turned off by. Yeah, speaking of gaminess, you're uh you uh say somewhere near the beginning of the book that you are a uh you're a fat on fat person when possible. Yes.
And you you quote uh, although it wasn't about fat, you quote your boy uh Patterson about uh as as using fat on fat when I say that, I mean like, you know, uh in a kind of non-biblical way, like cooking something in its own fat. I guess it's milk, you're not allowed to do milk and meat, but like uh, you know, cooking like a duck in its own fat, cooking beef in its own fat, et cetera, et cetera. It's reinforcing, reinforcing the flavor and doing everything you can to coax to coax what you want out of it. Yeah. Oh, hey, sorry, John, I skipped you.
What do you got this week? Nothing super exciting, just been dealing with more staffing issues. Oh, everyone loves a staffing issue. That's the worst. But yeah, you know, somebody accepted uh two jobs at the same time, and then after two shifts, decided she didn't want to work with me and went to her other restaurants.
So I thought that was I've never heard of that. That was a classy move. That's gotta feel good for a bunch of reasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great.
It was great. It's gotta feel good personally and professionally. Yeah. I like when people need the spinoff podcast of staffing issues. Yeah.
Speaking of staffing issues, if if you don't want to talk about it, uh, Jeremy, I heard uh I'm sorry because I haven't been, you know, haven't been to your place in LA, but you're uh closing Birdie G's in December. Right. And I happen to know firsthand how hard it is to close any place, but also one that's like named after your family, it sucks. Yeah, I haven't told my daughter yet. Oh man.
Still trying to figure out how to do it. She's nine. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah. Yeah.
Everyone else knows, but but her. Yeah, it's uh uh you know what the worst part for me. She's Bertie G. You know what the the oh, so she's also named after the the your grandma, Gladys? Gladys is her middle name, yeah.
The hardest, one of the hardest things is uh it's never the crew's fault. And then like here's something that people say about people who you know work nowadays, that they don't care about anything anymore, they don't care about business. But I find this not to be the case. I find that like good crew, which I've had the pleasure of only working with good crews, they care very deeply about what they're working on. And they take it personally when it closes.
So the saddest thing is like telling them that it's not, you know, it's not them. You know what I mean? It sucks. I say so. I'm sorry.
Yeah, we made sure to do that. And you know, after the after the meeting, you know, they were people were sad. They they weren't it wasn't about their jobs. It was they were just sad about it, and they were they were hugging me and you know, making sure I was okay. Um and you know, they they want to stay till the end, which is which is which is great.
So it's it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be a nice, nice few months to uh to to keep going. Yeah. Well, anyway, I don't know if I should have brought it up or not, but it just I feel anytime it happens, it I hate it. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I've never I've had restaurants close like after I left, but I've never closed a restaurant. So, you know, look at the the bright side, I'll learn how to close a restaurant. Yeah. Yeah. But look, when things aren't working, they're not working.
You have to take blame out of it. You know what I mean? I blame myself for like the last several years, but I I know that I couldn't have done anything. Right, whether it's money or partnership issues or whatever, like, you know, you have to you can't not blame yourself, but then you have to get away from it. You know what I'm saying?
Right. Anyway, sorry to bring it up. I shouldn't have brought it should have brought it down. And guys, I'm apologize for all the noise in the background. We have to keep the door open because I smell so much like a turpentine factory right now that I don't even yeah, sorry.
Okay. So by the way, you might be interested to know, folks, that I for craps for just for giggles, I decided to go on Chat GPT and ask it if there were any questions that I should ask Jeremy. And it it, by the way, almost nothing good. Great. Just like, so I'm not gonna ask any of those questions, but I will just throw these out there for what people said.
It was like Chat GPT is so here's the thing like it can do pretty complicated, weird things, you know what I mean? But then when you ask it for good questions, it's like, what's and this is actually not a bad question. What's the worst chef hack you see on social? But like anyone could ask that of anyone. What does that have to do with you?
Nothing. You know what I'm saying? It gave me almost no questions. It's not personalized. It's not personalized.
It is a good question. No. Although you are outspoken in favor of this chef press, which I've never used. Is it really worth all the money for them? They have the different weights and stuff?
I think so. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, I've used them forever. And um uh the uh the inventor, Bruce Hill, who's been a chef in San Francisco for a long time.
He he's the one who I s who I started seeing doing Hoshigaki every fall. Um, and he went really deep into it. So that's that kind of inspired me to try it out. Speaking about it, you you talk about a love affair with this make me love the persimmon because I just can't get myself to care enough about persimmons. Well, you gotta it's I tell people it's a lot of work to make something that tastes like a date already tastes like.
But it was a COVID project. You know, we it was it was fall of of 2020 and we couldn't have people in the restaurant. So I was like, I'm gonna do a small batch. Like I there wasn't a lot I could control, but I was like, maybe this, you know, I can I can coax and and nurture and take care of these things. So I did like a hundred um and they came out great.
You know, I would massage them. Yeah, yeah, tell people the general process. You take unripe uh Hachia persimmons. You can also do uh fuyus as well, but um traditionally it's hachias, the ones that you have to wait till they get soft to to eat or else they're too astringent. Um but you get them in unripe, peel them.
Um then you uh we we uh hang them from the ceiling and we do 1500 to 2000. They're everywhere in the restaurant, the dining room, the PDR in front of the kitchen. Um after about a week, you uh you give them a a really uh gentle massage really quick almost like you're giving someone a you know physical cough turn your head and cough kind of kind of little squeeze um and over time the sugars the sugars kind of break down the they kind of crystallize on the inside and and the outside and kind of forms this like sugar bloom that looks like the the the mold on salami um and yours have like a nice kind of crenellated look around the outside they're not like yeah I don't like to take them too far I like them to still be kind of jammy inside um so like right now on on the on the book tour I'm serving them everywhere I go but we have like last year's uh last year's persimmons which came out really good really sweet they didn't get a lot of uh sugar on the outside but um the flavor is really good and the texture is amazing um but yeah we started out with a hundred and then end up doing you know 500 the next year and then a thousand then two thousand and I think now we've got it down to like seven fifty it's hard to keep up with massaging two thousand uh persimmons every day especially if you have other work to do right you don't want to build a little robot massager plus my my tall sous chef left uh uh this last year so it's uh it spends more we have to spend more time on a on the ladder. I hate that because you're not are you one of those people who can jump a ladder. I can't jump a ladder.
They stay on the ladder and they just jump it. I don't do that. I don't do that because I don't like heights. I don't yeah I don't like flying I don't like heights. Yeah no hell no although you tell a fun story here's another thing it's kind of frightening you tell a fun story where was it what restaurant was it where you had to move the comfi back and forth?
Oh yeah, at Anson. Yeah, yeah so it's uh Charleston. Unrelated to Anson Mills, right? No, connected with uh the family who owns um uh Anson and some other restaurants own Anson Mills. Um owns you know, they had a bunch of uh farms that that grew that.
So Dave Robert, um I mean um Yeah, Glenn. Glenn Roberts was uh was the director of operations for the restaurant group um when I was there, and then he started taking on like he he got bit by the bug and he's was you know he's all in on on that. So we had a a mill in the in the restaurant. Mike Lada was the chef who has fig in the ordinary in Charleston, amazing chef. But we were kind of the guinea pigs for Carolina Gold Rice.
Um with uh what was that guy's name? The uh guy from the uh ag extension who was doing all of the uh seed work. Do you remember his name back in the day? Don't remember his name. Don Shields?
I don't think so. He was from anyway, he was from uh South Carolina, like some uh his Clemson, I think Ag Extension guy. Don Shields, no man, I don't know. Anyway, go ahead, sorry. Uh yeah, so that's uh where was I?
Uh and was it the original like real soft Carolina gold? Because I've only cooked it a couple of times. You love it or not love it? Like it. I love it.
I I feel like other people cook it better than I do. Um, but like Sean Brock can cook some amazing rice. Um but yeah, we we had these huge, you know, the uh plaques like the the huge uh aluminum uh rectangle contra uh tubs to hell. Yeah, that were you know had you know 75, 100 duck legs in it and you know, gallons of duck fat, and they it was filled up to to pretty much the top, so you would have to take it out of the oven without tilting it at all, and then walk down the line with it just like dripping on your wrist. And but it was the kind of thing where I wanted to be, I wanted to give it a try and do it, but I also was afraid to.
Yeah, because it's not safe. Right. So uh uh just as a test of the waters, have you seen the Canadian Chef PSA? Have you seen the Canadian job safety PSAs? Possibly.
I've seen some bad ones. So Canada, maybe 15 years ago, did a series of uh PSA PSAs, right? That's it. Where she says she's getting married. Yes.
Yes. You have seen it. Yeah. So I remember playing this for uh all of the students at the FCI once and trying to gauge who thought it was hilariously funny and who is shocked by it. Because I'm a hilariously funny, I think it's hilariously funny.
I'm I'm not easily shocked, but it was I mean, it wasn't graphic, you didn't see anything, but you can put yourself in her shoes and she's carrying a giant thing. It's not like confies, it's deeper, but in a giant stock pot. And much like what happened to me this morning, there was oil all over the ground that was not cleaned up. Probably much hotter than confit oil, because this was like drained deep fryer oil. Yeah, so she goes much like I did this morning, shoop.
But if you look closely in the PSA, her head, back of her head, like hits the wall door if she's going down, and then she dumps the pot all over herself. Again, half the people, hilarious. I'm in that category because I know it's fake. Mm-hmm. Half the people shocked.
And people are like, why are you showing us this? I'm like, workplace safety, man. Happens. Workplace safety. You do have to be safe.
I saw a guy the other day like shatter an entire rack of glasses at the eater event I was working this weekend. And I was like, this is why you don't wear open-toe shoes. There's this there's a thing that I see cooks do all the time that drives me crazy where they're cutting something big and they have, you know, their hand on the tip of the blade as they're pushing through. And I've seen people just slice their hand, like put a towel there, put a towel there, don't do that. Or going too fast with the mandolin.
Oh yeah, because you're gonna nick yourself eventually. But on the other hand, the guards are pain. Yeah. I mean no one uses it. Everyone throws them away when they when you get it.
Yeah. We we got my dad a bunch of um water gloves. Yeah, but then you don't have the dexterity. I mean, that's the problem. When you're doing fine work on a on a mandolin, you want maximum dexterity.
This is why the best move is to just eat the nubbin. But if you're doing too many, you can't eat them all, you know, at home anyway. I guess you could stockpot them in a restaurant. Oh, speaking of confie, I noticed a couple of things about your comfi recipe. One, when you're curing them, you don't let them get wet.
You keep them dry. You keep you keep your curing legs. I think it's overnight. You do overnight, right? You don't do more than overnight.
Overnight. Right. Don't you hate modern comfy recipes that are under salted? They're not real. Especially, yeah, I don't know, especially poultry.
Um, especially duck, if it's not if it's not cured, if it's not seasoned, it's it's just meaning it's like anything. It's it's just not good. Yeah. Anyway, so you cure it, but you cure it and let it drip during the cure because you really want it dry before it goes in the oil. And you think that that does that help more just that how do you how do you think it how do you think that's a meaningful step?
Because I noticed it. And also wrap that into your comfy question, because I think comfy's important. Um you cover it even though you cover it in fat. And I'm wondering w what the difference. I understand covering a pan to stop evaporation, but my impression was as soon as it's completely covered in fat, it might as well have a lid on it.
So speak, speak to it. Let me know. Well, I s I still find that they that they want to um uh they want to rise. They don't they're they they'll as especially as they cook, they'll come to the top um and then they won't be submerged. Um so I do uh I do a part a parchment, whether it's a round or or square, um, cartouche um on top to keep it submerged, uh and then foil to um keep everything in.
So what about I know why it's a bad idea to put a rack directly on the meat because it might stick to the skin, but what about the cartouche and then like a cooling rack? You think that would be a good idea? Definitely keep it submerged or is that too much? Sometimes uh actually when I when I poach things like the mortadella, um I'll have it in a deep uh a six-inch hotel pan of water with a rack on the bottom, then the logs of of mortadella, then a perforated, like a um a two-inch perforated hotel pan on top uh that weighs it down and then a lid, so I I can you know stick a probe thermometer through the perforated holes uh to get the temperature. So here's a here's a a trick.
Uh I I noticed that you're a fan of rolling things tightly in plastic, as all good people are. This is something that we used to do at the FCI all the day. But here's a a hack I learned from uh Erve Molavere, who is a chef that the FCI, he came up with this one. So you do your regular plastic wrap layer, right? Then he did a second thin layer, and in that thin layer, he put a bunch of butter knives.
And then the rolls just went boom, went right to the bottom. So you pick you put a rack in, whatever you're gonna poach off, and then all the rolls just went right to the bottom. You never had to worry about them floating ever. Wow. Smart, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Nice hack. As soon as he as soon as I saw it, I was like, where have you been on my life there, Vay? Yeah, it's always those simple things, Michael.
Yeah. Why didn't I think of that? Right. Because it's like the things that piss you off, food floating when you don't want it to float, it's things like that. Or sticking to the bottom.
Yeah. Either way is bad. It's like uh, yeah, especially like when you're frying things, sticking either not going under the oil, so you have to flip them a bunch of times, and they have that blonde line where it bathed too long on the one side, or sticking to the rack, either of which is a freaking nightmare. Speaking of frying, you have a sorry I'm all over the place, but my brain's a little scrambled with the with the smashing and and the and the oil. But you give a recipe for potato skins.
I have never been able to properly crisp up just the skin. There's always something not as good, but you say your recipe, people like it so much that you say it's paying the bills. So what is the secret to getting a good? I know you rinse the hell out of them, get the rest of the but what's the secret to a delicious crispy? Well, specifically, they I I I joke that they paid for the uh the yearly holiday party.
Um because you know, we would you know, we might make 45 dollars in sales on it a day. Uh and it's something that would have, you know, gone in the trash. But yeah, I just uh just run it under um uh underwater to get all the starch off. And I do a low, a low cook on them. I forget I honestly forget what temperature I do in the book.
Low enough so it doesn't burn. So you do it chip style. Yeah, not French fry style, chip style. Yeah, and and I've also seen people, I don't I don't like it, but I've seen people run hot water over uh whether they're doing potato chips or potato skins, um, so you almost cook them with the water and then they're very blonde, but I I feel like it washes too much flavor off of it. So you are just like my son Dax.
My son Dax, I was doing potato chip tests a couple of years ago, and I was just doing potato chip after potato chip after potato chip, and consistently he would choose completely unwashed ones. So when I'm making chips for him, I chip directly into the oil. So I just make sure the sugar content's not too high and my oil temperature is low enough that I can completely dehydrate them before they burn. And he consistently likes them better. He says they taste more like potatoes.
And you know what? But the really pale, you know, some chefs, it's like a a point of pride to have this like perfectly white pale potato chip, but I just don't think they taste very good. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the thing is like uh if you can somehow get potatoes that have been stored exactly the way you want them, they'll have a low enough sugar content, and then you can just do it without soaking the sugar out.
You know what I'm saying? This brings up a question, maybe that you can answer this. Um because the last few years I've you know, to uh I have a recipe for pickled mustard seeds in the book, but the last few years, they haven't been coming out very good. And and I had a I had a discussion, I we I just did dinner in Philly with um the chef from Iloo, Alex Kemp, and he was like, I I was doing pickled mustard seeds. He was like, Have you had a problem with those?
I was like, Yes. Me too. But not pickled, uh, pressure cooked. They used to work. They used to work.
So I used to pressure cook mustard seeds all the time in like a sugar vinegar mix. All the time. Pressure cook them, they get big, they pop like caviar. And then all of a sudden, I just couldn't make them anymore. They tasted bitter and nasty to me.
I don't know what happened. I thought it was just my taste buds changed as I aged. I thought it was something I was doing. It was like it was something that I could just mindlessly do, and now I just I haven't been able to do it in years. It was part of my standard repertoire.
You'll see in the in the photo, they're not very plump. Ah. What the heck could happen? What is it? Maybe they're old?
Only thing I can think of. This is bizarre. This is bizarre. Someone out there, if you look on the web somewhere, is your recipe for pickled mustard seeds? It's in here.
Yes. I didn't see that. Okay, so look at this. Someone else look at it and tell us what's going on because I want to know. And somewhere on the web, my old pressure cooked mustard seed recipe is there from like, you know, 15 years ago.
Why why aren't they good anymore? I'm so glad I this has been a revelation that I'm not the only one. Yeah. It's been frustrating me for years. Well, it's very frustrating when, first of all, something that you do a lot, all of a sudden you've lost the knack because you know, we all degenerate over time, obviously, but you wouldn't think something like that.
No. And you wouldn't you'd think that somehow your cook's mind could fix it. And it's bizarre, right? Mm-hmm. Wow.
Uh wait, I saw. Oh. I see I can't even. Oh, talk to me about your swarma. You you use someone else's shawarma recipe, but I've never made because I have had people ask me a million times, you got a good recipe for like a shawarma hero meat.
And I'm like, no. But you have one, so why don't you give the gist? Yeah, and this is, you know, the the kind of swarma that you would get. This is more like fast food swarma. And you brick it and slice it, so it's not a rotary situation.
Right. Could you rotary your recipe? Could you make it in a tube and rotary it? Yeah, you can make it in a log and and and and um and and do that. Um it's always been so I worked at this place called Eurowrap Cafe in uh in high school, and I I just I that's my one of my favorite meats.
Like my favorite cut of meat is you know fast casual uh swarma meat. Um good. But you know, I wanted to do it for the book, and then I, you know, I'm from Cleveland, my wife is from Cleveland, and we were back uh visiting. We went to uh this great butcher shop in Ohio City um called Ohio City Provisions, and they had they had a slab of of Euro uh swarma in in the deli case, and he gave me a slice of it, and like I ate it cold, and I was like, this is it. This is literally what I what I want.
So I was like, I'm not I'm not gonna bother coming up with a recipe. You've got it. So I traded him rose petal pie um recipe for uh for the euro. Yeah, talk to me about the rose petal pie because and I saw you mention that as well. What's so rose petal pie?
Is it literally like just sugar and rose petals, or is it actually like a fruit pie with rose petals in it? What's going on? It's a it's a hybrid of two classic Midwestern things. One is stained glass pie, which is uh kind of like a cream set uh jello with with like uh different uh chopped up jellies, like gelays inside gelatins, and then uh something called strawberry pretzel salad, which is like usually done in like a sheet, and it's a pretzel crust with like baked strawberries. So this is um uh in a pretzel crust.
It has uh a raspberry uh rose cream with um gelays of hibiscus, raspberry, and strawberry uh chopped up into it, so it's like a terrazzo uh effect to it. Um it jiggles really nicely. It was it I had a I had a a vision for it, but I didn't know how to make it. But my ex-wife um actually consulted on the desserts for Birdie G's. Uh she was my pastry chef at Manresa in Ubuntu.
Um so I described it to her and she made it, and um it's uh it's it was kind of my attempt to do like an Instagram dish because I've always just had things that were kind of sounds good though. It it is good. It's it's polarizing because some people, rose is something that can turn people off, and some people just don't like jello. Yeah. I think it's people don't like rose, even though they eat all right.
Like that and cilantro and lavender. Yeah, lavender I get. Now pretzel crust, is it just smashed up pretzels? Pretzels and butter. Yeah.
Well, except for probably not as chewy, right? Because uh Turkish delight's real chewy and the jello, hopefully is not not as chewy, but yeah, the rose. But the thing is you didn't you're not using rose water using rose, right? Because rose water, I can see how it's off blitz. There's a little bit of rose water in the um in the the cream that sets the the pie.
Uh and then there's candied roast petals uh kind of chopped up so it looks like they just kind of fell from the sky. You know what I love? Two things I love. I love pretzels and I love pie crusts. Never made a pretzel crust.
How stupid am I? I mean, I think you're pretty smart. Yeah. Maybe not the best bike rider, but yeah, well, uh that was not my fault, man. Telling you.
You're taking the side of those knuckleheads. No, no, no, no. Yeah. Jerks. Oh, uh you have a drink.
I should have put sand down on it. They should have done anything. They they were in the process of quote unquote cleaning it. You know, they're like, oh, we can cardboard. Close the bike lane.
Anyway, you know what I mean? It's like I'm sorry, this is New York City. You don't have time to sit around with your thumb up your behind waiting to clean it up. Close the bike lane instantly. Yeah, moves fast here.
And then for the guy to get mad at me and unclose it after I closed the bike lane so no one else will get hurt. It's like cutting your finger off in the kitchen and then your chef yelling at you for cutting your finger off in the kitchen. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe.
Two things. You have a non standard deviled egg recipe in here that is not a mayonnaise-based filling. It's like uh what is it? It's like it's cream cheese or sour cream. It's got a non standard devil egg with like.
It does have aioli in it. It has d and and in in part of it, yeah. Do you but it's is it cream cheese as well, or is it sour cream? Uh cream cheese. I've never put cream cheese in my devil egg.
Should I start putting cream cheese in my deviled eggs? Yeah, i it helps because the mayonnaise it has a certain lightness to it, but the the the egg when you add the the egg yolks into it, um even more egg yolks than the the hard boiled uh egg yolks, it makes it m really custardy and um more luxurious, I guess is is the word. So you over egg yolk your stuff. I nail it. I mean I mean like you're not.
I go more than most, yeah. You know, do you require more yolks than you do whites? Yes. And then do you have some recipe somewhere? Because I know you're not a waster where you sieve out.
Do you ever do the thing where you press the you press the whites through the sieve and you get the little piled up little pile of egg white? I used to love doing that. Yeah, you know, but then they clump together. But we we um we have a dish on the menu that uh has uh sieved egg on it, so we use that. Yeah.
Yeah. Or like uh I guess you have to you can't I've never cooked yolks separately and had them come out like a hard-boiled egg yolk. Do you ever cook the yolks separately and then use the what? Yeah, right? Why is that?
I always wonder why that doesn't work either. They're shielded. They have the the force field, maybe. Right, but you can't even if you break an egg yolk and then you cook it, it doesn't have the same granular perfect smash up deviled egg texture that you want. Yeah.
Wiley used to do that crap all the time. Um so yeah, they're buffalo deviled eggs. And fun fact for the photo, um I was uh someone had well, someone, I'll take responsibility for it. Someone had burnt all the the chickens, the crispy chicken skin, the crackling that gets uh uh showered on top of it. So I had to do um uh chopped up fried buckwheat.
But it looks like it looks like you know, it it passed the the vision test. Cheater, you're cheater. I like it. Cheated, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, that's right. It's buffalo, so it's stressed out, man. Blue cheese, aioli, cream cheese, and they and the crispy chicken skin sounds good. Hello. That sounds like a good use for the crispy chicken skin.
Whenever, remember back in the early 2000s, everybody would remove the skin and then cook the skin separately, like between pans or in parchment, and then put it back on the chicken. And I never liked it as much as when it was just on the chicken. I prefer, yeah. I don't, it's pretty much the only thing I like the chicken skin. It's kind of like bacon.
Bacon, I'm choosy with what I put with bacon with because it takes over and everything tastes like bacon. And uh the the chicken skin can have that same effect. By the way, for those of you who don't have the book yet, you should go in Kitchen Arts and Letters, and if you're a Patreon member, you should use the Patreon code to get your discount on the book. The very first recipe in the book is a set-aside. And it's be like, I don't want to talk about bacon.
Here's my bacon recipe. Shut up, basically. Basically, yeah. That's what happens. So on your bacon recipe, two things that stuck stuck out were one, you're a skinless bacon man.
Is that because it's gonna get trimmed off anyway, or you don't like the tough thing on the edge, or it's just like the just the way you do it? I actually sometimes I do keep the skin on it. I I find that uh keeping the skin on, I think it does almost help help self-based in a way. So um I'm actually for keeping the skin on. And then you baste it in butter while it's smoking.
What does that do for it? Other than, you know, I'm sure I'm sure you keep the butter. I'm sure the butter's good. Just going for shininess. I have this uh does look like lacquer, by the way.
Yeah, I have this running inside. John, you can look at it. Inside joke with this chef uh Bo Schooler. He has uh restaurant in uh in Juneau. Um, but he does the most shiny glazed uh smoked salmon.
Um and I'm constantly just telling them it needs to be shinier and needs to be shinier. But he he's giving me some tips to get to get it uh to get it shiny, like adding a little bit of gelatin to the like the vinegar and sh and and sugar syrup and um going for glaze, going for that shininess. What restaurants? Next time I'm June, I'll go. In Boca El Lupo.
Okay. In the mouth of the of the fish, I'm assuming, not the or the wolf, in the mouth of the wolf? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Is there's that fish called oh that's just loo.
That's a good fish. I just went up to dinner at my loo the other day. Yeah. Nice. Uh all right.
So, uh, some more things. Give me your scrapple. Cause I I'm not I mean, a lot of us are, but gout aside, scrapple is a delicious thing. You have a I would say a relatively high rent scrapple, right? And so, like, I feel like that's one of those things that Americans just can't wrap their mind around it.
And I I forget, it's yours is uh 100% cornmeal, right? No, no, uh, no oats or anything in it. Right. Okay. Although my grandpa used to like it with with uh oats, and I think actually around your way is where people do that and call it goeta, right?
Around Ohio Way, isn't that like um but uh talk about your talk about your scrapple recipe and why people should be baking more scrapple? Yeah, I mean, everyone loves fried polenta, and that's basically it's fried polenta with just a lot of really good flavor in it. Joe, you got a ding for that? I need a ding for that. That was a ding-ding-ding, like that's it.
You know what I mean? Fried polenta. Fried polenta, planta plus. I've been saying this for years. Do you like it with maple syrup or do you hate it with maple syrup?
Uh I don't mind it with maple syrup. You know, it's like the whole breakfast plate, you know, as you have sausage and other things on the plate, but the you know, the syrup from your pancakes drips into your sausage and it's like perfect. Yeah, yeah. Uh all right. Well, I'm looking for the there's a couple of questions that I think you might be good at that uh Patreon people had uh asked in but while I'm doing that um oh one other thing your chicken your roast chicken which by the way one of the things in the book you say is just cook a bunch of stuff read a bunch of people like like learn don't necessarily take my recipes for for you know where and you you say there's a billion ways to roast a chicken which there are your way happens to be I think in terms of the preseasoning anyway like really good like the the citrus on the inside is a power move citrus and herbs on the inside of a chicken you're gonna roast if you don't do it you're just a moron.
Everyone's like the flavor's not going to go into the chicken you're like it absolutely does. It does yeah it absolutely does but uh you are a high at the beginning and by the way you also say in the very beginning that you're not a high heat type of fellow. So they're like you know we clearly have different cooking styles although at Monersa Kinch used to be high and out in out and out wasn't he? Yes that's that was kind of the a lampessard sort of thing in so yeah you put something in the oven that's what most of the meats I do style. But you talk about a love for a kind of m moderating temperatures uh as you're doing but in the roast chicken it's very high to get the browning going and to flash off because I think most people fail because they uh they it just takes too long for it to start getting the the right tackiness on the outside of this and then and then the thing is they can't get a good skin by the way.
Then they're trying to get it golden after it's cooked and then you just end up overcooking. Yeah nightmare. So uh you do very high heat at the get very high heat for about 15 to 20 minutes. Right. So I forget what temperature you drop it too, but there's got to be some magic temperature where the evaporation rate is enough so the skin doesn't sog on you.
Because that's the problem. When people drop it too low, the skin sogs. Yeah, I usually do two fifty to two seventy five for most. Whenever I'm doing that, that slow in and out. 275 to is is about the what I do.
Let me ask you a question, what you think? Because this is this is a theory. So I think there's a difference between 275 or two, let's say 250, because 250 is right on the edge, right? 250 is right on the edge. I think a lower powered, like let's say a brevel toaster oven, right?
There's a limit of how much water it can evaporate. And so I think a toaster oven might require a slightly higher temperature delta than a big old oven that has a lot of like a lot of space and a lot of stuff to evaporate the water off. Do you think it makes a difference or no? Like the the size of the vessel that it's in. Just the amount of oomph it has, because yeah, the size of the vessel it has in, because I think it's like you're gonna have more of a tendency to sog in a smaller thing unless you have the convection on it.
Yeah, but in a large vessel, if and if it's a good oven that hold that has, you know, consistent temperature throughout however, whatever the size is, uh it's gonna have more air circulation. It's gonna have more there's more room to breathe. Not that it's breathing, it's dead, but you get the idea. You hope it's dead. Uh I also noticed that you're a tie the leg man.
You don't like your legs free, you don't like your chicken legs free? You know what? I'm I'm all for it at home. I I think that's the the restaurant part of me that that's just always what I was shown to to to tie those together and that that's that's what it's supposed to be. Um sometimes it's hard to let go.
But it doesn't it doesn't really affect it. You don't think that like in the armpits it makes it like a little too blonde? Probably. Probably. I might I think I'm uh probably a convert with this now.
Well, if you do it at home, listen, because it's not actually that much work. Well, so what it means is that when you do it at home because that's the way you actually like it. Yeah. I think it also when it isn't trust, when it's cooked, it looks like a dead animal, more of a dead animal, like it's in rigor and it's a little bit different. That's fair.
Also, uh on poultry still, I noticed that you are not a crosshatch on your duck breast where you do do like low and slow and like render it out and take the fat away from it. Now you say you take the fat away, you think it helps it render, but probably also under like doesn't overcook it as much. Because I think, you know, Nils, my Nils Norrin, you know, from Aquavete and Red Rooster and all that was uh, you know, running the French culinary. He was always a hater of the crosshatch because he said it would overcook the meat underneath. But you do a single score, constantly removing the fat as it goes, and then here's the trick, John, you might like this, uses the scores as the slicing marks.
Yep, it's it's your guide to guide to slicing it. Yeah. You remember they ever used to watch The Simpsons where the doctor is trying to get uh Homer Simpson to gain weight so that he doesn't have to so that he can be on disability and he's and he he rubs the paper with the oil and he goes, This is your window to weight gain. I've I have not really seen the Simpsons. I've seen uh maybe a handful of episodes.
Yeah, it's good. That one's good. All right. And since you since you say that you are a brisket head and you do both corned beef and pastrami recipes in here, is there a favorite? Corn beef.
Really? Over pastrami. Yeah. Yeah. Smoked smoked meats, I have to I have to be and uh have to really be in a in the mood for it, or you know, maybe it's like barbecue.
Oh, really? Um I'm a pastrami guy. Yeah. But let me ask you this you have a corned beef hash recipe that you put in a waffle, and the potatoes aren't like the tiny, tiny cube style. They're more they're more strips, right?
Not strips, but shreds. And it's in a waffle iron, living that waffle life, which I appreciate. What about a pastrami hash? Would it work? Yes.
Not too much pepper? No. You like pepper. I like pepper. Yeah.
I love pepper. I know some chefs who don't. Another thing, a question. Sorry, random, but again, I'm high. Uh you like grill pans.
I've never convinced me that a grill pan is not terrible. I don't love grill pans, but um my wife does. All right. Uh I I it every time we use it, we have to open all the windows, it sets the alarm off, the the smoke alarm off because it just creates so much smoke. But um it's it's there as an option if you're not grilling, because I'm not you're not gonna want to set up your grill every night, uh, you know, for every recipe, and I I understand that.
So if you want it to be, you know, have like grill marks, the grill mark grill pan for that, but it doesn't to me it doesn't have any sort of special unique qualities to it. I guess my one of my problems with it is that in order for it to even be close to doing its job, you have to get it hot enough to burn off the seasoning, and then it's gonna rust. Yeah, and then you know, wherever it's not wherever the meat is not in contact directly with the pan, it's creating all this moisture that's rendering from the from the meat and then splattering with all the oil. Yeah. All right.
Now listen, I'm sorry to throw this on you because I didn't give you any uh what's it called? Uh, but you do mention um, which I think is true, and I think more people need to talk about at the intro of the book. One of the things you mentioned, and John has it now, so I can't quote it exactly, is like uh having kind of like a a mental go-to list or like a series of things that you have that you can work with, like building blocks for building ideas, and that all chefs have this, and that they I'm paraphrasing here, but that we all have these kind of you know, like you're saying you pickled mustard seeds, it's just something you have. In fact, the back of the book is all like the larder, like kind of these base recipes to have around so you can make things. So from Math Man asked this question.
Uh okay, trying to keep family fed while having a one-year-old and need some ideas. What are some pre-made sauces, condiments, additions to meals that can be made ahead that helps keep your family fed without resorting to other options that they can just have around all the time? Well, we have we have a pretty significant larder, and on vegetables had a large large larder as well. So there's in this book there's recipes for sungold tomato ketchup, uh stone fruit barbecue sauce, um steak sauce that's kind of a reverse-engineered A1, um, uh tiki sauce, which is kind of like a sticky like Mongolian barbecue uh Polynesian sauce. There's so there's there's a good amount of things in those that um they hold really well.
You can make them in you can make them in a you know a big batch for I guess for home a big batch would be maybe a quart. Yeah, um it'll last forever. It'll last forever, yeah. Yeah, and here's one that you might know the answer to. Now, John is uh Belgian, by the way.
I know you you did a stint in the Bruges. Yeah. Wait, but so what's it so the the what's the town you're in? Dan how do you pronounce the town that that the restaurant was in? I was in Bruges.
Oh, you're in Bruges? Mm-hmm. Oh, I looked it up the restaurant, and it I guess it's a small place. I was looking at it. I don't think it's there anymore.
Oh, maybe a place with the same name is uh maybe Snip. Yeah, it was open north of it. Bruges, Bruges is nice, it ain't no Ghent. I did not go to Ghent. Um there's lots of lots of lace.
Uh it's like the the lace, and it's like the Venice of of Belgium with all the canals. The mustard, man. The mustard in Ghent. I just remember the fries. Fries, and and that's when I started eating them with mayonnaise.
So well, it's just which is God's way. But uh here's the question. Does anyone have a good resource for the Belgian fruit technique in like specifically the time, the temperature, and the fry size? Fry size, I'll give you. It's between three eighths and a half.
Anywhere between those, any Belgian will will be okay with any size between those two things, which is what I don't know what three eighths is, but up to about 12 millimeters. Uh so go so go ahead. What else what else you got? You got some uh really what what sets apart the Belgian method is the double the double uh fry method of uh of low heat and then um and then high heat. So it's usually usually I do 275 on the on the low um on the low heat blanch and then uh 350 to 375 on the the picking up on the final fry.
Yeah. I've been working on it, I mean not for a while, but I was working on it pretty extensively. And I think first of all, the Belgians all use a very specific fry setup. It's like a kettle shape, it's like a bowl. The fryer's like a bowl.
You know what I mean? Almost looks like uh for those of you that ever used to have an old sugar bowl, you know what I'm talking about? A sugar, a sugar cooking bowl. Yeah, or just big vats of of fat. Yeah, and then like a counter that it goes out on afterwards, and then a two-level counter, like so that they can put the different fries in in the different zones where they are.
And they don't do a water blanch. I've always done a water blanch because I don't think I've ever had my oil temperatures low enough. Now, because Dax doesn't want me to wash my fries at all, I basically cut them, put them directly in oil, pretty low for a long time. Like my initial fries now, my initial fry times are up upwards of like 12 minutes. Wow, so really low.
Low, 12 minutes. And then the second fry. But that was so we'll get we'll get uh more more into it uh later. See if I have any other good questions for you. Uh oh.
Kevin, we'll talk about the uh the what's it called? The eggplant. You ever had this eggplant Mizunazu? No. Me either.
But now I've got serious FOMO. This is like it's a variety. Yeah, it's apparently this Japanese eggplant that'll like make us all wish that that's the only eggplant we'd ever had. You want to talk about your Magazine eggplant recipe while I'm sure. Uh so Merguez, uh we do it in coils in the in the book.
And you know, as a side note, every time I post a photo on Instagram of of a sausage in a coil, everyone just keeps commenting that that it looks like uh uh uh a pile of feces. Like it it's a it's ridiculous how many comments do it, but then I see other restaurants do it, and no one ever says a word. Are they meat eaters of people who are saying this to you? Yeah. Yeah.
Who poops like that? I mean, you've got got to have a lot of roughage for sure. But no one poops in a coil. Yeah, I don't know. Even dogs don't poop in a coil.
They're just wrong. They're wrong, yeah. It's just yeah, they're just factually incorrect. All right, one more one more thing because I got 42 seconds left. Um, and I'm not gonna Patreon people, I'll I'll get to your questions next time.
Uh are we are we no tangent next time, John? I bel no, we've got uh KC oil from Dr. Desh. We'll get it going anyway. Listen, chicken Kiev.
You say you grew up with the box frozen chicken Kiev? Yeah. Give me a word on that in the way I've got 24 seconds on your chicken Kiev and the box chicken Kiev. Well, but what's the difference? No, like growing up with it and then making your own recipe.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I ate a lot of frozen food and and fast food growing up, so it was that and the cordon chicken cordon blues that you could put in the oven for 15 minutes and and they were, you know, I didn't know what what these things were, that they had like a history, but those things were just synonymous with growing up in the Midwest, you know, in a single mother household. East Coast too, man. East Coast too. Anyway, Jeremy, thanks so much for coming on.
Sorry I got you high. Come back anytime. Yeah. Cooking issues. Thanks for having me.
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