Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City with a special doubleheader cooking issues, first time ever. No John in the studio, but I do have Joe Hazenrocking the panels. What's up? Hey, good morning.
Morning, morning. Yeah. We're doing a double header. Double. Double trouble.
Double double double. We also do have no Jackie Molecules, so we'll have to keep our molecule talk short. But we do have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? I'm good.
How are you? I mean, you know, still breathing, you know, you know how they do. Keep sucking in wind and breathing out CO2. Uh and in the upper left, we have Quinn. How you doing?
Awesome breathing, so you know. Nice. It's all it's a little greedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
You know, once you have the the breathing, you're like, you know, you're pretty much that's the bare minimum that you get. And uh, so if you are listening live on our Patreon, right? You can listen to this, pause for like 10 or 15 minutes. And the second half of our doubleheader is uh Kevin Jungwongtime uh friend of the show, uh Patreon member, uh, calling in. Uh, and we're gonna talk Noma, but for the first half, we are very happy to have back with uh is this the second book you've written since the first one you came back?
In other words, is this the next book after the one, the islands book? Or did you do a book in between? Katie Parla, by the way. We're talking to Katie Parla. Chow.
Oh, so there's another book in between Oh no, Chow. Chow's hello. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But is there another book in between the islands in the Rome? Not a solo title, but I have co-authored other books in the meantime.
You're the Robert Simonson of Italian books. In other words, he'll Hele wakes up in the morning and he looks on the bedstand, and the little elves have cobbled him a book. I feel like you're the same way. I would love to know his actual process because he's prolific and uh that's a very generous comparison. Uh my I do not look at the bedstand and find a uh a book.
I procrastinate for seven months and then write 80,000 words in a manic episode and lose all my friends and and family support. Do you get the same friends back or different ones? Usually different ones, obviously. Yeah. I feel terrible.
Yeah. Well, uh so we're gonna get to our normal like, you know, week, week of the week in review and whatnot, but uh a couple of things where we someone remind me if I don't get around to it, because I'm gonna get lost in the in the vagaries of this book. Current book is Rome, a culinary history cookbook and field guide to the flavors that built a city. Where this is basically been your home base for the past 20 change years, 22. 23 in January.
Yeah. We're creeping up on the quarter century. When in January did you move? The 13th. Oh, that's the that's the day before my two kids' birthdays.
Exciting. Both on the same day. Yeah, three years apart, same day. Hi. I'm like basically once we stash once every three years.
Right on. Oh. Yeah. Love that energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, gotta keep it like uh I have some German in me, so I gotta keep it, you know, rigorous. You know what I mean? Disciplined. Yeah, disciplined. You lack discipline.
Uh all right. So uh, but one things uh we need to talk about is I was shocked, shocked to find out. I don't know whether it was the first one you did, but the islands book completely self published. Yeah. And this one also.
Same. Yeah. So we wanted to talk about that for people who are interested in this whole thing. And there was something else. Oh, yeah.
The last book you shot unbelievably, by the way, if you take a look at the islands book that, you know, I don't know, what was it, a year ago? Year now. It was two and a half years ago. Jesus. Uh so two and a half years ago came on with the islands book.
And it looks like you took months to shoot it, shot it in a week. Freaking nuts. I I only was there on site. It was Ed Anderson who works as magic. He's the fastest photographer in the game.
I have to say that's amazing. I wanted to like, I wanted to go home and like just beat my head against the wall. The fact that you were able to shoot that book in a week, I was like, I am a loser. Right. We were both legally insane at the end of the process.
It was super, super, super crazy. But we made it happen in, you know, just uh another Ed Anderson shout-out. He is brilliant, works fast, and uh everyone falls in love with him immediately, even when he wears shorts and cargo shorts and stuff in the winter in Italy, which is offensive. Should not do it's offensive everywhere. Yeah.
I mean, not everywhere. In Italy, it's like I could have my citizenship provoked for uh for hanging around with people like that. No, but he's he's the perfect collaborator of him. There's no way you could know this, but I don't wear shorts ever. In fact, there is a uh a large number of my friends who don't believe I have legs.
I've never seen your calves, so no one has. Yeah, right, right, right. We're on the same page. I like it. Yeah, yeah.
Uh all right, so uh week in review, Stas. Let's start with you. What do you got for me? Uh nothing right now. Come back to me.
Okay. Queen, what do you got? Uh well, again, we're gonna do two segments, so I could talk about my dinner, or I could process and taste the gelato a lot of. Listen, which is a good one. Choose one.
Choose one. Since we're six since since we're in Italian land now, do the gelato. Okay, you want me to process the gelato? Yeah. Before you do that though, why do the Italians have so many different foods called rags?
You got the cheese, you got the soup, you got the you got the ice cream or the whatever you want to call it. So many rag based. Yeah, um, you stumped me. Yeah, and what's your favorite rag based? Is it the soup you have in this book?
The soup. It's gotta be the soup. It's so good. Yeah? Yeah.
I look yeah, uh you you sold it well in the book. Yeah. Luscious, fluffy. Yeah. Yeah.
Savory. And and uh in in the book, is the height you above it like you you say that it matters, but like if I go lower or higher, if I go lower, what? It pillows out no, it pillows out more if you go higher. Yeah. All right.
And you like a what was it, a six inch drop? Yeah, 200 millimeters, as you would say in your world. Isn't that right? 200 millimeters? That feels right.
Oh, don't don't quiz me on metric inversions. No, no, it's I know it's less, it's it's 2.54. We'll deal with it later. It's like no, it's like 500%. You wanna translate the book into for the Europeans in a metric?
Humanity. All right, Quinn, go. Gelato. Well no, I gotta, like I said, I gotta process it. Oh, I'm gonna spin it in the cream.
Yeah, yeah. You're familiar with the uh slightly obscure soda moxie. It well, it's not obscure to me, but yes, I'm familiar with it. Well, maybe it's you know in the upper in the upper reaches of Canada, it's it's uh unfamiliar with it. But why would you want uh why why would you make a moxie based?
What led you to make a moxie-based situation? Uh I made like a standard like cola gelato bullet before, like you know, maybe half the composition is the cola, and then the rest is you know, milk and cream and enough sugar to you know balance everything. And I like that, and I thought uh moxie would be interesting. I I like moxy, but it is intense. I thought it would be interesting, slightly diluted.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong. The label has like a uh a Wendy's mascot looking lady on the front, right? Like some pigtail action. I think it's a guy. It's a guy?
Oh, it's a guy holding the the thing up like the yeah, I can't even keep you know what's a really not a great soda, but an interesting motto? Razcal. You ever had Rascal? Razcal is uh like uh Northeastern thing, was I don't even know it still exists. I believe it's a bunny rabbit on the front.
And their motto is nobody famous drinks it. Flavor? Like fake res. Okay. Color?
Red. Interesting. Red. But like self-fulfilling prophecy on that. Like, you know, Stas hangs out with famous people.
If if someone said no one famous drinks it, would they drink more of it or less of it? More. More, yeah. Sounds like something from the Hobbit. Freaking famous.
I know, right? Nobody famous drinks it. But that's like um when I was a kid, I know I've discussed this on the air before, but one of the classic all-time ads, might have been Stan Freeburg who did it. He was a famous ad guy back in the day. Dead.
Real dead. R I P. Yeah. Uh peak freens. You familiar with peak freens?
Peak freens are a rather standard English style tea biscuit. Relatively thin, relatively not sweet, pasty, semi vanilla. You're selling it. I like them actually. But anyway, the story was they had an advertisement.
Peak freens are a very uh peak freens are extraordinarily serious. Cookies. They're made for grown-ups. And then so, like, like they're like peak freens are too good for children. And that was their whole AV campaign.
When I was a kid, I was like, I want pink marines. Yeah. I want a peak freedom. I'm not a baby, I'm a grown-up. Oh, yeah.
I need these. Yeah. They're serious. Very serious. Anyway.
I feel like I don't know that. Did people still make really good jingles or is it dead now? Uh I fast forward through commercials on pod, so sorry. That's why. I think no one, no one's spending the time doing good jingles anymore.
Sad. It's real sad. Real sad. Um all right. So you're gonna process that and come back with your uh moxie tastings.
And when you say tasting, is it a comparative tasting or just moxie yes, moxie no? Do you have like um no, just like is moxie good as a gelato flavor? And you're gonna base it on your knowledge of other soda gelati that you have made. Well, I'm gonna judge if it if it tastes good. You might enjoy eating it.
Yeah, but that that you're not getting my point here. My point is that all soda gelatos could suck. Or you had a really good soda gelato, and this one doesn't stand up to you. See the difference. All right, so you process it and you come back.
So uh see, what should I talk about? Yesterday, my son Dax came home from his semester abroad in Copenhagen, and he uh, you know, he didn't get to have Thanksgiving, and apparently he couldn't find turkey in Copenhagen. I mean, I don't think he looked. Tragic. Yeah, so he had chicken.
Not right. Not no, not Thanksgiving. You know what I mean? No, and his friend who may or may not know how to cook, I don't know. He was the appointed cook of their dorm area, but what does that mean?
Nothing, really, right? Made the mashed potatoes. I tried to give some verbal instructions on the mashed potatoes over the telephone. We'll talk more about mashed potatoes. I noticed your gnocchi recipe, no eggs.
No. And is this don't need them? Is this what I'm doing wrong? Is this why my gnockies suck? Because I am adding eggs?
Uh, it could be because you're a potatoes are too wet. Nah. I mean, look, I haven't made one in years because I might it's the moisture contents what's gonna affect it the most. In my adding eggs, you're adding it. Yeah, yeah, that ruins it.
In my mid-20s, I just stopped. I was like, nope. And then Wiley, my brother-in-law, Wiley Dufrein, he's trying to bring back the gnocchi perizienne or however you pronounce it, which they're fine. It's shoe, it's like shoe pastry, boiled shoe pastry. Yeah.
It usually tastes really bad. I mean, don't work it too much. Use old, old, old dusty potatoes. No eggs. No sugar.
Little sugar. Barely any. A little bit sugar. What am I talking about? Flour.
Flour. Flour. No sugar, guys. Salt. Salt.
Salt. Well, or do you salt them or you salt the water to hell? I know you like a salty water. I love a salty water. Um I think I had a pinch of salt.
I'm pretty sure. Hmm. Hmm. I don't know, you taste it. So here's the thing.
We have Fox on the other day who wrote a book on pasta recently called pasta. What was it called, Quinn? Six six seasons of pasta. Six seasons of pasta. P.S.
The other extra seasons are just breaking summer up into three seasons. Okay, yeah. All right. That checks out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Fall is still fall. Winter and spring are still they're their thing. But summer you get three. You got your early summer, your summer, and your summer.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway. By the way. We kind of have that too.
What do you guys actually know in in Italy? Oh yeah? Well But no one talks about no one talks about it like that there. But now that I'm thinking about it, it's like you get your stone fruits and then they're gone. Don't you dare ask for stone fruit in July.
Yeah. Yeah. That shit's burnt. They like don't do that? No, it's like, I want a fig.
No, you can't have it. It's May. Get out of here. Come back in August. Right.
But you then you were saying, are the figs really so good that you want to eat them? In in because you have the you have like a one recipe is like just cut up some push roots and some freaking figs, call it a day. What what else do you need? Maybe put it inside of a Bianca. Maybe.
If you're going crazy. Yeah, but like are they really that good? Are they better than the what first of all, what style are they? So compared to the US ones. We get the They're the ones that are uh super pale green on the outside.
They're anywhere from like magenta to purple on the inside. They burst open if you look at them too like uh aggressively. And they're called Septembrini. So they're like a later harvest fig, even though September obviously is in the name, you can also find them in August. They are jammy and delicious.
You eat the skin, there's no bitterness even in like the little part that touches the branch. Uh and they are next level. They're they're insane. We get earlier figs, uh Fioroni and things from Puglia. Loser figs.
Loser figs, yeah, for jerks. Yeah. But they're they're just like a little bit more vegetable tasting. I feel I feel we could be friends. Yeah, yeah.
Uh uh, but yeah, different different like flavor profile. You can put it next to Bridge if you want, but you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right.
Uh so anyway, so I made what I like to call T2. Since I don't have Thanksgiving at my house anymore because my sister won't come into the city anymore, neither will my mom or my stepfather. Like, we've been going out there, freaking Westchester, you know what I mean? And so I don't do Thanksgiving at home anymore. So I've a bit for the past like I don't know, four or five years I've been doing T2.
I really I have to say I like T2 because I can strip it down to like the basics. I don't need to have all of the like millions of side dishes. I can just do the ones that are important to me. My mom's T2, what day? Well, Thanksgiving too.
T two. But I get to choose what day. Usually I do a little bit of a big thing. Number two or T-O-O. You could do it either way.
Okay. I I do it the number two. Okay. Like Terminator 2. Although can you imagine if Terminator 2 T2 had been Terminator T O O and it had been sort of like like two men in a little lady situation?
Would have been amazing. Reboot. Yeah. Need to do it. Right for a reboot.
Right now. I mean, Arnold can now be what? And what can he play in it? He's like 90 now. Not really.
He's like 80. Anyways. Point being, I did my T2, but maybe I'll talk about the nuts and bolts of the T2 later. But real pared down. Parker house rolls, turkey, which I'll go into excruciating detail on later.
My mom stuffing, gravy, duh, and I make anything else. Mashed potatoes. No cranberry. Oh, yeah, cranberry. I did cranberry.
I didn't do the sweet potatoes. Okay. Stuffing such. Yeah, my mom's stuffing. Okay.
But uh I had to, it was I had to do vegetarian and gluten-free. So I was I was dancing through needles. I was, hey, listen, I have to say something. I have to say something. Impossible brand fake loose breakfast sausage in the tube is in stuffing a passable substitute for the pork-based sausage.
Okay, good to know. Yeah. And luckily, I had a non-pork observ uh non-pork eating, mildly observant Jewish person come as well to T2 yesterday because Dax brought like four of his buddies. And they were like, oh my God, this has pork. And I was like, no, I don't.
Vegetarian baby. Perfect. Well, I'm not vegetarian because I mean I roasted a turkey over it. You know what I'm saying? Sure.
Yeah. But it'll work in a bit. Yeah. Not vegan because butter. I mean, come on.
There are limits. Of course there are. Gotta be reasonable in life. Yeah. And this I'll mention.
So my mom's stuffing, Dave Chang has popularized my mom's stuffing, strangely. And it is quite good. But it's not like a traditional all the normal stuffing rules go out the window. What like not dry bread, like bread right out of the package, manar and oranges, bunch of sausage, sauteed mushrooms, celery, onions, yeah, butter, poultry seasoning, 70s style. Dank.
You know, eggs. So much butter. Anyway, yeah, yeah. I'm starving. Right?
It's a good product. It sucks. You can only like really bust that out one day a year. Or two. You could too.
If you do tea too. Touche. It's like some people have the friends giving, but since I don't have friends, you just can't have one. Yeah. It's not not a not even an option.
Yeah. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. It's fine. You know.
It's fine. It's fine. My wife has friends. I actually do have friends. I just don't really see them very often.
You know what I mean? Yeah. You don't have to, you know, explain yourself to me. I'm not really Nastasia. I'm not anti-people, right?
I don't know. It's weird. I'm still trying to figure it out after all these years why why you don't hang out. I'm a homebody. Because you know what?
You sent Dave sent me this, like, this uh quote the other day. Because we him and I went to the Esquire restaurant of the whatever party. And uh and Dave and I together are really fun. Like we're really fun, right, Dave. And you sent me this quote that was like the problem with being fun.
What? Oh no, it was um someone was like, you don't want to be the life of the party with you never want to be the life of the party around people you work with or are your enemies. And I was like, oh yeah. Can't can't be fun around your enemies. No, definitely not.
And there's so many enemies. Gotta keep them guessing. So many enemies. Oh, out in these streets for sure. Oh my god.
New York. Hey, what's more two-faced stuff since you spent so much time in in both? LA or New York? Uh I don't know. I don't know.
I think it's about the people you surround yourself with. I really don't know. I don't know. It's a tough call, right? Because like we're famous for just being in your face telling you to to to go F yourself.
But you know, so you would assume LA, because you guys are famously vapid. But, you know, I feel like we also have a little bit of that. You know what I mean? They smile on your face. You've been through some stuff.
Yeah. You've been through some stuff. The the Chris the uh Ralph Lauren sweater comment that you made. No. So like listen.
Come on. Listen, a friend friend of mine is a she's a designer for Ralph Lauren, right? But not like Ralph Lauren, like high-end, like works directly with Ralph Lauren for Ralph Lauren collection. So like, and she does knitwear, right? So like super expensive.
Like a sweater, like I'm not even out of look at it costs so much money. You know what I mean? Like thousands and thousands of dollars. Miss Goosy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But she was like, you know where the bread and butter is. I was like, the polo stuff. She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like these sweaters with like bears dressed up as like like they're going to some sort of fancy, like, like regatta. And I was like, what?
She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. These things are so expensive and so like they're so fancy, like people are wearing this. I was like, come on, that's not a real thing. And then we're at this party. Guy's wearing one of these freaking things.
Outrageous. And I was like, Stas, look at the guy wearing the freaky sweater. And then He said it really loud. I did not say it very loud. First of all, it was a crowded party.
How can I say anything softly? Nightmare. And she drug me to this party. I literally been like gluing together red hot pokers and like twisting little pieces of metal together and soldering. I show up looking more rumpled than this to this fancy Esquire, best people in the universe party or whatever it was.
Nightmare. Classic styles. Rocking your bear sweater. No, no, this guy rocking his bear sweater and me calling calling it out apparently. It's a it's a fine sweater.
I just don't understand. Is it? I don't know where the money. I don't know where the money goes. I mean, look, if you like your bear sweater, do it.
Do it. Um, um, okay, so while we're starting Rome, I thought I'd bring a little something. I last time I was in Rome was the worst trip possibly of my life because I had a kidney stone a couple of days beforehand, and the ER doctor was like, Yeah, sure, you can fly to Italy. I was like, okay. So I get on the plane, have an attack on the plane.
No. The lady next to me, thankfully, was some sort of doctor, so she's like massaging my back. I didn't even have Advil on the plane. So like I was just like shot. Like, like they scooped me into a cab.
I made it to my hotel. I literally just did my talk, smear miraculously, didn't have the pains during the talk. And then right at the end of the talk, during the questions and answered, like doubled over and they had to haul me out of there. So it was the worst trip ever. And well, you can tell me as a former Jersey girl, or maybe do you still identify?
Uh yeah. Yeah. Let's say yes. I was staying in the what do they call it? The Eurozone?
What do they call it? Yeah. Which is basically the New Jersey of Rome, right? I'll take it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So like I was staying there. So like my wife was before we knew that I was gonna have a uh, you know, a kidney stone. I was like, hey, why don't we spend a couple extra days?
Come to Rome. We haven't been to Rome together since like 1995, right? I was like, let's go to Rome, hang out. And then she looks where you're staying. She's like, You're staying in New Jersey.
No way. I'm like, okay. Yeah. She's not wrong, right? I mean, yeah, it wouldn't be my first choice for like a romance.
What about your second destination? What about your fifth choice? No. No. Although it's not even in the top ten.
I do like in the book how you called out Ostia Antica, where I did go on my honeymoon, but I wish I had had your eyes back in 1995 to look at it as a food production and transport hub. It's fascinating. So I gotta go back. Yeah. I can take you there.
It's super, super cool. Does it look different than it did in 95? Did they build it up at all? There are a couple new excavations, but it will fundamentally look the same as it did ago. I had the first ever like uh pizza with potato on it in Ostia Antica, like, you know, right af uh after I got off the bus in 95.
I was like, This seems weird. I was like, this is delicious. It is quite delicious. Yeah, with the rosemary. I'll tell you what though, like this is something that like Sullivan, you know, lay uh Leahy, who come on, like he kind of popularized that in New York.
When I had it, I was like, Oh yeah, I had this delicious. Yeah. I mean, he at about that time in the mid-90s, he would have been at Antico Fournero uh no, not Antico Fournero Sholi, he's at Fourno Combo di Fiore, stodging and absorbing all the carb positivity. Yeah, yeah. The Bianca is a good product.
So good. Really is a good product. Yeah. So, anyways, so I had a nightmare when I was there, and it was for the Roman bar show. But this guy who uh is in Tivoli, which is a place where everyone should go visit it to visit the uh either the the weird like spring that feeds the entire area or the uh the Villa d'Este, which was the uh Cardinal Ippolito d'Este's uh place, which is one of the greatest Italian Renaissance gardens in all in all of history.
Uh but these guys make a quina, uh, you know, like uh, which is a quinited, quininated amaro. And he gave me a bottle. He mailed me a bottle, and he then he asked him, What do you think about it? I was like, I I think it's fine. I like it, but I can't help you because you don't have New York City distribution.
So we're having um and they used to make it in the 1800s and they stopped and they restarted again. Ricardi, Kina Ricardi out of Tivoli. So if anyone who's in Italy can get Kina Riccardi, and it is an old, like 1880, I want to say. Okay, you know you're not supposed to touch plastics. We have to touch knuckles.
Uh all right. All right. You almost give us both your lines. You're so lucky that my knuckles aren't made of plastic. But they also make a low sugar version because that's what everyone does now.
This is their standard. It's nice. It's delicious. It's also made in uh Sora in Frosinone. So it's based in Tivoli, and maybe they developed the recipe there, but it's from the deep south of Lazio, which is very, very rugged and delicious.
Oh, nice. Fantastic. Yeah, so like their uh what's it called? Their pharmacy is uh, you know, whatever you call a pharmacy, their pharmacia, right? Fadmacia.
Pharmacia, yeah, uh is there. So anyway, so I thought I'd share it with you, seeing as how you can actually maybe deal with this guy. He's a nice fellow. Beautiful. And also their like sort of logo looks like Leonardo da Vinci, like about to crack open a bottle of quinaricarted.
I mean, if you came back to life in the late 1800s, he would drink this. I'll tell you what, this place is just him and the brother. It's just him and the brother. Love it. Uh so uh that's the only Roman stuff I have for you.
Thank you for sharing this with me. It's a delight. You're quite welcome. Uh all right. So uh Quinn, you're just gonna chime in whenever you uh whenever you have whatever, right?
All right. Um, is this pig question for Katie or no? Or is it just it just says that there? Well, it was under I thought it was relevant. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's Porquetta, porchetta, because there is a Porchetta recipe in here. Uh and you say to watch out for the Porquetta because most of it is bunk, maybe crap meat in the right place. They cook it in the right place, but they use bunk meat. Well, yeah, uh Porquetta Diariccia is an IGP, so the production has to happen in the suburbs of Rome, but the meat can come from any number of places. Yeah.
Which doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad, but often the large industrial porchetta producers are not sourcing very good meat. So there are some places that are actually outside the IGP or don't want to be associated with the IGP that make really exceptional porqueta. They might just do like two a day, one a day. My spot is Norcinaria Berenbey in uh Marino, which is near Aricha, close enough. Close enough.
Close enough. And you can get there on the train and uh Vitalino Bernabé has this like uh crazy leather like arm glove that he uses when he pulls the the twine to like bind it shut. It's like very, very beautiful and like amazing. Well, like an oh like a a well-used glove. Yeah, he looks like he's going to weld something and not make a porchetta.
It's fantastic. All right. Probably. I mean, how do you clean that sucker? Not my business.
Okay. So the question from Dr. Smokehouse, and with a name like Dr. Smokehouse, I'm sure they know general metastrophe situations, right? But I currently have a whole boned-out 100-pound pig with the head on that I froze.
Imagine having a imagine living in a place where I could freeze a hundred-pound pig. Although a hundred pounds situation, though. 100-pound pig, I'm holding on my hands. You can't see me because this is a radio show, but like uh it's like that. You know what I mean?
Um by the way, before we finish this question, so much baby lamb in here, but not the way so like in these states, my stepfather's father and his father before him, and his father and father and father and father were all butchers, starting out of south of Italy, but then going to Boston, and one of their their they were lamb butchers was their specialty. And they used to slaughter their own lambs. So at Easter, he would get, but it was always the whole baby lamb. Like tiny. Yeah.
You know what I mean? And we they would always just be like very simple, like roast it out and serve with the with the stuff. But um, I'm shocked at the l level of baby lamb that they get in Rome. We are obsessed with the bacchio, which is the suckling lamb, the kind of veal quality. Yeah, and there's like a million, there are two million recipes actually for baby lamb in there.
Yeah. If you gave Papa with that, you know, we his name was Arcangelo Adonisio. You know what I mean? Obsessed. Yeah.
So like he went by Addy though. He no one called him Arcangelo unless they were mad at him, I guess. But anyway, so he uh you would hand him like what an American would call a baby lamb, and he's like, It's pink, what is this? Get this out of here. Yep.
Get it out. You know what I mean? Anyway. Uh Dr. Smokehouse says, I have a 100-pound pig with the head on that I froze to do a whole pig porchetta for a wedding this spring.
Would you recommend thawing, uh thawing in and keeping in a brine or thawing, then salting? It would be stuffed with a sausage and then sewn up to cook. Well, okay. That is uh beyond my purview. That's also not porchetta.
Hey, man. So the way that I would do it, first of all, I would practice before like throwing this on a wedding case. I understand that. I acknowledge that, but this is my advice. You can't just do it like once and think like this is gonna be flawless and perfect and I can serve this to a wedding.
That's a huge investment in meat. So I understand you can't do it multiple times. But I don't brine, I salt. Uh I would this is honestly like how I would do it. I would go talk to my butcher and be like, with this, with these dimensions, like what temperature and what uh duration should I be cooking?
Yeah. Because I have tested recipes. The recipes in all my books are tested multiple times. They are more or less foolproof, but I've never done the whole pig. And it's too much responsibility.
I'm sorry, Mr. Let me ask you a s a separate question about ovens. No one in the world likes the British gas mark unit, right? But Italian ovens have what? Just temperatures?
Mm-hmm. All right. So is is an Italian home oven pretty much like an American home oven? Uh yeah, I mean, at this point, pretty much. And a lot of the brands are the same as well.
But the great uh Vito Bernabé who I referenced earlier, he's using like a combi oven to do his porchetta. That's not the standard. Right. Um a lot of people are also using like a wood-fired oven, but like badly. What a pain in the butt.
Pain in the butt. It's impossible. So uh smokehouse, doctor, here's uh here's some things I'm gonna say. And this, you know, we'll talk more about this in the second half of the doubleheader when I talk more about T2. But one of the things you can do to mitigate the fact that you're trying to cook a whole pig and the muscles don't all want to cook the same way, is you can selectively brine inject just the loins and any any large muscle groups that you know are gonna overcook before the long cooking muscles get done.
That's what I do with turkeys. So with turkey, what I'll do is uh like when I make the stock, I'll take the turkey fat off the top of my stock along with some stock. Then I'll emulsify that mix, salt and sugar that mix, and then inject that into the muscles in Turkey's case, breast, that are gonna get overcooked and nasty. And the rest I'll just do exterior salting on. But anyway.
Smart. An idea. Yeah. I mean, no one in Italy does anything like that with porchetta, which is why when you usually order porchetta, the loin tastes like chalk and sawdust. It's a good uh, yeah.
My son uh booker always says that things taste like cardboard and paint, but it's a reference to Dennis Amenis, you know, one of the later Walter Mathow films. Um Quinn, tell me when you got your crap done or Stas. Oh, yeah, I I've tasted it. All right, Quinn. I don't know if you caught this, whether you're able to read the whole book or not.
But you and Katie share a similar dislike. I believe it was you. You guys both share a least favorite pasta shape. Uh oh, yeah, but it shouldn't exist. Now you incur by the way, this uh this Amaro has like some iron in the back, right?
A little bit of a little ferro, not a lot. A little bloody. Yeah. Um you say fight me. So I mean, let's fight.
What do you hate about it? Um, well, uh, let's start with the fact that for me, a properly cooked pasta is extremely al dente, what we would call al chiodo. And when you cook bucottini, if you're cooking it, even just al dente, it's already uh if it's al dente, it's it's not easily twirllable on your fork. And if it's twirlable, it's already overcooked. Well, yeah, it's a you can't twirl it.
It's a pipeline. It's a pipe. So it's a texture thing. I mean, it's also like, I mean, I'm I'm not mad at modern shapes, but it's a modern shape developed to cook more quickly. Uh it did really well in restaurants in like the 80s and 90s, but it's pretty much been, I would say phased out of many very delicious tratturier that I recommend in the book, places I go every day, replaced with another tubular shape, but a perfect one, mezzemaniche or rigatoni.
So and then so like like what are all the give me, give me all the tube lengths. Is ditalini the shortest tube? Yeah, like ditali di talini. This is difficult because each uh of the pasta companies, like in and around Grannano and the other dried pasta companies, they have different like language for the shapes. So it might change from region to region.
But ditali di tellini, di talini, uh, and then there's mezzemaniche, regatoni. I mean, th they're not ridged, but candele are the ones that are like three feet long, and you have to break those in order to cook them. Might have missed some in there. What's missing? Here's my least favorite pasta shape.
Tell me. And it's no one has it. I bought it and I feel stupid for it. I might have mentioned this on air. Dried peachy.
Oh, yeah, okay. Terrible. Yeah. It's theoretically 22 minutes to cook. The outside's paste, but you know, before the inside is even like close to, you know what I mean?
It's like it's not not worth it. It's nothing, nothing good to say about it. I think those are just sold. Like there's not a lot of demand for that per se. So they're small batches that are not dried properly.
Um spent or something go-I mean, that you would hope that would make a delicious. Dried peachy, but you know, the only thing do. The only reason I bought it was I'm scanning the aisle, I look at it, it says 22 minutes. I was like, you're stupid. There's no pasta that takes 22 minutes to cook.
You know what I mean? In boiling water. Right. Sounds like I bodice. Yeah.
I mean, just out of curiosity. And I regret it. Yeah. Hard. Yeah, me too.
Uh all right. So another things I can't let go. So here's some FOMO for uh for you folks like me who don't get to Rome very often. So is uh is this a hard J in the uh in the intestine or not? Pallata.
Pallata, okay, soft J. So talk about this. And by the way, for those of you who I guess only live in Rome because you can't get anywhere else. To follow this recipe, you need to remove the fat from the outside of the intestine that has the congealed milk on the inside of it, and then use strips of fat. Don't throw it away.
Because you gotta use those strips of fat to tie these suckers into rings, one of which you then break. But oh, the whole thing maybe be like, well, I'm definitely gonna get someone else to make it for me, for sure. Yeah, most people aren't doing that process, but instead going to butchers that are preparing it often like live. It's part of the like the sales pitch, right? Like, look at me making this beautiful payata ring.
And you buy them already made, and you tell the butcher how many people you're having over to have payatta with regatoni, and then you cook the intestines of milk-fed veal, which in Roman diet is payatta in a tomato sauce. And then many people also choose to break one open at the end of cooking to kind of stain the tomato sauce with a little bit of this sweetly lactic, almost ricotta-like substance. Is it is it good, the clotted milk? Like, is it yeah? Look, it depends on like the age of the la uh of the of the veal.
The super super baby ones, it's like it's sweet. And the intestines are very almost pencil thin. As they get a little bit older, it can get a little bit more of a gamey flavor, but it's still like round, lactic, recall, like kind of a tangy recall to like a sheep's recotta flavor, even if it's veal. And do you prefer more pencil or more pinky? I like I like the thicker one that almost is the same diameter as rigatoni.
Um and then for the pencil thin ones, I love to do that like on the flat top, just like toss a little bit of seasoning without doing the whole rigmarole of tying it into rings. You just gotta take like the whole tangled bunch, throw it on the uh the the uh piastra, and a couple minutes and you're done. Like does it break when you flip it or do you not flip it? Very gently. You've got to be really gentle with it.
Hey, listen, why do I always break? Uh you're gonna be uh you're probably gonna be about the language, but the ravioli, raviola. Well, how I don't always break how are you supposed to sauce those things without breaking them? You get them out of the water perfectly and then you break them. Well, how are you talking or how are you incorporating swirl?
You gotta swirl. I'm like doing it like a gorilla. No gorilla movements. They're delicate. And I mean, especially if they're made by hand, they could be uh like thicker at some parts than others, susceptible to breaking.
You put them in a pan with the warm sauce or even over the heat, and then you just gently swirl. And you gotta be really, really delicate. That's the only way to do it. I hate when I break them too. You can also not eat ravioli, just like it's spaghetti, which is tied with spaghetti as my favorite shape.
Okay. All right. Uh all right. Oh, another thing. You do cook coffee and you mention I'm not gonna pr I'm gonna mispronounce it, cafe Sunstacchio, but like Nailed it.
All right. I went there once, again, in like, I don't know, 1999, 2000, maybe 20005. And I went there and I was like, what is it with these people? First of all, I don't put milk in my coffee. And they want me to put milk because they want to do their little hidden thing behind their little hidden thing.
What are they doing behind that hidden hidey hole that they don't let you see what they're doing with the coffee? Nothing, right? Well, they're just taking the this is my theory and that shared by others. The like the first little cremino, like the little frothy milky part that comes out of the machine first, like whipping that with sugar, um, and then putting it into the coffee. Um it's not my favorite coffee, but it is a relic.
It's a ritual. And it's a place that I think if you want to understand the sort of mass marketing of coffee in Italy, you have to go there because like so many coffee shops, it opened in 1938, which is this critical time during the fascist year that coffee starts to be democratized. Before that it was a luxury good. Yeah. And they uh they're also famously wood fired, right?
Another thing you maybe shouldn't fire with wood is your coffee roasting, right? So maybe. It depends. Isn't that them though? Aren't they the wood one of the wood fire?
Like they do have a wood-fired, like hand calibrated machine in the back, but the volume that they do means that maybe some of it is roasted that way. But I don't know what the other processes are. But there's um Torah faction called uh Torifazzino Jamaica, and that is uh wood roasted by Johnny Frozzi in Verona. And you like it? No, I love it.
Strong. Uh all right. Oh, one other question. How often do you have pizza in New York City? Ever?
I get tricked all the time into eating Italian things. Well, the qu the reason is is that like I didn't realize that Rome had a cracker crust situation. We have so many pizza varieties. There's like 12 pizza recipes in here, and they'll they'll all surprise you. So the the Gruppo slash whatever, that group that's down here, I forget the other names of them, right?
But they're like lower Manhattan cracker crust pizza. Is that similar to the Roman style? So for those people who are in New York, have you ever had their pizza? I haven't, but uh so the last time I had like a cracker crust pizza that was in really a Roman style, it was at Marta, but that's I believe long since close. Is that possible?
Yeah, probably. Uh but in any event, it's like they would sheet the um the dough, like run it through a sheeter to make it really thin in Rome. Some people do that, some people use a rolling pin. But to my knowledge, I don't know if there are other Roman style pizzerias in town that do that. Yeah, and Styas, get this.
There's not like one, not two, like four pictures of Rosso pizzas. Not this I don't know. My my favorite food. Oh my god, you're one of them? Yeah.
Oh my God. Back when uh come at me. So it's just like, come on. Come on. If we're like, oh, it shows what they can really do because you can't hide.
Could you just show us you can do that? I don't believe that. I that's not my thesis. All right. I think that like Bonchi's sheet pan pizza rosa, which is probably like two to one tomato olive oil, is incredibly delicious and satisfying and savory with a little bit of sweetness.
I think a lot of pizzeros in Rome, it's disgusting. But if you've ever can you just come to Rome and I'll change your mind? I would love to come to Rome. You you could just go to even one place, Pannifica Bonchi. You can get the sheet panel.
They will not come. See this? Well, I'll I'll go and I'll think of you as I'm biting into these pizzeros. But the sheet pan one at Pani Future Bonci is amazing. There's the the long, like oily one that they call the tongue.
Uh and then you have that in here, but that one's looks more done, right? Yes. I mean, they're different, they're different doughs, different hydrations. Uh, the lingua has um oil in the dough, and the pizza in telia tends to not have oil in the dough. And then the like puff pastry pizza terosse, which are they're they're like the perfect snack.
Uh, and the like pastiness of the tomato sauce, I really like that because it's like a 20-minute bake rather than like the faster one for uh the other stuff. Here's the problem I have theoretically with the puff pastry pizza with the thing in. I'm imagining you ever go to an event and the puff pastry was cooked so long ago, and you pick it up and it's just dry, and you're trying to have a conversation, and you can't get to the bar to get a glass of wine, and this thing is just shattering in your hand and it's just dry. Yeah, but it's not like that. No.
Okay. And you have to trust you. Please. Oh my god, get this. I had an argument.
I was having an argument with uh this friend of mine, Guido, who's he's you know, Calabrian, but spends a lot of time in Naples, right? And I was like, you know what? Neopalm pizza's not my favorite pizza. I'm not saying it's so wet. Yeah.
You know, like 20 seconds after it comes out of the oven, it flops down. You know what I mean? And so the tip sag, no one wants that. No, for him, he's like, it's the only style of pizza. I was like, Guido.
It's ridiculous. I was like, Guido. Guido's mistaken. Yeah. So I was like, you know, and but then he he did the same thing you just did to me and Nastasi would do to me.
He's like, I told him I'd never been to Naples, and he was like, huh. And what do you mean? He's like, well, yeah, what do you know? I was like, uh, fair. I mean, look, if you if you go to Naples, most of the pizza's gonna disappoint you, honestly.
It's gonna be wet and floppy and uh and cook too fast at a temperature that's too high. But uh there are a couple of places that do a longer bake and are serving 60 pizzas a day at lunch and not four hundred. Right. So every pizza takes heat off the deck. That's gonna affect also the outcome too.
Yeah, you do say in your in your pizza recipes, give your stone time to recover. You gotta. Yeah. Or your your steel. But you know, it's true, it's like, but just the physics of Neapolitan pizza, I'm never like, oh yeah, that's the way I want my pizza made.
You know what I'm saying? Well, it's really evolved in the past few decades to become a food that has kind of almost mass production behind it. Yeah. And is eaten on a plate. It never was eaten on a plate before.
So the whole like the evaporation of the moisture, which also doesn't help that floppy texture. Yeah, and the cult of it I also don't like. Yeah. I mean, I could live without it. Yeah.
All right. I will talk to well, and you've had it. Oh, I take I go to Naples at least once a week. Really? Yeah.
How fast is the train from Rome to Italy? One hour and ten minutes. That's nice. It's amazing. Never been south of Rome in Italy.
Excuse me? I know. Unacceptable. I know. I gotta go to also I gotta go to the town that uh the Adenesios are from, but that's even further south in Naples.
But anyway, whatever. Someday. Nastasi's like, you'll never do it. You'll you'll die first. Yeah.
That's true. It's true. Uh all right. Oh, another thing I noticed is that when I was growing up as a uh, you know, in my twenties or whatever, culinarily growing up. I was full grown by then.
But anyway, um Italian writers spent all of their time telling you not to use bacon to use pancetta instead. And all of these recipes are guancially for it, and pancetta is like the maybe you can substitute it. So my question is is that something that's actually changed in Italy or was it always that way? It's absolutely changed. Guanciale, especially in Rome, guanciale is touted as the only acceptable um cured pork product that is permitted in carbonara, greccia, machichana, et cetera.
But when you look at recipes, even from 20 years ago, much less 70 years ago, they're using bacon, literal bacon. America, baby. Well, that's because you say Americans came in during, you know, after the war and you know, did their American thing. Also, bacon was like a thing that people had. Um, and pancetta was also something that people had, and guanchali was something that fewer people had because it's just less of the pig.
Um, but there's been this codification of recipes, especially in the past two or three decades, where we're now told this recipe is made with X, Y, and Z and these techniques, and there never were any variations, and the documents don't demonstrate that. Is less of the pig gonna be your flexitarian restaurant? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know that the Italians would buy into that. Um sounds like a flop. Yeah. Well, also you mentioned uh Gricia, which you you shout out as being the thing that you were trying to popularize over there.
Now, here's my question. So for those of you that don't know what it is, and that would be me until I read the book, right? Fundamentally, flavors of Caccio Pepe with guanciale in it, flavors of it. I would say I would say like I would go more the carbonara minus the egg situation because of the texture. All right.
Yeah, because you know it's entirely different. So you want it, so interestingly, it's gonna ask it's a very different way of making this than making the cachua pepe. You want it completely. So you're we should see Cachoe Pepe as a totally different being, even if it does have pecorino and black pepper. So why don't you get into it?
So tell us about this cold water McGilla and like the Cachoe Pepe and like you and then uh Nastasia. Did you do you guys did one of those too, right? But you're not you're you're never willing to say what your techniques were secret. For the cachoe pepe, no. That was I use Mark's recipe.
Yeah. All right. Well, Katie, you want to say what the the shtick is here, the magic? Yeah. So two of my favorite cachoe pepe recipes uh are made with a cold base to begin with.
And so uh in the kitchen, the chefs will mix pecorino romano and cold water and black pepper and have a paste nearby so that when they get an order in, they start mixing the paste with the cooked pasta, adding a little bit of not hot pasta water, warm pasta water to thin it if needed. That way the pecorino romano and some of the parmigiano regata that the chefs put in it now don't break. And you say the worst thing you can do is just add it, add it the way that people say with the hot water and bust it up. Yeah. All right.
Um, and then uh at Cesare El Casaletto, uh Leonardo Vignoli makes uh makes it in the in a hot pan with ice cubes and keeps everything really cool and then adds the pasta. And so you get like a tepid pasta on your table. Yeah, I don't know about that. I do like it. Do you like it?
Yeah. It's juicy. It's juicy, and it's not that kind of like dry, tight cachoe pepe that some people like. I like both of them. What's that lunatic Italian who puts ice cubes on his pizza?
And what's it? Oh, that's Stefano Caligari, and he's he does that for his cacho e pepe pizza. And I'll tell you why. All right. Because he puts the cacho e pepe, so the pecorino romano and black pepper on the pot on the blind baked crust.
Right. Uh after the bake. And so he needs like a wet but cooked center of his pizza for everything to stick to. And it's a really thick layer of cacho e pepe, but it's like a dry mixture of those things and it works. It's impossible for one person to eat more than two slices.
And what does the ice cube do for it? The ice cube goes on um the raw dough and then when he launches the pizza in the oven the ice cubes like melt and then the water evaporates but leaves a s a a kind of tacky surface. Oh and keeps it totally blonde? Mm-hmm. Huh that's some weird stuff.
It's not the worst. Okay. I l that's it's pretty good. Not the not the No no it's it's very good. It's just one of those, it's kind of like a novelty pizza in the sense you can't just like eat one by yourself.
Right. Wiley showed me this he's like look at this guy with his ice cubes in the oven I'm like gimmick. Gimmick that's what I said to him, but I don't know, maybe not. I mean it's it's kind of brilliant because this guy Stefano Caligari was always very is always cleverly kind of moving Roman cuisine along rather than trapping it in amber. So he's also the guy who invented the Trapecino pizza pocket.
Which is strange. That's so strange. 2008? Yeah. That didn't exist before 2008?
Nope. Huh. Yeah. You would have bread and you would have m meatball or chicken gatchatory or whatever and they never met each other. They were in two separate parts of your plate.
All right. But he joined them together. Speaking of new things that seem old uh how do you pronounce pizza right the oblong thing. You say that they call it ancient bread but really it was invented like last week. 2001.
Yeah yeah in prati near the Vatican to me that's last week. Absolutely but it's it's amazing because um you can say anything you want about when your business was founded or who created something and nobody will fact check you. For those of you that don't know right now we're in the like middle end section of the book. We're in the breads and pizza section of the book. So the way this book works is it starts with a history of Roman of Rome, but like with an eye to food and food production.
Then goes into starts with uh starters and so many fried foods. Oh, we love a fritto. And then works its way through two breads and then desserts and then drinks. Is this accurate? Accurate.
Okay. Um what about the piedina? Piadina's from Romagna. It sounds like Rome, I know. So that's from the eastern northeastern part of the country.
Back to this pizza. Rice flour and soy flour. What does that do to the dough? So uh on a molecular level, I'm not qualified to answer that, but from a marketing level, we are told it renders the dough molto digeribile, molto digeribile, very digestible. Speaking Italians because it doesn't uh cultivate gluten.
Yeah. Oh, oh, my Hey Stas. What are the two what are the things that Italians always talk about? Eating and pooping. Actually, or not pooping.
Constipation is the number two most popular topic. It's a problem. I mean, is it though? Not pooping, major problem. Especially if you're traveling in Italy.
No one's gonna give you the fiber that they eat when they're at home. Traveling always stops up the system, unless you go to the wrong places, in which case it loosens it way up. Fair, fair, fair. You know what I mean? It's because you're on the freaking plane.
You're sitting for too long. You can't get up and move around. I don't think it's the food. I think it's that you're sitting like a lump in a in a in a seat and it's just ruining the floor. Have you ever had an Italian?
Have you ever had an Italian ask you if they can give you an enema? Many times. Wow. And not just my grandmother. Is this real?
Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because everyone's always checking in with their like your GI and like, oh, did you poop today? And I go see my boyfriend's family. You know, people are very aware of my rhythms, and people will be like, well, let's get you an enema.
Oh my God. I'm like, I'm good. I just need vegetables. Can we have a salad? If I do see you in Rome, please don't take me to your enema friends.
No, that you're safe. But I will take you to eat some veggies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Veggies I like. Oh, speaking of which, you know what?
I've never been in the in the sweet spot for the artichokes to Rome. And Siri, that's the most FOMO of all of the Roman things is the cartofi alla diuda. It's most FOMO I've ever had. And you have this picture of this upright hyper crisp looking. You have a Roman one later that's like braised with some with some of that.
What's the name of the of the pentuccia? Yeah, yeah, that they're mint relative there. And I'm like, okay, fine. This looks like something I could have, but the cartofi alla judo. I'm like, ah.
It's great. Is it though? Yeah. I mean, look, if it's properly pruned, it's great, right? You've got to clear off all the potentially fibrous uh sharp bits and then poach it in oil until it's cooked all the way through.
Yeah. Nice and tender. Almost like a fry. Yeah, and then you fry it in hotter oil. Yeah.
And it's great. But it's um, it's like a December through March-April season. The thing is, there's so much demand for car trofe that you can find them year-round. They're just not always the same sort of nutty flavor of the local Roman variety, because they're coming from Brittany or Puglia. I don't want that.
I want the real. I understand. All right. Uh here's another question, because there's a lot of history in this book, right? 70 pages.
Yeah. So here's a question I always ask, and I probably asked you the last time you were on, but let's see whether like writing this whole history section is like uh, you know, fluffed out your uh concept of it. Is the reason that no one because there are American dishes that have seafood and a bunch of cheese. Look at shrimp and grits, which is a brick in your stomach, but delicious, right? No cheese in any of the seafood stuff.
It's gotta be Lent fast stuff, right? That's gotta be white. There's tons of cheese in the seafood dishes. I mean, the most famous fritto is fiori di zucca, and that's mozzarella with anchovy. Because most of the pasta dishes that anyway we grew up with is Italian American folks, like the fish pastas don't have any sort of but you're saying in the real life in Italy, it's like fine.
In real life in Italy, like if you attempt to put Parmigiano Reggiano and spaghetti with clams, somebody will slap you. But if you serve pasta with shrimp and pecorino in Sardegna, everyone eats it like that. All over Italy there are exceptions to this rule. It's just like Parmigiano and clams. That's a no-go for everybody nationwide.
Although I have had a clam pizza with Parmogano and in New Haven, it's the perfect food. Yeah. I concur. But don't tell any of my Italian friends or family that I said that. I will not.
Speaking of things that sound like horror shows, talk to me about rice salad with hot dog uh hot dog pieces and canned corn. So insalate di riso is one of the things that we make when it's so so super hot, which is like now five months a year. So you make you like r rinse a bunch of rice and then you boil it and mix it with canned corn, uh, those like um sliced black olives, uh oil-packed tinned tuna, cubes of emmenthal, and hot dog rounds, and also uh mixed pickled vegetables. And a tube of mayonnaise if you're feeling fancy. Yeah, yeah.
I like your mayonnaise comes in tubes. Weird. Yeah, I l uh uh I'm into it. But you said you're there for this salad. Yeah.
I like it. And every bar, so like the barra or cafe of Rome has also become a place where people go for lunch now because all of the labor reforms took away a lot of benefits, like the meal tickets people would get as part of the work contract. And so people with five, ten euros can go and get a rice salad, feels really summery. And everyone in Italy eats so many versatile, cut into little rounds, even on their pizzas. So it sounds maybe shocking, but it's pretty ubiquitous.
Hmm. All right. Oh, speaking of salad, mayonnaise, tubes, no mayonnaise in your uh Tonello sauce, huh? In your in your No, it's an old school one, so it doesn't use it. Why is it Tonello sauce, but it's Viltonato?
So no, it's uh salsa tonata. Oh yeah, all right, yeah. Uh you don't like mayonnaise? I mean, uh yours is egg yolks, anchovies, tuna. What am I missing?
Oh whole eggs. You use whole eggs. Yeah. And maybe are there capers in it? Probably.
It's delicious. For those of you who never had cold veal and like tuna sauce, it is good. Yeah. It is good. You know what I'm saying?
It tastes delicious. And it's if listeners are like, Katie Parla, that's from Piedmont. Yeah, no duh. But it's been fully adopted by Romans who were conquered by the Piemontese and had at least some of their culinary inspiration imparted. Say cheesecake with an Italian the way in Italian says it.
Just gag. Give me one more time. Just gig. Yeah, I like that a lot. But now, uh the one that you give the recipe for, which has the full crust on it, because theoretically Jews were not allowed to serve dairy to Catholics, so they hit it with a crust and it's like an upside down cheesecake.
Yeah, it I mean, that's the lore, but in fact, the papal bulls that established the ghetto and regulated Jewish economic life don't actually say so. Oh. But that's the lore anyway. And we know that there is a lot of stuff passed down that has a kernel of truth. Well, but doesn't have documentary evidence to support it.
If you read the introduction to Katie Parla's book, Rome, you will find that the Romans are famously liars. Absolutely. And we love this about about them. But it's Yeah, it's it's all about telling a story, and sometimes there's a little bit of truth to it, but usually it's uh it's to do marketing. All right, and so this is a an actual recipe, Joe, so I think we can say it on air.
Dick cake. Mm-hmm. Talk to me about dick cake. So uh in formal Italian, this celebratory cake is called uh pizza ebraica, Jewish pizza, and it was used for celebrating a briss, and so got a fun and flirty nickname. Yeah.
If however you order pizza di beride in the kosher bakeries, people give you really, really mean glances because they're like, you're not really supposed to say that. Oh but it is the it is the name. It is it is the name. It's like scan people are scandalized by it, but it also is the name. I see.
Delicious or not delicious? It tastes great. It's like the original power bar, and it's got pine nuts, raisins, candied fruits, almonds, uh, egg, oil, and flour, and it's very dense and very caloric. And was to celebrate the birth of a baby boy, and the one at Bochone is amazing. And that's uh Is that that's six generations bakery in uh the former Correct in the former Jewish ghetto.
Yeah. Uh and they will never ever give up their recipe. And so I have a disclaimer, this recipe is not their recipe. How close is it? It's like, you know, we're six sixty percent of the way there, but no one's cracked it, and no one ever will.
No one ever will. Uh all right. Now, speaking of dense fruit magillas, uh, at the end, so here's a product, Cianese product, right? Which I two minutes. C and E's product, which I like.
I don't love it though. Panforte. Don't love it. It's gross. Okay.
So the one that I that was most Panforte like in the book is this Pangialo. Is it similar or no? Very similar, but like the giallo, the yellow part is from Saffron. And is it better? It's the same.
It tastes the same. This is why, see, I want everyone to know when you read a cookbook, and a recipe is included because it has to be, but at the end, the person says, serves six to eight people for a hundred years. What that means is no one's gonna want to eat that much of it. But it is traditional. Am I reading this right?
Yeah, I mean, I had to put it in there because uh forno Angelo Colapicani is a really important place to document and uh Yeah, but nobody And no one's gonna make it. All right, uh okay, I have a minute 14. All right, here we go. Ready? So uh the Rosetta, which is you which is a like a flower-shaped puffy roll, right?
You say it references like the Kaiser and these other stamp things that came in in the 1800s, but does it possible? Right, but does it also reference the old Rome like Roman Pompeii like way that the Roman like Roman Romans, whatever you want to call them, Republic Romans, used to make their flower-shaped breads. Is it also referencing that or no? So those were like the ones that are perforated so you can pull parts off. Yeah, bigger.
They're bigger. Possible, but like people weren't really reflecting on things like that in the 1950s when they started developing sandwich buns. They were just like, how can we get something that's that looks pretty to attract people? All right. And and uh one last thing I noticed, here's here's a a thing I came up with.
So uh this guy pizza place in Raza, his name's out of my head. Dan Richer. There you go. I read his book and he's I wrote that with him. Really?
Yeah. Love it. So the auto lies. Great. This makes a lot of sense.
So you put the salt in after the auto lies. You mix by hand. So they but here's my new tip. Because sometimes it's hard to get the salt in. I blitz the salt in a blender or a spice grinder and get it into a powder and the salt goes in really easily super easily.
Game changer anyway. And I wrote did I already know you wrote that book? I don't know. Good book. Well well next time you come on maybe we'll have him on we'll do it the book the old book.
Anyway, Katie Parla, the book is Rome. Go pick it up if you want to know something about Roman food. Thanks for coming on again. Oh by the Kitchen Arts and Letters.
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