Hello and welcome to Cooking News. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the Heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City, News Dance Studios. Joined as usual with John. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks.
Great, great. Got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels. What's up? Hey, hey, hey, welcome. Welcome, yeah.
Welcome to everyone. We are a California list today. I think maybe the entire state of California with Jackie Molecules and Nastasia the Hammer Lopez has maybe finally cracked off and floated off into the Pacific because they're not here today. But in the upper left-hand corner corner, we know Vancouver and Vancouver Island is still here. So we got we got Quinn.
How you doing? Yeah, right at the Vancouver Island already cracked off. Yeah, but only a little bit. Only a little bit. Like you can still like telephone across from it.
You can get like a light plane or a ferry from the from the mainland over there. Yeah. It's a nice ferry. It's a weird little place, Vancouver. Island.
You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. And Nanaimo. Yeah. Anyway.
Uh all right. And uh today's special guest uh is Joshua McFadden, whose new book, Six Seasons of Pasta, A New Way with Everyone's Favorite Food. Speaking of everyone's favorite food, it's a shame Nastasia's not here because pasta is literally her favorite food. I mean, you can say everyone's favorite food, but I mean it's Nastasia's little favorite food. Because at one period in my life I didn't make pasta at least three times a week.
She said that I hated pasta. She's like, You hate pasta? I'm like, what are you talking about? I love pasta. She's like, you don't make it three times a week.
I'm like, that doesn't mean I don't What That's amazing. I love that. Yeah. And of course, she had that pasta restaurant with uh Mark Ladner, who you call out in your uh pasta flyer. Let me ask you a question.
You put your acknowledgments at the end of the book. What's up with that instead of the beginning? Like, what's the theory of operation? Uh asked the publisher that one. Oh, that wasn't uh you you weren't like one of those like strong feelings one way or the other?
No, not necessarily. It's always kind of the I've done three with them, so it's always just kind of been at the end. Yeah. But I hear what you're saying, because the whole thing is kind of like a a tome to Ladner in a way. I told him that when I saw him when I gave him one when at Babbo last time I was here.
Did you I haven't been for the reopening? I haven't been. I th I'm hoping to go on Thursday, but you just went when they were hooking it all up. Yeah. Yeah.
Now he was figuring it all out. That restaurant, what was there when it was it did it go totally dark for a while? You know, I asked the same thing. I said, What was it? And he goes, It was Baba.
And it was really funny. And then I had dinner with him later that same week, and I asked him more in depth, and he's like, Well, it's been there since basically like James Beard himself lived like right next door. And he was really good friends with the actual original owner. So they went way back and kind of looked at the old historical menus from the beginning and kind of went that direction. And now he's like the master of ceremony out in the middle of the dining room, which is incredible.
Oh yeah. No. He has like 30-day ministroni where he's like making a pesto and cutting the lasagna out. He's making it for next month now. Exactly.
For the holidays. And he's got like lasagna that he's doing out on the table. It's really cool. Yeah, high-end sandbagging concepts. I'll let him know that.
For those of you that don't know, uh it's one of the all-time my favorite restaurant terms, sandbagging. And if you don't know what we're talking about, like whenever you have a flood or perhaps you're about to get shot at by an enemy, you just take a whole bunch of bags of sand, which either can stop water or bullets, I guess, and you just stick them up in front of you for protection. And uh in restaurant parlance, it just means get a boat ton of prep done so you don't have to worry about it later. So, like when your prep person is going on vacation for two weeks, they tend to over sandbag and then the stuff you end up losing like a whole bunch of product that they've sandbagged, and because you're not used to sandbagging that particular product, it goes bad because it wasn't stored right. They're like, What do you mean?
We always keep this in the walk-in. Yeah, not for two weeks, jerk. Yeah, you know what I mean. Hey, listen, I think the art of the whole thing, right, is figuring out what you can do that to and what you can't. You know what I mean?
Sure, sure. Uh you know, Andre Sultner, rest in peace, you know, you know, one of the kitchen gods, uh, ran Lutes. You knew that he was in the restaurant because it was open. You know, uh I love that. Yeah.
But he once said to me, he's like, I bought fresh every day. That's like, as I because I was asking him about vacuuming, because like you know, he, you know, Lutes was still going great guns when the Trogo brothers were doing all of their nonsense. And so I asked him if he ever considered getting a vac vacuum machine, not for and he only associated it with sandbagging. So he's like, no, I do not do when I buy fresh every day. I'm like, okay, chef, you didn't talk quite like that.
Similar, but not quite. Close. Close. Buys the best, waste nothing. Alzatian Mafia.
The Alzatian food mafia is so strong. You know what I mean? You got your uh Sultner, you got your JG. You know, the Alzatians, you know, you think it's because they got taken over so many times. Is that why the Belgians are so good?
I suppose. No? I don't know. No. No?
No, I don't think so. All right. Yeah. I happen to actually like German qu uh cooking. So the mixture of German and French to me is like good.
Yeah. Especially all that wine right there. Oh, yeah. He always would tell the same story. When he was uh Sultaner again, sorry, when he was uh cooking when he you know wasn't running in the kitchen when he was still, you know, like uh comia or whatever the heck he was.
Even younger when he was apprentice, he would uh I forget where he was, probably somewhere like Lyon, somewhere I don't know. And uh, but he would always have like a giant rondeau with like onions going low because that's what he whenever you would ask him just to make something, he would just get this huge and just millions of onions and just cook them for infinity. Yeah. But he he said oh, but he would just do onion tarts. Because he's Alzatian.
So it's just onion tarts out the ears. You know what I mean? With uh I think most people who make onion tarts now, they do it with a puff paste, right? He was not, he was a short crust man. I love that.
Yeah. Yeah. Short crust man. Yeah. Do you do a do you do a cashmel on the bottom?
I don't. No, I love that though. I um kind of just get a lot of cheese in there. Different cheeses. I did one in my first book that was kind of a a a play on that.
It was it was good. I like that. I love that recipe. I'm a cheat or two. So like what uh the way I'll do it is regardless of the base, it's always uh cheese, cream, and eggs, and then I fold it in with the onions and let it bake into a sauce.
I don't bother making a sauce. Right, right, right. And then I've seen it with crumb fresh as well, right? Well, I don't know. Like a little bit in there, like, what do you do to stop it from breaking?
I don't know. But I've seen it in there. I mean, I don't think it's a lot. I think they actually put it on the bottom of the crust and then put everything on top of it. Huh.
So it's like another added layer. I mean, someday, someday I will try. I used that was one thing I used to make like weekly, onion tarts. Just bang them out in the onion tarts. That's sandbagging for the week, right?
Yeah, right. Meal prep. Well, it was also like at for some reason I don't know why. It was like the party thing of choice. It's like, uh, party, onion tarts.
Because they it doesn't matter. Hot, cold, doesn't matter. They're so good though. I mean, especially this time of year. It's a good holiday.
I think I need to make one now because of this. Yeah, and well, and back then I didn't have the now, I'm so lazy that like it's easy to cook onions to perfection because I have that freaking control freak, so I can just put the onions in, walk away from them, and never have to worry about it. That's interesting. That's a good point. You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, whatever. Like, you know, an hour and a half onion's not a problem for me anymore. I used to be like a 22-minute onion guy. 22 minutes.
That's the maximum I had in my heart to sit around and look at some onions on a on a stove to hell with this. But now I'm like, I don't have brilliant. You know what I mean? Yep. Uh, but back to what he so he used to put, he used to put cooking wine.
It must have been terrible because it was boiling because it was like sitting in, he would put it in the rondeau so that the chef couldn't see it, and then out of the thing. Oh my gosh. Looney voons, man. That's rich. I remember once I went uh to some cooking school in Portland, actually.
What was the name of the big uh cooking school that was uh Lee Corn Blue, the Western Culinary Institute? Yeah, and they didn't trust their students, so they used salted w uh cooking wine. You ever seen that in a cooking school? Salted cooking wine? That's a real story.
It's a real story. So I went to go taste it to see what it was like. I was like, what the hell is this? I was like, I was like, listen, folks, I can I can afford like you know, the wine to drink. I'm not trying to get high off your supply here, but this is wretched.
You know what I mean? It's just a horror show. Oh, that's amazing. I've never heard that. That's brilliant.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, uh speaking of salt, before we get into the weekend review, which is what we normally do at the beginning of the show. I noticed you, much like you know, many actual chefs, like probably Mark and Wiley, never use salted butter. Except for you call out salted birat, because you say when you're gonna have like a uh a higher grade of butter, get that, but you wouldn't use that for eating, you wouldn't use that for eating. Do you buy salted butter for eating?
Like when you're saying eating, though, like adding into something like that. I mean, like I'm gonna have bread. Oh, yeah, 1,000%. Yeah, salt. Yes, one thousand percent.
Because it's better than salt, it's better than wiping butter. Yeah, salted butter. Yes. Yeah, okay, fine. All right.
So, but I'm just too lazy to stock too, and I know I'm gonna add a boat ton of salt to everything I make anyway. Right, right, right, right. But Wiley gets so bent, he looks in my fridge, and you know, I've got like four pounds of like salted butter, and they why don't you get the unsalted? I was like, cuz man. What's your favorite butter of choice?
Oh, to eat. Yeah. Uh uh, Beppiocino's uh Italian, it's not cultured, which is weird, but it's just so good. The cream is just so good. Eatily stocks it, uh, but um it there's two suppliers that bring it in.
Um I used to buy it at DiPalos because I buy everything at DiPalos that I can buy at Di Polo's, but uh he would always airship that in. So when, you know, once the prices went up and like he wasn't pulling air shipments of the peppy Occino, because they make the testum, which when the chestnut leaves, which is oh sick cheese, you know what I mean? But he just hasn't had the butter in a while, but it's such good butter. What about domestic butter? I don't know much about domestic butter.
What do you like? I love organic valley. Really? I've not had it. Yeah.
Is that a cultured or a sweet? Uh it's sweet. Uh, but they do have cultured, I think, every once in a while when they do like a grass-fed special in the springtime. It's actually really an amazing company, really cool story. Like real deal co-op.
They have farms all over the country, and they supply milk and they make butter, and it's the real deal. It's it's like I think one percent less butter fat than uh the Irish one. What's the Irish one that's like? Carrie Kerry Gold, yeah, which everyone loves. What's that?
Is that like because our standard, by the way, for those of you keeping track is 82. Right. So I think that that's 83. And then the organic valley is 82, I believe. It's something something red like that.
Here's the thing, right? But the organic valley is organic and it has a lot of regenerative farming, which the carry gold does not. But it comes in the beautiful gold back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the one with the with the little girl's face on it?
Oh that's also Irish, right? Is it? Isn't it? Anyway. I know what you're talking about, but I don't know the name of that one.
Well, I've never been so hyped on the exact fat content, because like there's are applications where the exact amount of water in your butter does make a difference. Totally. But most of the time when I'm cooking, not really. You know what I mean? But I remember uh who is it?
Uh repair pluga. I like the pluga, but they do not pay me. That's what he said in a uh a talk once. Maybe they pay him now. That was like 15 years ago.
You know what I mean? Like brilliant. But uh yeah, I never bought I never bought. I mean, I'm not gonna spend extra money on supermarket French butter though. Yeah.
Are you? I have a little market called Provador in Portland that I go to and they have got some good butters. But now with tariffs, it's probably gonna be too much. So I have to get a cow and just make my own. The best time to buy French products was this is perverse, but right after 9-11 when everyone was boycotting French products and like no one wanted it.
And like, first of all, at that time, cheese was still cheap anyway, because there the cheese explosion hadn't happened. You know, there was no Instagram, so there were no cheesmongers of Instagram, which there's a documentary out now. Yeah. I think Steve Jenkins had just started pushing burrata, but he was no longer at Fairway every day. So uh we literally get this.
I had to do a photo shoot, I forget what magazine for, where I was their cheese supplier, and I was like, yo, I'm gonna go get some burrata, and they wanted me to work with Steve Jenkins' products because he had been the consultant for the article. So I'm like, fine. So I go up to Fairway and the burrata, it's like oh two or oh three, something like that. The burrata, whoever was storing it, for those of you don't know what brat birata is like a mozzarella with stracciatella on the inside. So it's think of it as mozzarella plus goop on the inside, and you break open almost like one of those gums that has the gusher, like a gusher gum for mozzarella, and you cut it open, it's got the goop.
I actually it what? You're gonna say you don't like it or you do like it. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it, but I'm gonna go ahead and say this.
If you have to buy in advance, just buy the stracciatella. A thousand percent and put that out with your bread, texture's gonna be better when you pull it out of the fridge. I mean, you know what I mean? In my opinion. I agree.
But like uh a fresh burrata is a thing of beauty, right? Oh, yeah. Anyway, oh man, especially especially when you're Italy, just like go in and eat it like an apple and just makes a mess. They turned it upside down in a core container, uh-huh, and all of the liquid from the stracciatella drained out as though they were trying to make like Greek yogurt or something. And I was like, what the hell are you doing?
Is it like punctured itself on the little knot? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So it's got the weird little plastic in the hay that they wrap those things in upside down in a core container. Like, my people.
So then I had to go to DiPalos and been like, Louie, I apologize. I need to buy one of your buratas, but it's gonna say that Steve Jenkins sold it to me. He's like, anyway. I don't know how I got on that. Uh oh, so uh anything interesting happened this week.
When is the when's the pub date on this guy? It was the 30th. It's uh been out for a month and what, 17 days or wherever we're at right now. Yeah, all right. Well, people, it's uh six seasons of pasta.
Uh not actually the follow-up to uh six seasons of vegetables. You had a book in between. I did uh grains, but it wasn't only the one season of grain. Right, yeah. Any season.
Any well, because they only harvest grain the one time. Turns out. It turns out you're not one of those guys who like uh who surfs the the the buckwheat harvest. You ever meet the region to this region, yeah, yeah. Oh my god.
Do you remember in the early 2000s uh when um what's it the Gohan Society would bring in all of these like like awesome Japanese chefs to do demos in New York? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And one of them was some soba nut. And he was literally talking about like almost like surfing the mountain.
He would go like he would he would go plot by plot up the mountain, rolling harvest to get the buckwheat for the soba. And then he showed it. It's such a thing. It's such a thing. And he's cutting, cutting, cutting.
And then you know what he did? He boiled it in a huge pot of unsalted water and then rinsed it. And I'm like, what the hell? Seriously. Seriously.
And I was like, 'cause like I guess in his restaurant, he's got the same pot of soba water going forever, and so it's almost like a s soba solera. But when he was making it here, I was like, you I'm like thinking about like the buckwheat and the altitude and the time of the harvest, and then hey, why don't I wash all that flavor down? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's wild. It's crazy, right?
That is wild. Is there anybody doing soba well now here? I don't know. Probably. Is there?
Yeah. Because it's like one of those things that it's not everywhere. Like how the ramen takeover. It's it's still a thing that's not that much. Obviously, New York must have it, but on the West Coast we don't have much, but there's like one up in Seattle.
Really? Is it good? It was very good, yeah. I I love Soba. I like the knife.
I bought one just to practice. And uh not to say I was good at it, 'cause I was not, but it's like a really when you see them cut the soba, like the turning yourself into a machine that can do soba like just once or twice to get it a feeling for that. Like I couldn't do it for a lifetime. That's very cool. But it's you know, fun.
It is cool. Anyway, so uh so this book's out, and I recommend that uh you buy your cookbooks, including this one, especially if you're a Patreon member and you want to get a discount at Kitchen Arts and Letters. And in fact, Matt Sartwell from Kitchen Arts and Letters is gonna be on next week for your holiday holiday book buying. If you're gonna buy a non uh a non-cookbook, you know, maybe buy it from McNally Jackson here locally. You know what I mean?
But if you were gonna buy a cookbook, you know, gotta go to the always Kitchen Kitchen Arts and Letters. You know what I mean? Absolutely. He's the reason for six seasons. Really?
True story. Yeah, I just told him that when I was up there signing that a couple months ago. Sorry. Um when I first moved here, my first job was at Franny's way back in the day. So it was like 2022.
And I used to go up to Kitchen Arts and Letters all the time, and I kept trying to find something that was similar to a book like this with seasonality, and it was more like English books like River Cottage and obviously River Cafe. Those were great books, by the way. The best, right? All of them, the small ones too. Oh meat, the meat one, they were incredible.
And uh I guess one thing I love about that meat book that I'm sure you liked. The picture of the pig with the dotted lines on it, like a real live thing on the ground with the dotted lines. That book was amazing. Oh, it was so good. Um, but I asked him, I was like, is there anything here that is like seasonal?
Like for this area, because when I just I had moved from the Bay Area, quick stop in Chicago, and then um was here and Franny's was super seasonal and it was amazing, but I go to other places and it wasn't as much, and I found that really interesting. And then um, so I started talking about that, and he didn't have anything. And he's like, Oh, we could uh how about the New Jersey farmers almanac for next year? And you're like, I don't need to know when to plant. And so that literally that kind of always kind of stayed in my head as that idea of like um that's kind of my focus on those things of seasonality.
And then you you you ran with it. I did. I did, I did. Uh oh, speaking of uh seasons, I hear tell on the internets that you like bought a farm or you're renovated. I did, yeah, a 50-acre farm.
So 50 acres, give me a how big is 50? I know how physically big 50 acres is, but what can you do on 50 acres? Like what's a 50 acre farm? Well, I would love to put a 12-acre vineyard, but I don't know if that's in the budget. 12 out of the 50?
Yeah, that'd be really cool because I have a really amazing south-facing slope. That'd be really, really perfect for that. I could also almost have different varieties going up. Yeah, how much longer you plan on living? Well, the whole thing is gonna be an agricultural center that I'm putting in a trust to leave it there forever.
And I wouldn't want to make wine, I'd actually want to make vinegar. Oh. So I would have a whole different idea about it. Um, and right now there's eight acres under agriculture, then there's a flower farmer, and this coming summer we're actually gonna start hopefully building fences and putting in orchards and start thinking about like bringing on animals and guardian dogs and things like that. So it's a very, very big project.
Wait, say the say the fruits again. The fruits? Yeah, fruits. Um not yet. But um new pears.
Are you in the are you in the pear area? Are you near Corvallis or everything? You know, I just this is interesting. All right, I'm glad you brought that up. I um I'm in the Willama Valley, yeah.
Um, I think this year I kind of realized that I think I like pears more than apples. Okay, hold on. That's very strong, but I know, but it's it's the per the perfume and the texture of uh a pear really hit me this year. I don't know why. I mean, obviously I love apples, and I live in like apple country.
You also live in pear country. Right. And so there was just and there's a lot of fruit country, yeah. Yeah, and there's Japanese pears, and I'm obsessed with peaches. I'm convinced it's like the best thing in the world.
Peaches? Peach. Like, what's better than a perfect peach and somewhere? Okay. The nectarine is like a peach with, you know, better acid.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I like fuzzy crack. But it has more texture. I just like the I like the You like the Fuzzy Crab. I like the softness of it, I think.
Uh but back to pears. Uh I had a I had a Japanese pear that just kind of like blew my mind. I have been wanting to visit Corvalis during pear season to visit the um USDA GRN like um repository of pears for decades. And I've never never saw them. It's a really cool little area down there.
And the peaches down there are unbelievable too. Which what's seen? What about what what about the is there what what's the bear give me some berry foam? What's a berry that I you can get there that I can't get elsewhere? The mar the marion berries are pretty wild and not.
There was a farmer out there that used to have josta berries. Yeah. He's not around anymore. Or he's not farming out there anymore. I think he's on the east coast somewhere.
But I remember talking to him about his berries, and he's like, Yeah, no one does this anymore. No one grows berries like this anymore. Marionberry, not related to Mayor Marionberry, right? Right. Yeah.
Amazing, wouldn't it? Um the salmon berries are really amazing. Yeah, Alexander. Yeah, they're really cool. They're um but they're weird, they're variable.
It's like plant to plant. I was just gonna say the same thing. Yeah. They're like mulberries that way. Right, right, right, right, right.
Umberries are amazing too. The trees themselves are just oh yeah. I love the mitten shape, weird leaves. Yeah. Like you can watch them grow.
It's like the zucchini of fruit trees. But with, you know, at least they don't make zucchini. Exactly. You must love zucchini. You wrote a book.
No, really? Yeah, because they suck. They really do. It's like water bags. Hey, speaking of water bags.
Yeah, but before we get into what we've done in the week, they're great fried. Once you get the water out of them. Once you get the water. You know, uh, I used to go so bananas because my mom used to make eggplant. She used to squeeze the bejesus out of them.
We would salt them, layer them on a cutting board on an angle, wait on top. You know what I mean? To try to get all the stuff out of them. And then like I that was so imbued in me that that's the way that you did eggplant that I used to salt them and vacuum bag them to smash all of the air out of them so that they wouldn't absorb any oil. I just don't like absorptive vegetables when they're absorbing.
I've learned to love all forms of eggplant in my later life. Have you ever just fried it, lightly salted it, and then just patted it dry and just deep fried it? No. Stir-fried. Like, similar, but I've never deep fried.
I've never deep fried chunks of Asian style, though, you're acting then you're adding a bunch of flavor to it. It takes on a whole life of its own. That's the only way I've ever the only term. But I I really enjoy that. I think it's really cool.
The one that I tried to do when existing conditions open when we're working with uh Shorty was this prep I had in um in Shenzhen for the first time where they take uh the long, you know, Asian style, Japanese style, longer ones, uh, and you kind of roast them out, then you split them and you lay them flat. Then you hack them up, and then you brush the oil and the flavor in, and then you re you griddle it or grill it, and then the whole thing's like bubbling and the skin gets crispy. Yeah, eggplant's wild. Yeah, it's a really interesting vegetable. It has nothing to do with uh how we got here with zucchini.
No, but do you think a zucchini looks in an eggplant and it's like, oh, it just has to feel bad out there in general, don't you think? I mean, first of all, zucchini not really. I mean, they're the only ones that like people are giving away. Yeah. Like the little signs that say free.
Free zucchini. You know what's weird? That used to be the same with bluefish back in the day. People would give away bluefish, and now people are like, oh, I want the I mean, I always liked bluefish because I'm not a moron. You know what I mean?
But like maybe someday I'll be the morning. You're like, you because we're like, oh, it's a trash vegetable. No, it's someone's gonna figure out the ultimate other than bread, which fine shredded, shredded in bread. There's a good one in here. Yeah.
It's like roofing on uh Stanley Tucci's recipe that it goes off on. You ever met that guy? I have not. I would love to. So uh it's not in your it's not in your vegetable ragu, though, is it?
Um no, they're rusted. Yeah. I don't I don't think so. I think that that one's kind of can vary with all different things, but it's not a primary now. So a lot of meat in this book, but also a lot of vegetarian and vegan restaurants.
And it can be gluten-free actually, because it's all about dried noodles. Oh, by the way, I think you're correct. The corn-based noodles are better than you think they would be. They've actually gotten really good. Why are they so much?
What is it that the do they add corn zine? Like corn protein. I haven't figured that out because I just recently with doing this in the last year, we started talking to people that are like literally can't have regular pasta, so I kept asking them like what's the one? And they kept saying they don't like the ones that have rice. And the c everyone kept saying I like the corn ones now.
It was a yellow corn one I had that was not bad. Right, right, right, right. I was like, I was like, they don't obviously absorb the the the noodle and the condiment as well, but it's still kind of shocking. If you wouldn't if you didn't tell somebody, you could almost pull it off. Like in an interesting way.
The Brad's corn pasta is very good. What's the company? Brad's. I don't know it. It's made here.
Yeah, it's made made here in the States. Uh it's a you can get funded at any grocery store. It has its own, uh it's organic, it's great for children. Is it East Coast brand? East Coast brand.
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah. But my son has allergy to eggs, so we can't have any of that fresh pasta.
Um by the way, book is about dried pasta. So don't go to this book looking for a bunch of fresh pasta recipes. Another reason I wish uh Nastasia was on the show because there's nothing she hates more than fresh pasta. I'm assuming you don't hate it, it's just not about that. No, I love it in dumpling form.
In dumpling form. We had this conversation uh a couple of weeks ago with uh Alex Camp who's on dumplings and noodles. So give me give me the your favorite dumpling format. Do you are your spetzel? I love Spetzel.
That is really good. I mean, I like filled. When I say filled or dumplings, I'm thinking filled. We're going straight to Ravioli, but then also if you're going that way. I don't even think of it as a dumpling because it's like the the um remember going back to Mark.
Um remember the Rakota Nokia Lupa. That thing haunts me. It was so it was like a sausage ragu. Oh no, yes, with tons of black pepper. Wait, what just and they were so big, it was amazing.
They're just like pillows, but it held up really well. What was the lamb ragoo thing he did? That was just a thing that was around a lot, right? I remember um special that was always kind of with like Tagatelli. If you for garganelli.
For listeners, uh I have a thing about gnocchi. I I try block it out because I'm not good at making it, and I don't know why. I can't figure out why. It's really difficult. That's what I'm saying.
It haunts me too. Yeah, yeah. Because I look at that one, I remember like I have that exact recipe, and I remember making it back in the day, and it would always work there. Yeah. But it never works now.
Yeah, it's one of those things I'm like I feel like there would somebody was doing something to the racotta at nighttime. Yeah. Just so you wouldn't know that spoken holes in there. You know, chefs used to do that crap. Like we used to get salt the wine.
Yeah, we used to we used to get chefs who would come in and give us their recipes, and it wouldn't taste right until they came in and fixed it because they wouldn't give you the actual freaking recipe. Sure. Mark's not like that. No, he's not. Not at all.
You know what? Weird, right? Uh all right. Before before we forget, what's uh what's the weekend? What's the week of in review?
I made some just good crispy skinned pork belly last week. Yeah. Um what's your what's your give me give me the give me the Yeah yeah like so low uh score the skalted in the walk in 5050 salt sugar? You want me to loan you the uh you want me to loan you the freaking uh the machine? Oh maybe the Danish the Danish cat claw machine that Kevin gave us.
All right, I'll loan next uh next week I'll bring it. Perfect. All right, right. Awesome. Um 300 to just kind of render out the fat for I think it was like three hours, then uh upped it to four.
Wait, try. Uh had cured it with 5050 salt sugar mix, let it sit in the walk-in for four days. But when you were putting in 300, oh liquid? No, nothing. Dry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um in a half pan, so it's pork belly cut in half. Um yeah, then 425 for like 45 minutes can get all nice and crispy, and it was uh delicious. Bubbly, bubbly, yes. It's gonna have to there was one little soft spot that I had to freshen up with fryer oil.
But what do you think? What's the theory of the baking soda on skin that some people put on it? Because it's gonna make it browner, right? Because it's baking soda, it's gonna make it more alkaline. Do you think it's gonna make it any better?
I don't think it's what about with beans. Oh, well, this makes it softer. Uh, how's your water in Oregon? It's well, I have a wall, so it's pretty hard. Yeah.
So I mean, for you, I could see it. And you know, any any water that's got high calcium, you can add a little little alkalinity to to like nuke it out. But I don't like it. Yeah. The smell of beans cooking with baking soda bothers the hell out of me.
I know it's gonna go away when I correct it. You know, for those of you that don't know, when you do use any sort of alkaline in your beans, as soon as they are done to how you like them, add some freaking acid to that thing so that they don't keep mushing out. Do you agree with this? And olive oil, in my opinion. I I put a lot of really good olive oil in the at the end and kind of mix it in there because it's like liquid gold.
I added early I do both. Okay, both food. Yeah. But like at the end, like when you're like putting it in there, you can just like kind of see it, it's doing something more, and then you're seasoning it more aggressively at the end, right? Yeah, by the way, in the book, uh, you call out uh olive oil, olive oil beginning the end.
This is a theme in the book, and you say what I think is correct, unlike olive oil Nick, Nick Coleman, who uses expensive, crazy fancy olive oil for all things. And you're like, why don't you just get a moderately decent one to use when you're cooking and then a good one for finishing, which I think makes sense. I don't know he just is swimming in olive oil. That's the reason he can do that kind of stuff. You know what I mean?
I agree. I mean, I would like to be able to do that too. Yeah, I mean, who wouldn't? I would like to be able to uh I wish I had an olive trees. Yeah, you know, like uh I remember once, uh remember Ken Ken Oranger, famous chef.
He was doing a soup, and this was uh 2004, 2003 at what restaurant was that in Boston at the time? Clio probably trio or whatever. Anyway, uh it was a soup that was all filled with the most expensive ingredients possible. And I was like, Well, I just wanna just put a freaking shiffon out of hundred dollar bills on top of that thing. You know what I mean?
Like it's like I didn't I didn't get it. Is it garnish? Yeah, yeah. Shuck, shuck, shuck, shuc, shrink. You know what I mean?
I was like, what the hell, dude? You know what I mean? I love it. It's like, we're not, you know, I don't know. Uh okay.
Uh where are we going with that? So beans. Beans. Fajol. Oh, well, first of all, where did you put that?
You you didn't put it in winter, you put it in fall, right? So the theory is is that oh yeah, six seasons of pasta. And the six seasons are, first of all, you start with ragues, I guess, just as a basis for learning slow cook stuff. And then also all the any seasons, which is kind of like the what the mother sauces, if you will, like the cache pepe, matrichana, carbonara. Yeah, which we'll talk about because you do that, you like interesting style on that.
And then the seasons are you got your spring, which you didn't just do a straight, I mean, because they're all this, right? You didn't do a straight primavera, which is kind of a disappointing pasta anyway. Yeah, do you find it the disappointing pasta? Yes, yes. I prefer like the one that's all mashed up with the favas and the asparagus peas.
I I kind of dig back more. But um it's a it is disappointing. That's just an interesting way to put it. I've never thought about it that way. Great word.
Oh, pasta primavera. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? But it's just like going back to the soup idea, like maybe just make minestroni. And then you got three different summers fall and winter, right?
So it's more big because you get more rolling, at least in temperate climates, you get more rolling difference. Although it's interesting, I never thought of beets as early summer. Because I don't think they're both. You know, they're like storage, but uh the sweetness in the spring is really cool. It's kind of like new potatoes and any of that uh business.
That's what we did, at least on the farm. Another thing so that I can before I forget. So I think it's spring. You do an aspar is yes, it's asparagus. You do a hot tuna mac.
Bring in tuna mac back. I'm from Wisconsin. I can't help myself. I love tuna. We had this conversation, I think also, like a couple weeks ago with Alex Camp from Philly.
Yeah, and I was like, yo, I like a I like it. I like a I like a tuna mac salad. Yes. Cold. And I like a hot, I like a hot tuna mac casserole.
Actually, going back to the uh zucchini and summer squatch, we did that in the first book with uh with uh like a a bake. Really? Cheese and tuna. Yeah. Yeah.
Everyone loves it. They're always still talking about it like 10 years later. And uh, you know, you in all of the recipes, not all of them, in many of the recipes, you do, as you say, not quote unquote autentico, but like a 50-50 Parmigiano Reggiano and uh and um uh peccarino. Yeah, pecorino romano mix, and by the way, interestingly, call out the microplane is like nope. Doesn't melt right as as flavor flavor would say.
I didn't melt right, like but like uh well it's true, right? I mean it won't it kind of all of a sudden stick to the bottom of the pan and kind of gum up and just be in one area as opposed to like actually emulsifying in. Yeah, I think it's I think that texture is a little bit of a little bit of a little bit on top, yeah. I love it on top of pasta, I think it's because it fluffs so high. Yeah, yeah.
For a given weight. So you have a gr you have like a very like uh like almost yeah, like old school looking great, like graded mix of a 50-50. Do you have a particular, I mean, there's such a there's a wide range as you point out in Parmigiano quality, but I think even more so in uh pecorino romano. Some of it's just so bad. Some of it is so bad.
It's all like one note. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's I'm always just kind of tasting it and finding new stuff, to be honest. I mean, some are delicious. Yeah, some are really and some of them are a little bit like you can actually kind of peel them up and they're really beautiful and texturally just kind of soft, you know, even looking at them, they're kind of like ready to be eaten.
Um, but yes, to your point, some of them are just even the texture's kind of off. Yeah. It's kind of wild. So, how long do you how long do you uh think uh a graded 50-50 will last in your in your fridge? You know, that's a great question because honestly, um it almost tends to emulsify better when it is has been in the refrigerator a little bit longer because it's kind of dried out, so you're adding moisture back into it in a weird way, which is interesting.
Um I don't know if I've ever like thought about it because I'm always using it so fast, but I don't think I've ever really had any go bad. Right. All right. So it's hard, it's a tough question to answer, but I definitely think like two or three weeks for sure. Oh, yeah?
Yeah, yeah. If if you're letting oxygen into the situation, yeah. And that one more thing before we go into Quinn's gonna say what he did this week, and uh, and then we're gonna hit we're gonna hit some more points in here because fundamentally there's a zillion recipes in here. Um the ones I was uh perused. I think we're gonna go over hopefully some of the ins and outs of the techniques, but you know, very most of them I'd say, like approachable, you could bang them out.
They're bang, you could bang them out. Like and like a lot of ones where you could pick it up and like throw it in your toolkit. And a lot of them where you wreck say where they came from. The craziest one, the loonyest one I saw was you doing an adaptation of which I hadn't read this because I'm ashamed to say I I didn't read the book it was in is Marcella Hazan's. Oh yeah, yeah.
I know you're going with this. Yeah. So John, if you did I mean, here. So take a look. Here's what happens.
He's gonna look at it, he's like, get out, get out, get out. Wait hold on, that's this fucking kale guy. Tell me that. Yeah. Well, but also like a half of an onion in the that's the thing I was gonna think, a half of an onion.
Yeah, that's her recipe. All I did was add the kale. In the sauce. Yeah, with kale. You love kale.
I do love kale, but I in there it's really interesting though, because it takes on this like almost like it tastes like like seaweed. It's really cool. It's really special. I'm not against cooked kale PS. Right.
Just tell you like raw kale. This is why I'm here, right? Do you like raw kale? I love raw kale. What are you gonna do with it?
You know, that little salad that I made a long time ago. Use it as a scrubby? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you massage the hell out of it? I do.
Yeah, well, that makes sense. Chilies, breadcrumbs. That's like cooking. 50-50. That's like cooking.
You can bring out the microplane on that one. Tons of lemon. Is it is it lemon or is it kale at the end of the day? Needing a kale is is akin to cooking it. I would agree.
But like people who if you're just going to cut it and put it with dressing. Sure. Oh, I would totally agree with that. Yeah. Like like Pizza Hut.
Oh man, does Pizza Hut do that? So we were I I knew this fact, but I had to pull it up before the show because I was watching um uh Josh's uh Instagram piece about the set the excuse me about the kale. So Pizza Hut was the largest purchaser of kale in the United States up to the year 2013, buying 44,000 pounds of kale to dress all their salad bars to cover the ice. That's because it's bulletproof. Get out of here.
Yeah, no, I hadn't heard that before. But that's bulletproof. But they don't eat it. Unbelievable. They don't eat it.
They don't eat it. It's bulletproof. I thought you were gonna say scrub cabbage salad at pizza. That was even more confusing. That's just to dress the salad bar.
Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. I need to go. I haven't been to a pizza hut in a long time.
I gotta say, like, as long if you don't think of their pizza as being what you consider to be the pizza that you like, I think it's fine. Yeah, I agree totally. I think they started making a I've made a tavern style one that's actually like the thin crispy one. Really? That everyone really likes.
Everyone did. Speaking of likes, I like the fabric on your on your sweater jacket there. Well, thank you so much. Is it wool? It's kale.
It's kale. It's kale color. It's a light, it's lighter than kale. Kale is dark as dark as death. The uh the spinning kale.
I'll tell you something else. Uh cabbage on a sandwich, shredded cabbage on a sandwich is great. Yes. Like a fried chicken sandwich. Cabbage in general is great.
Oh my god, cabbage is good. I love it. You know what's really good? I don't know what the there's I don't know if there's a term for it, but like whatever micwi would be for curing a cabbage is delicious. Where it's like you have salted it and it's started to go a little bit lactic, but it's not sauerkraut yet.
Is there a term for that? You should see the cabbage recipe in there with the panchetta and the clawburn chilies. Yeah, that one's really good. Do you like the do you like the the the fancy conical cabbage? Yeah, those are really fun to like cut up and then just kind of like sear up like steaks and like actual sauce, and I think that's pretty nice.
Caraflex, right? Uh I never remember. I don't remember the name either. But who is it that loved those? Was that uh was that Alex?
No, it was someone else. Who loved those things? Came in. Susie Cups. Yeah?
Yeah. Um okay. Uh I'll tell you what I did this week. So two weeks ago, I started trying to make uh Westphalian pumper nickel based on the rye baker's book. Uh and so uh in one day instead of in three days because I made it once in the three-day procedure, and I was like, to hell with this, I'm not gonna do that.
And I had a bunch of rye and I needed to clear up a some of my containers because I got a bunch of uh uh white Sonoma in, which is one of my favorite all time wheats. So anyway, so I was like, I'm gonna make more rye. So and I bought a giant pressure cooker to do it. So it's all about the pressure cooker. So instead of cooking for 24 hours, you cook it for I'm now up to about two hours and a half.
Uh because I I made full like um 1.75 kilo loaves of it. So uh the original one I did was I think 70% hydration, and then I did one with a sourdough starter just because the one without a sourdough starter, which is how uh they do it in the rye breakers book, it it molds quickly because there's no acidity to it until it molds. So I did one at like 80 something percent hydration with a sourdough, and it's still all in one day, you know what I mean? Uh and it was too blonde, right? So then I did it.
I figured the high water content made it so that it it wasn't browning as much in the oven. So I fascinated. I knocked it back down to 75, did it for two and a half hours. I bought a giant presto steam canner that's induction friendly. Real friend, because like all of the big ones are all aluminum, but most of them don't have uh an induction plate on the bottom, and within five years, no one's gonna have gas anymore.
They're 10 years, you know what I mean? So I'm like, I'm not gonna buy anything anymore that's not induction friendly. So this one's gotten an induction plate on. So anyway, it came out good. Although, you know what?
All the cheap Pullman pans have holes in the bottom of them now. Why? I don't know. What the hell? You know what I mean?
So then I was worried about moisture getting in, but it was it was fine. They do, yeah. The expensive ones don't. But the you know, the Amazon two two one pound Pullman pans for for like 26 bucks, which is what I went for. Holes.
Interesting. The hell's that about? So I think it's they say it's for release, but I don't need it. You know what it is? It's make it easier for them to mold.
And they turned it from a bug into a feature. It's gotta be. Oh, that makes sense. And they're a little thinner than the good way to look at it, actually. You solved it, you solved it.
Yeah, you know what the other thing is is that but that meant because there was holes in the bottom, I couldn't have them resting in the water. So I had to figure out a way to get it lifted off of this. But the the pan is 23 quarts. Huge. So like I just took uh I took a um one of my like uh Kaiser Bachform rings and stuck that on the bottom and then stuck the trivet on top of it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, floated them uh above the sea of uh tumultuous 15p. By the way, here's another trick. Uh that one has a jiggler weight. I'm a fan of Coon Recon.
Kun Recon has a little pressure thing, and when you want it to go all the way at pressure without leaking or even a little bit higher, you just fold up a kitchen rag, throw it over the valve, and then stick a lid on top of the kitchen rag so that it won't skitter, and you can get another couple of PSI out of it. This one I 3D printed, I took a bunch of like quarter inch heck n hex nuts and 3D printed a holder. Uh uh weighed it so that it would go exactly to 20 PSI before it vented. So now I can make any pressure I want all the way up to 20. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway. That's incredible. That's like your own commercial right now. Yeah, well, you know, that's how I I there's there hasn't been the piece of equipment that I won't modify for my own needs.
I know and wants. Um anyway. Do we have Quinn back or no? No. No.
Someone else is there. Can you hear me? Uh I can hear you, and we have apparently we also have a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Where's the colour, Quinn?
Oh, the caller was Quinn. Oh, well, that's fine. Quinn, you're on the air. What do you got? Uh we actually made uh Joshua's Master Lamon on Monday.
I got my dad the book for his birthday in October. Nice. Wait, so that's the one that's Alfredo adjacent. Although we did use Yes. Did you enjoy it?
Yeah, it was very good. Although we did use all the pecorino because we have some Ontario uh produced pecorino. You're one of those guys, Quinn. You're one of those guys. Recipe, recipe didn't work.
We did all these subs though. One star. I don't know. I can't have butter. Makes me sick.
Come on. One star. You're supposed to use a fresh lemon? I use dehydrated melon melon, uh dehydrated lemon uh crystals. Anyway, yeah, just joking with you, Clint.
Just messing around. Uh I'm glad it's glad it came out. So did your dad like the book? Yeah, he's really liking the book. And then I I almost had local Meyer lemon to use.
Yeah, but that's good because Meyer Lemon's different. Well, how would you adjust the how would you adjust it for my how much acidity for? Well, no, he he recommends Meyer. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, so it doesn't need the extra acidity. I don't think so. Okay. All right. You like the peppery note in that?
I do. Yeah, yeah. By the way, you like a coarsely, you like it cracked, you like you like you smack your pepper rather than grinding it for some of your recipes, right? No, I grind all of it. But you know, you said you coarse, you need to be really coarse.
You said that for the Carbonara. Did you see the uh for the Carbonara? The man kitchen uh I know you you give a number of turns for it. But yeah, but like in the Carbonara one. I want to know your your feelings about that.
I don't know. I bought it for a friend of mine for his wedding. It's incredible. Yeah? It's incredible.
It's the best because you just take it off and you load it quickly, especially if you're in a kitchen, and then um it just does the thing. It works every time. There's not like this fussing. I can go ch and then ratchet it up. It's great.
I believe your words in the Carbonara recipe were coarser than you think. Yes, I would agree. Yeah. Also, first of all, first of all, if you get nothing else from this book, like you are extremely consistent in the way that you make pasta. And I think what's interesting about it is actually it lends itself to any number of portions.
Interestingly, your standard portion size is uh half pound pasta. Uh like a standard make, your standard make. And that's good because a lot of people make for two people, and it's easy to double this up if you can double the price. I really wanted people to understand what it's supposed to be like. Because I think I think the idea that pasta is so simple is so wrong.
It comes, it can go so horribly wrong because you somebody at home doesn't understand like all of a sudden there's like ten people and you're making pasta for ten people and you don't even know how to make it for two. Right, right, right. So I really like the idea of like, well, learn how to make it for two and then keep scaling it up so you understand what it's supposed to taste like, so you know when you're right or wrong. Right, but you also like your recipes could easily be adapted down to one. Like if you wanted to do it like restaurant style where you were just like finishing a little bit, you know what I mean.
There's a lot of repetition in the book. When I talked to the publisher about that before we did it, even with the photos there, try to get it to be just like what it's supposed to look like. Not a lot of pretense in it. It's just like that's what you're going for. That's the right amount of condiment, that's the right amount of all these things.
What is a handful of cheese? What is a Glug of olive, all those things? Like it's just constantly the same. Even with measuring out the salt, all those things. One percent.
P.S. For those of you that still buy the book, but it's one percent. The answer for the book is one percent. I think I go higher, but I I you know what? I don't use enough, I don't I'm a more I'm gonna start doing it maybe your way.
Like because you know, right now the way I do it is I really only use the water. I usually go loose on the sauce, let the sauce firm up. And I don't really I what I usually I'll do the full pan drain, but I'll drain it over a saucepan in the sink so that I have a saucepan full of the water if I need to. But I think your way is better. I might just do it your way.
Where were you where you bring sauce over or water I should say to the sauce while you're doing it and then bring a little bit more if you need it and then I'll like like if if it's a real thick base like I'll I'll take it I'll dip it as it's cooking I'll take some and I'll I'll blend it in to get it and then I always just loosen the sauce a little bit and let it finish off. But in the book it's like I think a much more rigorous way to get it right which is always pull it two you know about two minutes early depends on how what the cook time depends on what the total cook time is. And you're always you're always checking it regardless. Right right it's always changing. Right.
And then uh and then a little water from depends on what it is but a little water in the pan to s start it up and then the stuff in and then finish it off and you have the water there to go with it makes sense. And I never do it that way but maybe I'll start. There you go. You know what I mean? There you go.
But uh it's smart because it is a way that you can then adjust up or down without having to change your flow too much. You know what I mean? Yeah and you're really paying attention to where you're where you're getting to so when you throw in a knob of butter you know exactly what it's gonna do. When you throw in cheese you know it's not gonna make it too tight or too loose. Knob's a funny word.
A knob well it is a knob of butter. Yeah yeah but it's kind of a funny word because you know it's have you always thought that or when I said that were you like this is a fucking funny thing. A knob. So hold on. We have some we have some pasta adjacent.
We have some questions that are adjacent, so let's get to them and then we'll get back to uh stuff. What was the other thing? Oh, you're before we do that, you like a relatively granular pesto. So as opposed to because I have to admit, here's another one. Maybe I'll try it your way.
I'm I'm a I just go ape in my like super smooth, and then I add texture other ways with like breadcrumbs, fried shallots, blah blah blah bah. But like just layer all that stuff. So I'll just I'll rip and pull things and then have kind of a puree and just keep adjusting. I just like don't like everything that tastes the same or even look the same. So I think that's just always in my head of that idea.
Yeah. I don't know. You should try the sun-dried tomato one. That's a sleeper. Yeah?
Yeah, that's really it's uh sun-dried tomato and almonds. It's actually really you got a lot of good nuts. What about your nut ragoo? The nut ragu is really cool. That was an accident.
I always um there's a bunch of recipes in the book that kind of remind me of um Chinese food in a in an interesting way, especially like the panchetta one I was just talking about. And I always see some well, I love Chinese food, first of all, American Chinese food. So I'm there's always some like tension that I'm always trying to like get to because I have a good understanding of Italian pasta and what you're supposed to do, and then familiar with how to respect it with other ideas that kind of get to that same place. But when I do that, it's always kind of on some like Asian territory, it feels like. So it seems like the sun-dried tomato kind of does that.
And like when you have the eggplant and the um like eggplant and basil, it really kind of brings out you're like, hmm, what is this? Or there's uh there's basically the pork and um chili kale ragu has fish sauce in it. And that's basically like some version in my head of like a dandan noodle. Yeah, but seriously. Fish sauce works in lesser and cuisine anyway.
Oh, I know, I know. I I mean, so works. So it works. Love it. Uh, you know, especially if it's cooked for a little bit.
I mean, I like it as a finisher. But I just put it in a, I just put it in a bolinese the other day in an event because I was trying to adjust it to get it something that was like a little funky. And I would have loved to have had like chicken livers to be able to start it off with, just kind of give that like barnyardy like you think you can hide chicken liver though? I feel you can hide fish. You can't, well, yeah, you can't.
I wasn't trying to hide it. I was trying to add something that was just kind of like made it more than the sum of the parts. You can't hide chicken liver, but definitely it does a thing that I would have looked for if I had it. And I would have put just trace amounts of it in there. So we had uh uh chef uh last week, two weeks ago, Alex can't Alex Camp on he hates angel hair pasta.
And I said that I like it because I think it can be great, yeah. Yeah, I grew up with uh Christmas Eve anchovy pasta, angel hair bread crumbs on top. Grew up with it, so I like it. And I also like it sometimes in a very creamy, you know, because it becomes a creamy thing. Totally.
He hated that. But John, can you guess what pasta shape uh he hates? It's the one that everyone should hate. It's the one we should uh outlaw start there. Yeah, yeah.
Quinn, you've seen the book, so no, you can't say anything. Actually, wait, wait. I don't I haven't seen this part. I have a guess. Okay, but you haven't seen it.
I have a guess. Okay. You didn't read the okay. All right. It's near the beginning of the book.
Give me your sure, give me your guess. As long as you're not cheating, give me your guess. No, not blue. What? Although, you know what?
I had like you know why bugatini is good? Because it's got a hole through it. It cooks. I just cooked it. It's a very difficult one to cook.
I cooked peachy yesterday. Impossible to cook. Yeah, no, it is. So it's not a good pasta. No, you need to get that.
That's a great fresh noodle. Yeah, right. Because you make you make like uh like a book, like another bucktini. You make a uh well, what's the one uh in the press? It's oh the one with the same as peachy, but in a press.
Yeah, torchino. Yeah, big. Right, but it's made with a softer flour. You know what I mean? And it's fresh.
But the the peachy, I was like, you can't, the outside is soup by the time the side. It's one of those when it's great, it's like you're going to a place and they have it like nested up and it's fresh and they made it. That's when it's the only reason I bought it was that on the package it said 22 minutes. I'm like, Well no, what was the what was the brand? I don't remember.
I don't remember. What's the pasta? It really said 22 minutes. 22 minutes. Imagine like, imagine like you put spaghetti in a grow ray.
No, no, I hold up. We got sidetracked. We're off on tangent. Uh Josh Warren. It's not pocketti, is it?
What? What? Oh, the one that's one of my favorite noodles. Which one's about to do it? I think you guys are just testing me, trying to throw me out of here.
No. CD? I don't know. I thought that's one of the best. I'll give you a hint.
He hates one that is classic for the hated classic for a not bow tie. He hates the bow tie. That's fair. I can get by on that. See?
It's not terrible. Campaign. Farfale. No, no. Good.
No one, everyone knows it. It's I mean, it sure is cute. But uh it doesn't cook right. What do you think? I mean, I never really thought about it.
Like uh like my go-to is any any, not the actual ones called radiator, but any spiral positive. If those cook well, they cook well, yeah. And the pinwheels cook. The only one that doesn't cook well every single time is farfale. It never works.
Unless you blast it and you overcome. You're like, the wings are the wings are ruined by the time the inside's gone. It's true. That's what you said in the in the thing. Yeah, maybe we should like cut them in half and then reboil them away.
Or the tricolore ones. Oh, you don't well, you come out against uh you come out against your colored pasta. Like either the flavor is bad or it's not there. What do you think of that one? Do you ever think you're correct?
But I used to it's beautiful. When I used to make pasta at home for whatever, I color it with ever, because it doesn't matter. Ketchup. Just dump ketchup in. Doesn't matter.
Literally, I would dump ketchup into the pasta because it doesn't matter. Dump ketchup into it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. I totally know what you're saying.
I've never had one where I've like, hmm. I mean, maybe saffron, sort of. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, but you would throw away so much of the saffron you're cooking on. Oh, another thing.
You are a gallon, a gallon of water to the half pound pasta. I'm assuming you don't need two gallons for a pound, but you want there to be at least a gallon of water and you want it tall, because you don't, you're you're anti-breaking the noodle, you're anti-anything like this. Well everyone should be. What about all these folks who are like the small amount of water people now? Like in other words, I mean that's fine if it doesn't uh stop boiling when you put it in there.
Just the same thing like blanching, right? I mean, that can be fine. And you're monitoring it and stirring it for the first minute, that's the most important thing, so it doesn't stick together. So I'm not I don't think it's the end of the world. For they're consciously doing it, then they're paying attention to it, that it's fine.
If you're just getting started in life and your hands haven't developed a lack of sensation yet, like eventually you should be able to quickly dip your hand into even boiling water and taste it to see what the temperature is. I'm not saying start from zero. Start with a spoon. But but people are gonna burn themselves on a spoon. I mean common sense applies.
But again, like remember I said in the back with doing recipes for two is you learn from messing up. Right. Same thing with burning yourself. Right, right. But you say there, get a feel.
Well, I don't know if you say it exactly like this, but you basically say get a feel for what this 1% water tastes like. And you can't really get a sense cold of what it's gonna taste like hot. Because the issue is is if you're doing this over a period of a couple of hours, you're gonna need to add more water and more salt eventually. So you need to know what it tastes like. Right, exactly.
So and you bring this up, which I think is like a good point, which is why pasta boilers are such a pain in the butt, aside from the foamy froth. How often do you skim those things? Uh well, you're talking about like the professional ones. Yeah. Well, I love it when you can you can regulate it so you can actually get fresh water coming into it.
And it floats the stuff off the top. Yeah, exactly. So you're never really having to deal with that. You just have to deal with always making sure somebody's actually putting salt in it. I remember which is an easier thing to deal with than like the scum, but but it's also like oh the Italians.
You would think that they would just have it so it would just do that, but it never just does that. It's like moped or Lamborghini. There's gonna be nothing in the middle. So it's just like and they all and they all break all the time. All the time.
I think I remember like even when I was in Italy, it's like, oh, you you shouldn't put salt in it. It's gonna like like make it rust out. I was like, are you kidding me right now? Okay. Like throw it away.
Like throw it away. What are you talking about? I forget like all cladd or someone used to be like, uh, put the salt in after it's boiling. I'm like, no, no, I'll get a new pan. If that's what you're telling me to do, I'll get a new pin.
Right. That checks. Yeah. Where do they get their salt? How do they get it in there?
Is this just MSG? Probably super high contents of their sauces, but they don't like salt the water or anything like that. That way they don't have to. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare.
Nightmare, nightmare. Don't even make me talk about it. Uh we got three minutes. Let's get some questions. Uh uh, let's see.
Let's do we have a pasta question, but it's about fresh pasta. Hmm. Where is it, Quinn? What's the what's the name of the of the pasta question? Maddie.
Maddie. Hey, I work at a restaurant and we want to work on adapting our current pasta. They use a double zero flour based egg dough. So remember, double zero is just a grind. It's it's a grind.
It's not a protein content. So assuming you're using double zero pasta, but if it's Caputo, that stuff is designed specifically to have for how fine it is, have a relatively low damage starch so that you're not gonna have to use a wicked amount of hydration to get the dough. The whole trick is not having to add too much water to the dough, I would say, but also having a good bite to it. Whatever. But so uh double zero base flour egg dough, roughly uh 10% whole egg, 46 yol, uh 46% yolk.
That's a I can't read exactly what anyway, uh with some oil. Work with fresh flour. You want to work with fresh flour. You mostly do stuffed pasta. Uh love recommendations.
What wheats might be good? I'm a breadbaker at the restaurant and blessed to work with super local stone mill, has access to a tons of variety of wheat, so we can likely get our hands on anything that might be uh good in an egg dough. I think the problem is gonna be on a stone mill, anything that's gonna be fine enough to mimic what you're doing with a double zero is gonna have a lot of damaged stars. It's gonna take a lot of extra hydration. I think you could move to a coarser one where they if they can sift it and get rid of the fines.
I would recommend like a wit, like not maybe as fine. But how long does it take to develop a fresh pasta dough when you're not using fine when you're like an egg base when you're consistent one? I mean it's changing all the time, especially if you're working with all this different local stuff, so it's hard. Yeah, I don't know. I um you're at a restaurant, I think honestly the thing that I always it's kind of cheating, but it's the thing that I learned, which is we would freeze all of our pasas.
And I think that that creates some of the best like texture out of even a fresh pasta, which sounds crazy. You mean like free if to because it does something to the water migration? I think that there's a few more than a lot of things. I definitely believe that, even with like ravioli for sure. Like try that sometime at home, just like throw them and then cook them in a same thing with like Nokia.
It just it changes the entire idea. So on a sheet tray flat and then freeze them uh and then and then bag them afterwards. Don't try to bag things together and then freeze it flat fast. You want fast. Oh, speaking of which, I saw that you had your meatballs, you were doing your meatballs in a pan traditionally, but then I saw them on a sill pad.
So you also can oven them to pre-cook them. So smart. Come on, oven, oven those sons of guns. Yeah, totally. I mean, it would be great to be able to just like fry them, but you can't do that all the time.
But yeah, I think it works and then you just dump the fat in there. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Uh and you know, you can get a fond in other way. You can cook a little bit. Oh, uh also, you don't you do dislike the uh no-boil noodle? Uh as far as lasagna lasagna. Yeah, I uh I had never used them until this book, but it didn't make sense to go that route of word like doing this, and then it's actually kind of amazing.
Oh, so you don't hate them, it's just not for the books. Yeah. I blew my mind because my like DiPalos made me buy some. I'm like, the hell with you! And I'm like, try it.
I'm like, you're you're talking about the ones I'm using in the book, right? The ones you're just like stacking in there and they just do their thing in the oven. Oh, yeah, but you said uh in the bechamel one, which is the one I read carefully, you're like, don't use no boil for this. It's wor it's been working. I just I just did four hotel pans the other day.
So fast. It was like, and I couldn't believe the text of it. Yeah, you soak them for a couple of minutes in warm water, lay them out, done. Yeah. I mean it's kind of crazy.
It's crazy business. It's like, yeah, it's like my mind bender. Um, Maddie, another thing, uh, another thing on on your when you're working with pasta, uh, even fresh, but especially if you're gonna do this, I worry about uh doughs that have like uh a lot of gluten in them that are have too much uh snap back. Because you want them to be you want them to have extensibility, but you don't want a lot of snap back, or they won't hold the I guess it's not as big a deal for like ravioli and whatnot, but they're not gonna hold their shape right if they have a lot of um snapback elasticity. So I would look for ones that are relatively higher in protein, but but whose gluten development doesn't isn't so uh elastic.
What do you think? I agree. Thank you very much. Buy the book at uh Kitchen Arts and Letters. It is called uh Six Seasons of Pasta.
Six Seasons of Pasta, a new a new way with pasta. A new way with everyone's favorite. A new way with everyone's favorites. Nailed it. A new a new way with everyone's favorite.
Uh come on again, please. We have a lot more to talk about. Cheers. Good to see you. Cooking issues.
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