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, New Stand Studios. No John today. No John. No John.
No John. He's chilling in Connecticut. He's like, it's too, it's too damn cold. I'm not coming back. And he's like, it's springtime.
It shouldn't be this cold in New York City. So to hell with you. I'm not coming back. I think that's what happened. Love you, John.
Yeah, yeah. Love you anyway. There was a guy in New Haven, one of the best uh panhandlers of all time, who you would his we called him God Bless You Anyway, because you wouldn't give him money and be like, God bless you anyway. I was like, I don't want that. Don't give me that.
Don't give me your sloppy God bless anyway. What are you talking about? Anyway. Got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels. What's up?
Hey, hey, hey, welcome to the studio. We may or may not, she keeps calling in and dropping out. Now listen, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez lives in a neighborhood in Los Angeles called Laurel Canyon, where for some reason, even though everyone's got money, no one's got cell service. So you explain this to me. It's like it's like it's like all the people who live in the financial district or or try, you know, try Becca down here and are like, no, no, the streets are supposed to suck.
That's why we pay all the money so that we can like bust all of our cars and bikes on cobblestones and snap our heels off. We love it. We pay extra for it. That's what she does with her cell service. P.S.
Her dad used to work for ATT. Still, no cell service. Can't get any cell service in where Nastasia like uh lives. Whatever. It is a nicer environment than what we have here in New York City, our tortured hellscape.
But we do have Jackie Molecules who lives in the lowlands in Los Angeles. How are you doing? Yo, I'm good. So are you in the area. Are you in the area that like cracks off and goes off into the ocean when it finally happens?
Or no? No, no, I'm east. Okay. All right. So where does the line run where where like the entire seaboard just goes goodbye and turns into Vancouver Island South?
That's a great name for it. I don't know, actually. Yeah. We'll figure it out. Uh and speaking of Vancouver Island in the upper left, we got Quinn.
What's up? Quinn. Oh, good, good, good. All right. And uh today in studio, our special guest with the upcoming, not yet released, you get it here early, coming out on March 24th, book, Ham L.
Whaley with his new book, Hello Home Cooking. Wait, how do you like to pronounce Hello Home Cooking? Is it like hello, home cooking, or is it like, hello, home cooking? Or like is it somewhere in between? I like the emphasis on the hello, like like old school sitcomie, hello home cooking.
Oh, all right, all right. Hello. Well, you do like you make a bunch of Seinfeld references. So I do. I do.
You like some. Although, have you gone and look obviously funny, incredibly poorly acted. Yes. No doubt. No, it's Jerry Seinfeld, maybe the worst actor in sitcom history.
Yeah, just a bread. He is horrendous. Yeah, he's horrendous. Can't like, you know, can't go outside of the yeah, it's definitely carried by the cast around him. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, uh, you know, uh what's her name? Julie Louis Dreyfus is fantastic. Amazing. Amazing.
Uh Jason Alexander, great. Yeah. Michael Richards, great. Aside from, you know, yeah, like from the stuff that's not so great. Aside from that, yeah, not not great.
A lot of not great things in his in his in his past. Yeah. Um Julia Louie Dreyfus, though. Amazing, consistently amazing. Yeah, yeah.
Uh oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, like, you know, that Veep, all the other like weird, bad, terrible movies she's been in where she's still great in them. She's also, I I'm not a big person. I'm not a big person who likes to watch like, you know, those YouTube interviews with like with like stuff. I don't really care about those, but I will watch every single one with her because she is so funny, consistently funny, a great storyteller.
She's a great watch every time. She has a podcast that uh we started listening to when we were doing more driving out into Jersey. So I have pictures of listening to my mental pictures of listening to her podcast while waiting for uh Lincoln and Holland tunnel traffic. Which is not like there's like fewer crappy approaches than to like fight your way back into New York City and not in like the Holland tunnel and they have all of those traffic lights. And you're like, don't.
Yeah, just don't. Just don't. You don't need them. Like, why isn't there just a way to get from the highway to the freaking tunnel without going through all those damn lights? For those of you that have never visited New York City, you don't know what I'm talking about, but trust me, you don't want to.
You don't want to go away. Yeah. It was designed in like the the 20s, probably, when they were like, oh, traffic light. What's the problem? Yeah.
What could possibly go wrong? Okay, how many cars are possibly going to come into this city? 25 to 30? You know, the Holland Tunnel was interesting because they had to do a lot of engineering on how to make the air not poisonous because it was one of those early, like, you know, long tunnels underneath the one that cars were going through it, right? It's like a similar problem.
They had to make the air not poisonous for the trains coming in and out of Grand Central when they buried all of the lines. And I think Holland, the engineer who the tunnel was named after, like maybe, maybe he died while they were making it, similar to like a rolling situation with the bridge. But you know, Brooklyn Bridge, they don't call it, they don't call it the rolling bridge. They call it Brooklyn Bridge. They're like, I don't care whether this guy died.
What is it to me? A bunch of people died making this bridge. You know what I mean? Anyways. Uh well, it's a it's a pleasure having you on.
And Quinn, do we have a uh discount at Kitchen Arts and Letters on the pre-order on this sucker? Uh not in the pre-order. I'll try and get one. They're ordered during a pre-order promo. For everybody.
Oh, everyone gets a pre any chump can get a pre-order promo. Anyone. Well, welcome welcome any chump, you know, to the game. Well, well. Yeah, yeah.
Um, all right. So right now is the period of the show where we shoot the breeze over anything that's happened in the first of all. So 24th is next week, right? When it comes out? So what do you have to do in the week before a book comes out that is like unlike other like do you have to like make a bunch of recipes and show up at places with recipes and try to tell people like what's what, or do you or do you just kind of chill and wait for it to happen?
Like what how does this work now? Now you just you just talk about the book nonstop. So I've had I just had a podcast earlier today where I was talking about this book. I have another one later today where I'm talking about this book, and then I'm gonna shoot some uh social videos where I'm making recipes out of the book, and then that's pretty much every single day up until Kiln comes out. So it's like, hey, there's it's like, hey, buy my book.
Did you know? I had a book. You should buy it. It's really good. Buy my book.
Hey, you down the street, buy my book. It's a lot of that. Yeah. It's a lot of that. Are you doing the are you are you on one of the NPRs?
Um, no, not yet. You gotta get on the W N Y C, man. I need to, I know. Why not put in a good word for me? I mean, if I knew those fools, I would.
You know what I mean? But I'm always kind of like curious, like what kind of questions, like what's the question you hate the most that people keep asking you that you have to do over and over again? Your favorite X or your f I mean, like I it's like it's always like you have to do it because uh like I'm not a very famous person, so people don't know who I am. So it's just the give me a gist about your life. So it's like basically giving like an autobiography in five minutes every time.
That's always how you open. That's always like that's what everyone wants. It's like, can you condense your life story and your career into you know just a couple of sound bites for people to like learn about you? And you're like, yeah. But you know, the good news for anyone that actually wants that information is that every chapter has a biographical section in it.
So all they need to do is, you know, if you want to know about, by the way, I never played any of the Final Fantasy because it just missed me because I'm, you know, I'm older. You know what I mean? So like if you want to know what it was like. First of all, how do you pronounce that the country Q-A-T-A-R? Is it closer to butter or closer to guitar?
Because I hear both in the US. I hear both. So this is very controversial. So in Arabic, it's Qatar. So that's like the Arabic pronunciation.
But a lot of those letters don't exist in English. So a lot of people try and say like kind of like the English do paella. Like they try and do that and they'll say cutter, but that hurts me. It like it hurts my ears. It makes me kind of cringe a bit.
So you prefer Qatar. I prefer Qatar personally, but it's like it's it's really uh up to you. Like it's it's like you know where the country is. So I'm happy with that now because before the World Cup and before what's happening now, like people did not know what Qatar was or where it was. They thought I just made it up.
They thought it was a state that they didn't know. So it's like, so it's I'm just happy people know it. But personally, I'm a Qatar versus cutter. Or if I'm going to, if I'm going to go that route and like kind of flex that, like, yes, I grew up there and I can speak some Arabic, I'll say Qatar. But like I'm I'm like, I find that kind of strange.
You know, that there, like the Giada Delorentis, where she she'd be like speaking and then just drop some like perfect Italian pronunciations in there. I find that to be a little weird. You know, in normal conversation, I'll just say Qatar. So could you not watch Jeopardy back in the day because you couldn't stand when Trebek did his like accents? It was rough.
It was rough. It's rough. We love you, Alex, but can't you just, man, come on, man. It's like we know. You're a very learned human being.
We we get it. You're a smart guy, but it's like just talk to us. We're just here. Yeah. Or like an American aggressively rolls their arm or something.
It's like every time. Yeah. It's yeah. It's rough, right? We know you've been to Spain, guy.
We know. Completely non-cooking related, but often one of the anecdotes here. You mentioned uh again with the with the playing in your PlayStation, getting these the magazines you used to get in in Doha were like literally sharpied out the stuff they didn't want to. Who has the time? Did magazines cost infinity because you had to hire someone to sit there and sharpie every magazine out?
Yes, because from because they had to get shipped in, which already adds to the cost, and you have the sensors who are manually sharpieing, you know, any potential potential hint at cleavage. Like it's a video game. It's not like you're seeing full frontal and or full on nipples. It's like just like the promise of cleavage. And this is like tech and two era, right?
So pretty blocky. Yeah. Very blocky. Very, very blocky. So you were not looking at realistic models.
Uh a lot of it was still in 2D. So yeah, just everything. Fully, fully. And it's not like they would they would just black out the what they thought were the compromised areas. Full blockage, head to toe.
So it's like, at least let me see the face, man. Let me give me some kind of idea of what this looks like. So question. Do you, as a result, find silhouettes more sexy than the average American? Ooh, very, very interesting choice.
The uh maybe. Yeah. Maybe I never thought of it. I never analyzed it this deeply, but but I do love a silhouette. Right?
And I think for the average American, look, I mean, there's like a Victorian era kind of American who like, you know, grew up with those weird silhouettes of people on the wall. He couldn't afford maybe to get the picture done, but you could get the silhouette. You know what I mean? But like I feel like that's like an era of the past. The only time you see silhouettes are like, you know, truck, those chrome truck McGillas.
Yeah. Those are very suggestive. Probably not allowed. Definitely that those would get the silhouettes would get sharpied over, that's for sure. Yeah, that's a silhouette of a silhouette.
You're like, I know what's under that. You can't you can't hide that. I can't make that. I know that's a naked lady on the back of that automobile. Yeah.
Anyway. Uh all right. So enough of the non-cooking stuff. What do you what do you got for me, Jack? Stas and I, she's not here, I guess, but we went, we both went to nine inch nails.
Oh, yeah. And then uh watched then we had the Oscars. Uh we we all hung and watched the Oscars the other night, which was fun. Was it? Um was it actually though?
Well, yeah, it was, you know. You can find fun in these things. Oh, yeah. Were the Oscars fun? I don't I don't know.
But they were fun. So you weren't like they were on, but they weren't what you were focused on. No, we were focused on it, but you know. Okay. Getting jokes off.
I see. Okay. And what was the what's Oscar party food before I talk about nine inch nails, which is really important. We did uh we got uh pizza from Triple Beam, which is not very interesting, but Nastasia did um I think she helped make lasagna with Elizabeth Faulkner. She's not here, so she can't speak to it, but it was very good.
Yeah. And she made it. Yeah. So I have nothing beyond that. Let me ask you this.
Are you more putting the goodness of the lasagna on Faulkner or on Nastasia's Suchet's ship? And please the fifth. Yeah. Smart man. Smart man.
Right answer. Do you know, I've never. So like, you know, like uh Faulkner was on the show, I don't know how many years ago. When she was like a year or two ago when she was doing her date, uh started her date liquor. You know, she's making date.
I didn't know that. She's making date liquor. Get this. So yeah, she's teamed up with uh, you know, in like extreme SoCal, like probably out near the Panaments or something, uh, some date farm, and all of the sugar is made from dates. So like they do a fermentation of dates.
So they're probably using I think they're using mainly for that, like medules because the sugar level's so high. You know what I mean? So they're doing a date fermentation, and then when they do their sweetened, like their their Amaro, they use date sugar for that too. So it's like no oops, it's nothing but dates when it goes in. Is it out already?
Or is it something that she's still working on? It is. Uh it's I forg I forget who's carrying it's in tomorrow. Yeah, it's in it's in California. Uh I forget where she said she's she just switched distributors in in New York, but yes, it is available, and they're gonna do I think a New York tour of it again.
Anyway. That sounds amazing. Yeah, it sounds really, really good. But then I was, I think. I was like, uh, I was like, you know what?
I never had like any of like her famous like pizzas or any of those things that she I was like, I was like, man, I feel like such a chump. Like whenever I have someone on and I've never had any of their famous, like, you know, I'm like, uh, what a chump I am. Well, I've I've when she first started, I knew ours like this amazing pastry chef. Never got a chance to try any of her pastries. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Never got a chance to try any of her Italian food when she's shifted into the Italian world. So I gotta make sure that I try some of the day tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, she's funny.
She's like, uh, yeah, we're just we'll have her back on again, which he when she comes back. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. So, how is nine-inch nails? Because that is what we were here to talk about today. Nails was fantastic.
Yeah. Un unparalleled, unparalleled, like stage audio visual presentation. I mean, that's usually the case with them. But it was yeah, it was fantastic. Does is Reznor still I I don't think he is, but Reznor used to famously kind of be a dick to the other musicians who are on the stage, like to the extent that he's like, you're kind of worthless and just kick over their equipment.
You know what I mean? Like, but he's not like that anymore, right? Oh, well, no, he he no, but I will say, so we we we there there are two stages. This will be a quick story. There are two stages, and there's like a B stage where they do like the more he's like playing piano and stuff, and we were right in front of that, like maybe you know, ten feet away or something, like very, very close.
I think they have two stages. He's on the piano. Yeah, yeah, it was pretty cool. So he's on the piano singing a song to open, and um at the end he kicks over the it gets up and it kicks the piano bench off the stage. All right, and there's just clearly a production guy whose job is to catch the bench every show.
He was standing there waiting for it. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. I um when I was at the Brandy Carlisle concert, like something went wrong with her guitar, and literally in the middle she just holds her guitar out like it's some sort of unclean filth, and someone runs on the stage and grabs it and then puts a new guitar in it. Oh, like strong, strong.
I like that. It's a good move. Yeah. So was it uh the piano? Was it an acoustic version of I want to f you like an animal?
No, no, no, no, no. I actually forget the song, but yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, now that's what's going through my head. Well, of course, how can it not be? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, anyway. Well, that's the video where he was hanging upside down the whole time, right? I think so. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Then there's like I think there's maybe there are like meat hooks involved somehow. Yeah. I might be wrong. Maybe you're on something like that. Sounds about right.
I would feel like if you're gonna do it with an animal, maybe choose a live animal, not one on a meat hook. Just saying. Like whatever your kink is, I mean, hey man, not here, you know, not here to judge. Uh they did head like a hole. Oh yeah.
Okay. Oh, yeah. Uh all right, Quinn, what do you got? Uh this week we made some uh fresh emu egg pasta. So I guess it's good that uh nostalgia dropped out and cheese eggs.
Right. I I have to ask. Like, of all the applications on earth where you can taste the egg the least, pasta's gotta be it. Like, I used to I I I know that I rant, right? But like I used to color my pasta red with ketchup because you can't taste it.
You know what I mean? So like why is it just because you had it where you're just like this is my flex now? I make emu egg pasta, or like why why pasta? Well, I wanted to see if the texture would be different. And it is kind of there's actually more delicate than a regular egg pasta.
So I wonder if like the amylase and the egg yolk is more active or something. Or maybe it just doesn't have as much protein. But the point is it looks really thick. Like even when it's raw, the yolk and the egg white are very, very risky. So I thought there would actually be more protein.
All right. Are you sure? But maybe I are you sure that the person you bought it from hadn't frozen them? I know you can prevent them from cracking. I don't even know whether emu eggs crack.
You ever freeze eggs and they crack, but they're still fine. You know what I'm saying? They crack, but they're still good. I don't think I've ever frozen an egg. Yeah.
Well, when you freeze an egg, the yolk goes solid. So if you but like I we used to get um we used to root in solid. Yeah, but we used to let me finish. So at the French Culinary Institute, where they kept the eggs was too cold. And I think where we used to get them from Dairyland, like they kept their eggs like super cold.
So when I used to do my sous vide demos, I would know if the eggs not even frozen had been stored like too too cold, so they were even close to freezing, and the yolks would always be thicker. So I'm wondering if because the emu eggs have to last a long time because they're not like selling them like I don't know, chicken eggs, that like they keep them like like at zero. So where they're not like freezing, they're not gonna the yolk won't go solid, but might get thicker. You know what I'm saying? This is a s I'm ask I'm asking because I have no idea, but I suspect that might be the case rather than it's also possible it's a different bird.
Who knows? You know what? I don't find it. Yeah, I mean I g I I can ask how they're stored. Yeah.
But this is two eggs like the and again the the farmer tells us they're ready. We pick them up. So I don't think maybe they're storing them in like a really, really cold fridge, but I would assume it's like standard refrigeration. Okay, I like the way you say they're ready. I'm imagining this emu like for like three days and finding you like, ready.
Let 'em know. Let them know. All right. I thought you said you were gonna put two eggs in the uh the two emu eggs in the pasta, and I was like, what are you making pasta for a billion people? Well, I tried to make emer egg and then fill ravioli with quail eggs when they fell apart.
I see. I see. I see. So like a tiny egg and a big egg. Listen, Ham, do you have any good techniques for peeling quail eggs?
Because I don't, I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I love quail eggs, but I hate peeling them as well. I love quail eggs.
Yeah. Like just hard boiled pop them like snacks like olives, especially a pickled quail egg. Oh, what a treat. Well, but here's the thing there's a magic point in a pickling before the texture goes too rubbery and it shrinks too much when it's just right. Where it it it doesn't, because I feel like when it goes too far it can get a little plasticky.
Yeah. Like when you're bite into it. But yes, there is a sweet spot where it just yields just the right amount. Right. Because I don't appreciate the texture.
Because like one day I was like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna make pickled eggs. Because I was this was like, you know, the last bar. I was like, I'm gonna make pickled eggs. I'm gonna see whether the canned quail eggs work.
They're too, they're not, they're they're no they're no good. Yeah, they're no good. They're no good. They're no good. But like imagine if they had been good.
If someone made like what if someone made like frozen, like a first of all, I don't know why all hard boiled eggs you buy. I know you don't like hard boiled eggs. I I don't. I'm not a big fan of hard boiled eggs. So do you pickle softer eggs?
I do. Jammy. I like a pickled jammy egg. Pickled jammy. That sounds like uh like a 1993 ska pickled jammy egg.
Yeah, yeah. But uh opening for no doubt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, but uh, yeah, I like a hard boiler. But I guess with a jammy egg, you could probably keep it better in the pickle longer, right?
It's not gonna go as exactly. You have a bigger, especially for like restaurants, you just have a bigger window to just store the eggs. Right. But imagine if someone made that pr like the first time you realize that you can buy frozen uh pearl uh pearl onions that are already peeled. Imagine if someone did that with like quail eggs that was actually good that you could use, and then you could be like, everybody gets tiny pickled eggs.
All of you, you all get tiny pickled eggs. You know what I mean? That's a shark tank idea, right there. You you can go to Shark Tank with your frozen, frozen pickled quail eggs. You know what we'll do?
We'll get crisper to make quail eggs with no shells. We'll crisper those quails up. They'll be like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blahs. Done. You know what I mean?
I'm glad you brought up the frozen pearl onion because they're one of my favorite vegetables out of the frozen aisle. They're amazing. How are you making a chicken pot pie if you don't do it? Yeah. You know what I'm saying?
Now here's the problem. There are literally four grocery stores within a block of my house. Only one of them carries pearl onions, but they don't carry the standard brands, and they're slightly too big. Oh no, that's the worst. Yes.
That's the worst. Yeah. Wegmans has the perfect frozen pearl onions. So you live pretty close to that Kmart Wegman's, right? Yeah.
I call it the Kmart Wegmans people because for many years this was a Kmart and then it became a Wegman's. So to me it's the Kmart Wegmans. I apologize in in advance. But it is an interesting store, like the weird up and down. Uh but it's a good resource to have.
It's it's great. They their produce isn't great, but their their fish aisle, their like seafood aisle is amazing. They have so many fish that they get from Japan. They do like tuna cutting demos. They're their fish is top, top notch.
And just their general Wegman's brand stuff. I don't know how this turned into a Wegman's ad. But they're like Wegman's. They don't even pay stuff. Do they pay you?
No, I wish you'd be like, sucker. They don't pay me either. Chumps, idiots. It's good. It's pretty good.
It's like cheap and good. Okay. Speaking of, you know, they're an upstate New York brand. Yeah. I know you're a hot dog man based on your book.
Although, okay, before we go any further, I was gonna say they carry a brand of hot dogs that I like, Zweigels, which is a Rochester brand hot dog that I've I I enjoy it. I think it's good with skins, because I'm a skinned hot dog fellow. Yeah. What the hell is a Brazilian hot dog party? So a Brazilian hot dog party, it's it's just it's a giant pot.
It's a lot of, it's um sauce, it's um peppers and onions cooked down, some tomato sauce in there, some seasonings, and then you can either sear off the hot dogs and dump it in there or just dump the hot dogs right in there. So what do you do? I like to sear and then put it in. I like that extra, that extra bit of flavor. And the smokiness from the hot dogs mingles with the sauce, and you get like this delicious thing.
So that that pot just goes out on the table, and then you just have an array of toppings. Like, and not just, I'm not talking like onions, relish, ketchup, mustard. I'm talking mashed potatoes, potato sticks, chilies, pickled peppers, pretty much anything that you have in your fridge that's ready to eat and that can go on a piece of bread, that's making it onto the table. And you just grab your hot dog, ladle a sauce into your bun, and then you kind of just hit the buffet of toppings and make your own, make your own hot dog. Now, these are somewhat soupy, so these are eat over a plate situation.
These are eat over a plate. Yeah. You need you you always have a paper plate, and it's definitely one of these. You gotta eat it kind of like a taco, like the the kind of angled, angled bite, so you can get all the toppings into your mouth. But it's it's like I if I was going to a weekday Brazilian party growing up, that's what was on the table.
And it's like I'd I would crush like three of them. And I would go different toppings every time. Because I like wanted to experiment. I wanted to try. I have my tried and true, which is mustard, some avocado, some uh it's called uh patata palla, which is like uh potato sticks.
Um that like the same ones little mayo. The same ones they put on the Cuban uh um fritas? Yes, same one. It's like it's just a perfect nice, it's so crunchy. I know you're a fan of French's.
How are the French's potato sticks for this application? They're good. They're a little thick. Um you're a fan of the French onions. I love I love French's onions.
I love French's onions and the French's potato sticks. That they were actually discontinued, the French's potato sticks. Yes, because I um why does everything always have to suck? I know, it's uh it's crazy. Because that that that was my go-to replacement for those potato sticks.
And they're like, I have to I used to be able to get them off Amazon, but now they're they're just gone. Speaking of Amazon, again, people who aren't paying us. Uh so if you what was the what was the thing you used? The it was was it the edamame dip you put the French's onions on? Yes.
Yeah. So by the way, interesting idea. Make make a edamame, then you know, kind of saute it in the pan, blend it up, and then of course French's onions on top. So many people come on, like we had the lion lion dance cafe, and they're like, you know, we fry our onions. I'm like, man, I just buy French's, man.
And here's the pro tip. And again, they're not paying us as far as I know. Don't go to the supermarket and buy the little tiny plastic tub. It's gonna be gone in two seconds. Get the food service ziplock foil bag.
Yep. Just do it. Just do it. It's worth it. You are going to go through it, I guarantee you.
These like pantry staples, just get them in bulk. Yeah. Like Noor, the Noor bouillon powder. We go through so much of that stuff. Also, another happily, happily accept money from Noor.
It's usually where they have it. We just get the big big tubs. The big, big tubs of them. They're not gonna give you money because you uh you you you poked at Big Mayonnaise with your tofu tahini situation. You poked at Big Mayonnaise.
So they're mad at me. Uh but wait, wait, so wait. So the onions, here's the thing, right? Uh you gotta start putting them on stuff or they'll go ran. But you will.
Like, you know, make any of these salads. By the way, salads. You're a vinaigrette only man, huh? I'm a vinaigrette only man. I'm a vinaigrette only.
I I like I like creamy dressings, but I like to use them more as as dips for like hand salads and things. Like I'll boil potatoes, like boiled potatoes, exactly. But like for a nice leafy green salad, I just I'll put a bunch of stuff on it, and I don't even make my vinaigrette on the side. I just dump some vinegar on it, dump some olive oil, season it, and then toss it. It's like it's easier.
You get to taste everything a lot better. Like it's it's I I want to taste, I spent good money for my lettuce. I want to take I want to be able to taste my lettuce. I don't want to like drown it in in something super creamy. Yeah.
Oh, by the way, speaking of salad, because the only reason I think of this is there is a picture of the of this particular vegetable, radish. So my wife, and Nastasia, if she ever comes back on, I don't know if she's here or not, but uh Nastasia can't do raw onions because they quote unquote give her nightmares. My wife. Wait, really? Yeah.
I don't know. My wife can't stand the smell of raw onions or people who have cooked with raw onions. Now, here's my problem. Okay. I love raw onions.
Yeah, they're amazing. Yeah, they taste good. Like the best burger dressing for me is like you get a nice thick patty. I'm like over the smash. I want a nice thick patty in my burger, seasoned really well, slice of cheese, thick slice of raw onion.
That's it. I don't need a sauce, don't eat anything else. I just want my onion, my patty, my cheese. I love it. So, like, like in Nor's Dax, my son was home for the spring break because he's in college, and he thought that my wife was going to be gone for the evening.
He's like, oh, so we can have onions tonight. I'm like, no, man. She's coming home for dinner. She's just going to be late. He's like, oh, you want to see your mom?
I love I love that. It's like, wait, she's gone. We can have raw onions. Yeah. Yeah, dude.
And well, what's weird is my son Booker look like he only eats like three things. One of them is tuna salad. He'll never use my recipes or anything like that. So it's full of like like red onions, which he chops. I think he uses the back of the knife because they're like mashed in like you know, big chunks, and like then it ends up everywhere in like the whole kitchen.
When my wife comes home smells like tuna and raw onions, she's like, oh, she hates it. Anyway, that's not why I'm talking about this. My point is the grated radish. So, like, not like Daikon. I like have like the so you use the box grater to good effect here.
You make your by the way, I don't know. Really, I need to put sweet potatoes in my in my freaking like uh hash browns. I need to add some sweet potato to my hash browns. It's nice, a little bit of sweetness. See, I I am a sweet potato hater.
I'm not a fan of sweet potatoes. I like sweet potato fries make me angry. Just a mere existence, like it is not a good fry. It is not a good potato. Thank you.
Stop lying to yourselves. Like the sweet potato fry just is not, should not be a thing. Should not be a thing. They don't even make good chips because of their sugar content. It's hard to get them to you.
You can't hit that sweet spot where they crisp without burning. Ding ding. Like unless they coat them in starch and then and then it's not a potato chip anymore. It's something else entirely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So yeah. So I I but I was out of potatoes. I had already grated one potato, so I couldn't have got I can't I can't go back. I can't go in a different direction. For whatever reason, I'm sure we're like solo was recipe testing something, so we had a sweet potato at home.
Great it, mix it in, bulk it up. The sweetness, so you get the nice crispness from the your regular russet potato, but the little pops of sweetness are really, really nice. I gotta say. I gotta say. So sweet potato on its own, no, but if you if you mix it in with a russet, kind of top it, you know how really nice farmers market potatoes have like a good amount of sweetness in them.
It kind of makes your russet taste like a fancier farmer's market potato. Just gives it another nice little dimension. And so for those of you that you know are wondering at home, buy the book and you can see the recipe. However, it's roughly two pounds of of uh regular God's potato and like one quote unquote medium sweet potato. So like that's the ratio.
So like a little less than a half of a five-pound bag. Oh, wait, speaking of potatoes, I did I cook potatoes this weekend. I did pick potato bar 70 style. And Little, which has issues as a supermarket, just opened across the way. Worst shopping experience in the world, but they sell five-pound bags of baking potatoes.
Really? Yeah. And in general, they're fine. Because normally when I'm gonna bake a potato, I'm like, I'm staring at that potato. I'm that guy that people are like, can you move over so I can get you the potatoes?
Like, maybe you should have gotten here 10 minutes ago because now the potatoes are mine. All of these are mine. Yeah. Whereas like with avocados, I'm more like, I'm just like trying to find the soft ones. You know what I mean?
Like anyway. Uh so radishes. So I grate radishes in similar like box grater style to that. They look kind of like red onions. They give crunch and they also give a little bit of the sharpness that onions would have, even though they don't taste like onions.
That is nice. Do they get farty? No. And here's another thing. They last a million, well, not if they're kept dry.
Okay. Uh, but they they last so long compared to an onion. You know how like when someone chops an onion, you're like, if you leave them out, they'll dry out. But I know I have them in covered, like snap cover containers, and they last like you know, overnight. So like that's what like I put on top of beans at home.
Really? Yeah. Because I can't stand having beans without like you know something. Yeah, something like fresh and chili, like fresh and bright and crunchy. Speaking of, uh your so your your mom, the figures large in in the book, and you went back and looked at a lot of her old recipes that you couldn't look at for years because it was too painful because you lost her too early in in a terrible way.
But she makes her chili with beans in it. Talk to me about this. I am very see. I know I I understand the history of the chili and how it is. I'll all meet, no bean.
I get that. But just texturally, for me, I need something to break up that monotony uh of that like braised meat or like ground beef, whatever that may be. I like the texture of a bean in there. It's it's it's delicious. It's it's there's nothing wrong with a bean.
I love beans, and it's it's just she always she always made it with beans. So my default to chili is always a chili with beans, always kidney beans, has to be a kidney bean. What do you fools think about it over there and uh on the other coast? I mean, I'm I'm Canadian, so I have no strong bean opinion. I actually did have a question.
I actually did read the book, and there's a recipe I'm thinking about, but I couldn't find it again. I thought it was the one of the egg preparations where you call for bringing the pan to medium, then low, and then medium again. That's the sausage, that's the sausage egg and cheese recipe, right? So the sausage. So isn't that correct?
Yeah, boy. Why? I so I'm trying to teach people how to preheat their pan. That that's like a big in especially in the in the intro chapter and the early chapters where I talk about eggs and and everything like that. I feel like a lot of people lean on an on the nonstick because they there's a greater buffer with with that.
Like you can you can kind of heat a nonstick pan and then things will be okay. But if you're I'm trying to convince people to move away from the nonstick, because you can do you can achieve much better results with stainless steel pans and cast irons, but you need a little bit of knowledge to use them properly. And I think the main thing that p I want people to take away from with uh when it comes to using stainless steel and cast iron or even carbon steel is the importance of preheating your pan. So I I try and use a lot of visual cues and try and get people to to spend some time getting their getting their temperature of their pan to a certain level before adjusting the heat to where they want it to be. So like something like an egg, I actually like to get my pan nice and hot over medium, and then I'll if I'm doing a like a sunny side with something that needs a more delicate heat, I'll take it back down to low and then gently, gently cook it until the whites are set, maybe pop a lid on there to get the yolk warm, and then slide it out.
Yeah, I noticed that you you call out stainless and cast, you don't do carbon. Is it just because this is meant for home cooking and most people don't have it? Exactly. That's why I at the restaurant I I use carbon steel just because it kind of is the best of both worlds. I like how fast it heats up.
It's it's very, very consistent, very easy to clean. You just hit it with a little bit of oil at the end of service, and then it's good to go. It's it's amazing. But it's the pan I reach for most often. Yeah, but it hasn't really it hasn't really crossed over into the home cook world.
I mean, I'm I'm I'm honestly just trying to convince them to just step away from nonstick. That's like the first step is like just step away from nonstick. I feel the easiest way to step away from the nonstick, because like as you say rightly, uh, cast iron. So my son makes this mistake all the time. He won't listen to me.
He's like, what do you know about him? Like, literally, this is what I do for a living. It's my life. Yeah. It's like he jacks the heat on cast iron and then it goes way over and then doesn't come down in time, and then like there's smoke everywhere, and it's nightmare.
I'm like, you can't heat cast iron that fast because it's not it's not nimble enough. Exactly. You know what I mean? On the other hand, and I don't want him using that because he doesn't clean them out right anyway. But then uh, but I'm like, yeah, I also don't want him doing that because the seasoning layer on my carbons is so thin because it's not like cast iron, it's not build up the thing.
Yeah, that like I don't want him like mutilating it and then leaving it full of water for I don't mind. I'm not one of these freaky, yeah. I scrub mine. I do too. But I don't want it sitting wet for exactly days.
Yeah, you know what I mean? If I'm gone or some crap, but I think he would do far better with a with with a carbon pan. I mean, I also love my thick, I use I use Lincoln uh uh Volrath, uh, the thick centurions because they have that giant aluminum sandwich on the bottom. And they used to be cheap, but the price won't weigh the hell up on them. Price of everything is is crazy now.
Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's it's getting wild. Speaking of like the pan you'll most often reach for, you're a one knife man, which I appreciate. I am a one knife man. And one knife at a time. What'd you say you're using?
Ninox now? Lenox. Can Enox G type. Okay, I tell you something a little embarrassing, but that everyone who picks it up is like, okay, I use the knife that Mads Mickelson uses in Hannibal. Wait, really?
Yeah. So like I watched Hannibal, which a lot of cooks like that show. You know what I mean? Go look at it. I think Jose Andress was the culinary director on that show.
Really? Yeah. I believe that. And so Mads Mickelson, who is Hannibal Lector, uses a knife. And here's why I think no one would ever use it.
It's called Porsche Like the Car, but it's not made by the car company. And it's Porsche 304. And so for you know, anyone who knows steel is like, why the hell would I make a knife out of the 300 series of stainless steel? But it's not made out of 304. I think it's just like this these Germans don't understand kind of what an American would think.
So I think no one buys these knives, and it's all stainless. And when you look at it, you're like, that's gonna be slip because it doesn't even have a textured thing like the globals used to. And you're like, that's gonna suck. Yeah. You know what I mean?
But like it's got this weird little nipple on the side of the handle and it doesn't slip at all. Oh. And like, and I got a 10-inch because I decided at some point that I like 10-inch knives better than eight, but it's total preference. It's not like it's just stuff like that is total. Like knives in general are total preference of preference.
That's why if you're gonna get a nice knife, like you have don't just get it off the internet. You need to hold it and like see how it feels in your hand. This is a great point. And this is like the one of the advantages of hanging around professional cooks is that like, you know, don't take someone's knife without asking. But you could be like, hey, can I can I see your knife?
And then you can get a feeling for like there was a time when every everyone in the kitchen, like as soon as they got two nickels, they would get their Masono. Remember the Masono Used UX 10. Yeah, dude. I I have plenty of those uh at home. Yeah.
It's the it was the standard knife at a certain type of restaurant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For where you cooked at a lot of those restaurants. Yeah. I did.
You know, like all of the like the the wiley style, the Alex style, the uh the freaking does Brooks use those things or no? You didn't cook with Brooks. Did you cook even cooked? Or like uh Yeah, and all of Nils's people at at uh who you know, all of anyone who came out of that kind of like zone training, they were all like UX10 family. You look at their you look at their kid, you're like, okay.
Yeah, you know exactly where someone worked, just to just look in looking at those. Yeah, you know, I never owned one. Really? No. When you did it, did you resharpen them 50-50?
I did not. I kept the 70-30. Oh, it's ate at 7030. Really? Oh, I I I like for me.
Yeah, I like it. I like it. All right. Are you are you a big German knife guy? Look, look, I got my first knife set when in 199 like four, right?
And at that time, like Henkel Wustoff was like the crap. No one, no one in the New York metro area knew from like any of these other kind of fancy kind of brands. And so yeah, I like my first set was was uh Henkles, like decent ones. Yeah. Actually, I guess it's 95 when I got married.
And um, you know, then you know, when I started getting into it more, I was I would just collect one one offs of kind of what I wanted. Like I finally got a set of Japanese traditionals, like piece by piece from corn, the cheap ones, but they're nice. Oh, you didn't find you it just No, I showed up and they had used it as a cleaver. They used my Yusuba as a cleaver. Yeah, giant half moon.
You I couldn't even grind it down, it was total gone. I they left it to rust. I found someone, I I found a cook, a prep cook using my uh Misono UX 10 Honosuki as a can opener. Oh my god. I wanted to die.
I I wanted to. Did they die instead? No, they that unfortunately I could not. I could not kill them. There are their laws against that.
Oh man. So wrong. Listen, why would you think it's okay to pick up someone's knife? This is their like livelihood. This is what they do.
You know what I mean? And use it for such a brutal task. Yeah. Like why would you like it's I I take very good care of my knives. Like they're sharpened.
I like to polish them. I I like leather strop them. Like leather strop, key. Key. Leather strop is key.
People go buy a leather strop. Buy a used one. Buy an old one. It doesn't matter. They last forever.
And then put a hook on like a shelf near where you like your your wherever you sharpen and then poof, and then that's the money right there. So no one talks about them. They should talk about it more. Yeah. It's like it's it's you you you often see tell people like people will often tell you to take it to the steel point, but past the steel point, there's a strop point.
And then that, it's like you can shave with that thing. Listen, this is a good conversation to have. For those who have never used a strop before, whether you use paste on it or not, like get a strop, do your normal sharpening routine. Whatever your normal sharpening routine, do it. Then do the paper test, then strop it, then do the paper test, and now you realize you dulled it with the paper test, drop it again.
But like the key with a stop, I think people don't know how to use it. You go the other way. Yeah. You know, so like you you're dr you're you're you're you put the dull side towards your chest and you pull the blade across it. And then the one thing you have to be careful about is don't you know, you flick your wrist, you cut your strop a little bit.
They're nicks in my strip. I mean it takes it takes a minute to get the motion down. Like that, I definitely have have nicks in in my strop. So the old school barbers, they do leather or leather and linen, or some people just do linen. Are you I'm a leather?
I don't use the linen side. Yeah. I I I just do leather. Yeah. I just do leather.
Yeah, me too. Oh, strong. All right. Um I don't know how the hell we got on that. I don't know.
I don't I don't know where we are. I don't know. I don't know. But anyway, uh so I have a whole drawer of these, because you know, whatever. I'm 55, so this this kind of crap happens, right?
So I have all these knives. You know what my favorite knife to slice steak is with? I have an old 10-inch, like real French sabotier, like nice one. Oh, that I found in a thrift store. Three dollars.
Blade was straight and uh rust like a demon. So I have to oil it. I have to oil it every time I use it, but it's so thin. I'm just like, yeah, love to cut steak with that knife. Have you ever have you used those ultrasonic knives?
So I have one, and we're I'm waiting for uh I'm waiting for him to come on the Seattle Food Geek to come on the show and talk about it. But so like I got I would post more about it, but I got such negative reaction about the sound, but I feel it was unfortunate because like my head was right next to it, right? Yeah, it doesn't make a sound when you're when when it's not in something, it's the harmonics. I'll post more on it. So like mainly I've used it for for bread.
I wanted to use it the last time I did like a pulled pork because I wanted to see whether or not I could do the pulled pork. Yeah. But I forgot to charge it. So like I have to wait till I see it again. Yeah, yeah.
But um, so in my knife drawer, right? I I anytime like my kids, I'm like, look, don't use this knife. Don't use this knife. Any of these, fine. What do you store your knives in?
What's your drawer situation? I built like a I so I built a thing where they can stand like like this. Blade to blade. Uh yeah. So the blades don't touch, nothing touched.
By the way, so you that you mentioned something in your book that is something my butcher told me years ago. And I I'm not sure if it's true or not. But this is something I was also told that the hot water is why not to put things in the dishwasher. And I was thinking about it, it's like, why though? Isn't it just that they knock together in the dishwasher and that's what's dulling them?
Well, I I don't know if it's just that, but it's also like an old kitchen rule that you never put anything with a blade through the dishwasher. So you never wash like your vita preps, your your Roboku blades, like anything like that. I always thought it was the heat. I was always told it was the heat. That's what I was told by the butcher.
But then the more I think about it, I'm like, is it true? Yeah. I'd I'd because the temperatures do get quite high. It's like it they get hotter than than a knife would normally. Yeah, I don't I don't know.
Would it would it be the temperature? Yeah, but because I know it's terrible because it's getting rattled around. It's like, how mad are you when when someone helps you and you see your knife in the sink? It's like you're like, why is my knife in the sink? We have also some really nice uh wooden handled tools.
It drives me crazy when they go into the sink. You gotta oil them all over again. Yeah, so it's like it's we have a lot of stuff. It it's rare that people help us do dishes just just because there's a lot of there's a lot of rules because there's a lot of like old vintage-y stuff that we have have around that we kind of have our own system to wash. It's hard to own stuff.
It's hard to own nice things. So get this, so like uh, you know, obviously because I'm human, I have sheet trays, you know. I mean, they're aluminum, but then my you know, my kids started putting them through the dishwasher. And so every week Wiley would come over and clown me because my so finally we threw them out and got fresh, and I'm like, only hand wash these. We'll see how long that lasts.
Not long. Not long. Not long. Not long. Although I found do you use toaster ovens at home?
No. I we used to have one, but then we got um we we kind of shifted. We have very limited counter space. So we only have room for two appliances. So vitaprep always is always there.
And then we used to have a toaster oven. But then we got like we got this like the Japanese toaster oven that like steams your Balmuda. Balmuda. We got a Balmuda. Um they will they'll does Balmuda sponsor you?
No. No, they don't? Okay, fine. It's good toasto. It was it the toast was fine, but then it just stopped working after two months.
Yeah. Was that a timer? It w no, it was one of the coils, one of the heating coils just stopped working. It's like for $320. It's too much.
It's this is this thing is too expensive to break this easily. Okay, people. For those who have no idea, like who who were so like the they're saying they don't have this is a very kitchen powerhouse cooking powerhouse family. Your kids got a lot to live up to. But like uh the it's funny that you say like they don't have the counter space, they literally have a Roboku that they don't keep on their counter.
And so when I read that, I was like, yo, you have to move the you you have to move it on the counter, dude. Anything that's not on the counter, you know who does this also? I'm gonna call them out is uh Wiley Dufrain, my brother-in-law, has all this equipment. He doesn't keep his Vitapep on the counter. Oh, he doesn't?
Oh, that's wild. I vitaprep at minimum has to be on the counter just because we use it so much. Right. And also that's another way to know someone's like old like like has been around in kitchens if you still call them vitapreps instead of Vitamix, because they're not Vitapeps anymore. That's right.
They're Vitamixes now. It's like I I can't. Vitamix just sounds wrong. Wrong, sounds vitamin. Sounds sounds wrong.
Vitaprep. It will always be Vitape. Ding ding. That's like uh, you know, I was at the French culinary and they changed the name to the International Culinary Center. I'm like, okay, you can.
Exactly. I will not be calling it that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you can call it whatever you want.
It's like, you know, it's like I still use the Triborough bridge. Because you know, to hell with you. Yeah. But uh anyway. Uh well our rotary evaporators also uh or our centrifuge rather is not is not is not on our counter.
Yeah. Imagine if the one piece of equipment you kept on the counter was a centrifuge, it's like, what? Um the we can have clarified lemon juice at the drop of a hat just like yeah. But like the Roboku's not that much bigger than a standard. I mean it is, but it's not that much bigger.
It's not that much bigger, but it's a lot heavier. It's it's like a little bulkier and you're not gonna take it out because it's so heavy. But we don't, it's it's about it's about use, how often we use it. And like so, I uh right now we're using our kitchen aid mixer more than we're using the RoboCo. It used to be Vitapep Roboku, but then it's like we're going through like a baking baking mood right now, so it's kind of shifted.
So the the vitaprep is the standard, but the second appliance kind of changes with our mood. In the summertime, that gets replaced with our our ice cream maker, like the uh what do you use? Vitamice? It's yeah, musso or lelo, yeah. Yeah, it's amazing.
It's it is like not Carpajani level, but it is for home, it it is it's as good as you can get. So here's the thing do you like uh those things have a roughly 20 minute batch time, right? So do you small do you lower the batch size a little bit so you get a faster freeze? Is that the power move? That is the power move.
Always like we don't we don't do any more than than like a little bit less than a quart at a time, just because you get that it it just freezes fast enough. And how good is that for a test versus the larger machine in a restaurant? So in other words, like how how transferable are the recipes for that versus when you're using like the larger batch freezers? Oh, very, very transferable. Like I I I do most of my testing in there.
At uh Strange Delight right now, we actually do Paco Jets. So the that that doesn't transfer because you need to change the sugar. You need to lower the sugar um by like around 25%. So it freezes hard enough to spin. But uh but for other ice cream makers, it's like a one-to-one.
It it's just as good. And you'll just if you're in a Carpajani and you're going from that to that, it's like it's obviously better just because it's a better machine, but you don't I I found that I don't need to adjust the recipe at all. Yeah. All right. Oh, by the way, I'll say this before I run out of time.
So again, we're talking to Ham O'Ey about his new book, Hello Home Cooking. Uh are you guys ever gonna do a book together, by the way? You do two books aside as apart from each other. You haven't done one together, right? Not yet, but that's a funny idea.
Definitely in the definitely in our future. We've talked about it. So if you if you want to know Ham's like pedigree, all the crap that other people are asking him, either go watch a different interview or like go YouTube. This is the funny part of the book where he's like, oh, yeah, I know how to make an omelet, just YouTube. That I'm not gonna go through it.
There's eight million YouTube on this. You don't need that from me, right? And also I find like something like an omelet, it's I'm I'm I'm a visual learner as well. There's some things that I think are better taught visually. Yeah.
And I think there's a lot of cues, a lot of motions that is just more useful to get visually. Like it's it's so easy to find someone make a French omelet. Like, I'm not gonna waste your time or my time writing it in the book. All right. So in the roughly nine minutes we have left, we will skip all of that crap.
And I'll just ask you some questions about the book. First of all, uh my son who, Booker, who likes nothing, was like agreed to try some of your recipes. The fish, the fish taco and the salmon over bulged wheat. So we'll see whether he actually will eat the bulgor wheat or not. But uh that's high praise.
And my wife was like, oh, you gotta make this. Like she was like, the tahini, tahini French. First of all, you're saying that this tahini, this it was tahini mixed with uh cream and sweetened condensed milk or milk, milk, was it tahini over the French toast? What was it? It was tahini.
Tahini, milk, maple syrup, maple syrup. That's it. Yeah. And then uh Pecmez uh or pomegranate molasses along with it. Now, the brands of those, do you have a specific brand you like?
Because some of them are like kind of more on the burnt side and some are kind of more on the acidic bright side. Do you have a brand of of pomegranate was pomegranate molasses? Named. Do you have a brand of that you like? It's the uh it's the blue, the blue label.
The what what's it called? It's uh it's like the Lebanese brand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blue labor. Yeah, once in there like weird and like yeah, what's with that?
I I don't know. I think it's like how they because it's it's like it's probably the temperature that they reduce the pomegranate juice at. Like they probably go a little bit too high, the sugar gets a little bit too caramelized, and then that bitterness kind of permeates into the syrup. I like the what I want for my pomegranate molasses. I want like that acidity first.
Yeah, I want acidity, a little bit of sweetness. You don't want it to be too thick. So it's like I also don't like the ones when they're like the texture of honey. You've reduced it too far. Don't like too much.
People are doing too much with the pomegranate. And then splendid's gonna get that weird bitter cook thing. First of all, my wife, my wife went right to this page. Frito ganache. I mean, that's a win.
Exactly. It's like salty, crunchy corn with with chocolate. There's there's no yeah, we don't need to talk about how good Fritos are because duh no. And Fritos and chocolate. I mean, come on, please.
But I'll have to say, you are the saddest man ever with a cake. There's a picture of you looking so sad. I don't know where it is, looking so sad. With a cheap cake. Oh my god.
This is the saddest anyone. Where's the camera? Where this is the saddest anyone has ever been with a nice cake. But uh there was a picture of me hungover out of my mind in Sweden that my old partner Don Lee took of me and said, This is the saddest anyone's ever been with a cake. In a publication, this is the saddest anyone's ever been with a cake.
However, I must ask you, what is Brazilian carrot cake? It doesn't have the spices in an American cake does. It doesn't have the spices in it, and it's a blended cake. So you're blending the carrot into the cake. And it's a it's closer to like a box mix texture than American style carrot cake.
Still moist? Very, very moist. Very, very moist. So that's a try. That is definitely a try.
If you if you love that classic American birthday sheet cake with like the chocolate frosting, this is what that evokes. Like it, it's it's a they live very much in the same world with just a hint of carrot. All right. So let's uh let's run through some questions of questions that I have about the actual cooking techniques. So uh don't get angry at me, because you have recipes for both, but I usually when I cook plantains, I'm doing sweet, like Maduro plantains, right?
Like either like split and filled with chili fried or like you know, whatever, fried. Anyway, so in your tostones recipe, which obviously you're not, you like them, you say just when they j start to color up, you mash and then soak in water before you fry the second time. What is that water doing? I found that so I I like to season that water as well. Or not mash, smash, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Yeah. So you smash them into discs and then dip them into that water. So this is like a the a classic way that a lot of um Dominicans and Puerto Ricans that I've worked with make their tostones. And it's it's something that I learned during family meals.
And then I've done it with and I've done it without. I found that if you don't do that dip with the seasoned water, they come out less seasoned and they come out crisp but almost squeaky. Like that kind of I know what you're talking about. Like that starch, you know that that when you fry starch sometimes, you get that squeak because it's not hydrating. That's why I don't like plantain chips.
Exactly. A lot of the times they're squeaky. So I feel like that extra hydration just prevents that, and you get a much nicer crunch into a yielding fluffiness as opposed to that squeak. By the way, Quinn, can you check to make sure there are no specific questions for ham that I miss out on from the users? Because otherwise I'm just gonna race through some of the questions I have about the book.
Yeah, we're good. Okay. Um, the hottest take of many in your book, but the hottest take is that you literally boil your potatoes in milk and then mash them. So this is the one that like, you know, because we're all raised, and I know that you dealt with this because Wiley's insane about it. Yeah, you know what I mean?
Uh you know, you cook the potatoes as dry as possible, but then in your mind, I'm guessing you're like, well, you're gonna add a liquid to it anyway, probably cream or whatever. So why not just cook it in the liquid that you like rather than worrying about adding water to it? Is that where it comes from? Exactly. So there's there's to clarify, so this I do not want to knock the dry potato.
Like if I'm if I'm making like a big holiday meal and I want the greatest mash of all time, that's gonna take me I don't know, an hour and a half to make. Yes, I'll I'll dry roast my potato, I'll I'll scoop it out, I'll rice it. But it's like if you're this this book is about making delicious, approachable things doable on a weeknight when you feel overwhelmed where your kids are yelling at you and you're tired. And I just want like you don't need to eat the best all the time. Sometimes pretty freaking good is okay.
And that's what these potatoes are. They're pretty freaking good. And all you gotta do is one pot, you mash your potatoes in the liquid you're mixing them into, and then you eat them. They're delicious. A little bit of lobna at the end, like lightens the whole thing up.
Because I found that when you do this method of the potatoes uh cooked directly in the liquid that you incorporate into them, they do get a little starchier just because you have all that that starch in there. And so finishing it with something light and bright like labna kind of counteracts that and then you end up with like a nice, uh nicely textured potato. You know what you don't have to do? You don't have to have a separate pot full of cream heating. Exactly.
You don't. You got one pot. Will it work with cream instead of milk or does it break it? It'll work with cream. It'll just be richer.
You might need to adjust it with milk at the end just to get the right texture. But yeah, it works just as well. All right. Uh by the way, I've never been to a Johnny Rockets. You've never been to a Johnny Rocket.
I've never been to a Johnny Rockets here. They're in Jersey. There's one in Elizabeth. I need to go. I've never been to Raz's either.
John here says we're gonna go to Raz's. Maybe I hit both go to the Johnny Rockets. I've never been to Rosa's. If you go, let me know. All right, I will, we'll.
Um, all right. So by the way, we are we like we so it turns out I guess you said my wife still like when you make a frittada, you're like, I they're throwing in the stuff that my wife still swears is good, but I don't. So we're the exact opposite. I'm the one like, it's still good, it's still good. And my wife's like, this thing's gone.
You know what I mean? So we're we're flip on that, which is kind of good. Um, my my wife doesn't like sola doesn't um smell really well, so she can't really do the sniff test when things have gone bad. So there's been many, many times where she's dumped milk into her coffee and it's it's like curdled. And I'm like, you can't drink that.
That's like it, it's clear. There's that's like cottage cheese in your milk. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of uh my wife, my wife looks at your cardamom pancake recipe and is like, why don't you put cardamom in your pancakes? I'm like, come on, man.
What are you doing? Yeah. I'm trying my best over here. Look at this guy's book and he's giving me crap. What the hell?
Um, all right, let me see what else we got here. Uh I have so many questions. I need to know which ones I'm gonna get. Oh, by the way, frozen English muffins are the fastest thing to get out. Good.
True. Do you pre-split them before you freeze them? Or yeah. Yeah. If you don't, I know you only have the one microwave recipe in there, but like a quick nuke on it, it makes them fork splitable before you before you unfreeze them.
But I think you were exactly correct that it and you make your own sausage and it's quick, but you have to do it overnight. No sage in your breakfast sausage, huh? No sage, no sage in my breakfast sausage. Because I'm going, I'm going more for like a Bolivian chorizo type vibe. So it's like uh no sage and no sage down there.
Yeah, no sage down there. Uh it's like something you would say like in like a like a real bad no sage down there. Uh all right, so also I'm gonna call you out. You say dry brine on your shrimp, makes me want to die. You know, I hate the word you don't know that maybe, but like dry, come on, man, you're salting it.
You use a lot of baking soda, by the way, uh, in an interesting way. Like when you you're doing your uh chickpea uh situation, you add some baking soda to make them real soft and make them mash out earlier. I don't like the smell. I know you neutralize it with lemon juice, so it doesn't matter, but does that smell of the baking soda cooking with the beans bother you? Yes, it does.
I I I exactly like it's there are a lot of people who use baking sodas to help with browning in like caramelized onions and stuff like that. Things that don't naturally get acid. I hate that. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Like something like caramelized onion, you want you want that sweetness to come from the onion.
You don't want anything else to mess with it. But with something like the canned chickpeas, it's it's a canned product. You're gonna cook it for a while, you want it to be really soft, you're neutralizing it with a lot of lemon. I have no problem with that. But yes, the smell of the baking soda, not great.
Alright, here's a ready from the this remember the book again is Hello Home Cooking by Hamel Wheiley. I'll give you one more guy, people out there, cooking issues, people. Buy it in Kitchen Arts and Lates if you can. I'll give you one more phoooo. What about tea as broth?
What about tea as broth? See, under very underappreciated the tea as broth. Like that's actually something I learned from Wiley. Chamomile, he cooked. It was I think it was zucchini with chamomile, and it was paired with like a yeasted mashed potato, another thing that's also delicious.
And ever since then, just like the the floral with the chamomile with like green vegetables, just goes so well together. Like any kind of really seaweedy Japanese teas, there's so many of them, go so well with beans, or like alright. So there's like it's it's this cooking medium that you usually have in your house, just sitting around that you just kind of drink in the morning with some milk, but it's just a great alternative to like a veg stock or some kind of broth to cook things in. Yeah, and you'll have to come back some time because we didn't get to talk about the fact that in this book you have long cooked green beans and short cooked green beans, and they're very different. We didn't get a chance to talk about it, or the fact that you like cauliflower as as do I.
Cauliflower needs to have a longer moment, as you say in the sun. Or the fact that why do people you don't actually mention this? You mentioned a bread and butter pickle cauliflower, but everyone says they don't like bread and butter pickles, but they then they sit there eating them. What is that? The bread and butter pickles have a bad wrap for some reason.
Like it's it's very cool to hate on the bread and butter pickle, but it's it's the superior pickle for sandwiches, it's a superior pickle for burgers. It's just a fantastic pickle that people should appreciate more. It's like sweet, it's briny, it's like it's is it's that beautiful yellow from the turmeric. It's like, what what do you need? Yeah, I don't know more than you I agree.
And Joe, sorry about this. On the way out, team spoon or team fork. On the way out, team spoon. Team spoon, baby. 100%.
All right ham thanks for coming on. Come back again. Cooking issues. Thanks for having me.
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