Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

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We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29,

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I'm Steve Jenkins. I work for fairway markets in the New York area. And we're awfully proud to support heritage radio. And we care so much about everything that goes on out here at Roberta's in their studio. Because they talk to people who are serious about food and that's what we are at fairways, we're serious about food we we just care very deeply about, about you as a customer and how you cook and what you cook with and how you entertain and and that's why we love to support heritage radio because it's pretty much the same thing. It's wanting to to find happiness through serious food and people who are serious about it and care about learning everything there is to learn about it. And that's that's with kindred spirits. If it's something worth having in your kitchen, you're going to find it at fairway. And if there's somebody worth talking to about food, you're going to find them on heritage radio and we will be supporting you guys for a long, long time at fairway on your personal grocer Steve Jenkins, fairway market.

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Roberta's pizzeria on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from about 12 to 1245. Calling all your questions cooking or non cooking or technical related to 718-497-2128. That's 718497 to one to eight sadly I am not joined in the studio today by Natasha hammer Lopez because she is on vacation in Rhode Island up at watchfulness, but she is calling in so I think we have Anastasia there. Yeah, hi. How's it on

face? Sadly, if you didn't say sadly are not in there.

Yeah, sadly, Saturday. Is that bad.

Oh, thank you.

So how's How's Rhode Island up there?

The beach is beautiful. Very gorgeous.

Have you had a beach? Yeah, well, I've seen and tried to avoid most beaches. My you know, my wife likes me to go to beaches all the time. But I'm first of all, so white that everyone thinks there's a second sun on the beach, even though I'm completely clothed, head to toe whenever I go to when I also detest sand, although I do like foraging for things on the beach. In fact, that's one of my favorite things to do. So that's basically the only way you can get me to do anything is if I'm going to forage for food. I remember when I was a kid I used to we used to go to the Cape all the time. And I used to basically all I would do is go around looking for a cogs and clay hams and muscles depending on on where I was because that's basically all I like about being outside is finding food What about you?

Your foraging session at four o'clock? So

community that you're going to do it? When are you going to what are you gonna forge for? For plants or for animals? Yeah,

I have no idea what they're gonna do. It's a surprise. So like a

lot of good foraging to be done on the shores as well as in the water close to the beach. I've never done it in Rhode Island, though. I mean, I've done a lot in Maine, the the famous, you know, dead for a long time but famous wild food right? Or maybe the first big famous one here in this in the US Euell. Gibbons wrote a specifically small manual for New England sea coast foraging, but it's more for me, but there's just a wealth of things you can eat on the on the beach from like orach which is like lambs quarters, which is great for a salad or a version of sea beans or like wild sea rocket, which is like, like wild rocket like arugula, but more succulent and like crunchy, and also a little more bitter, like mustardy green, but the stuff just grows wild along the along the beach, you know, it's crazy. And depending on I think it's a little early, but like beach plums, you know, there's just fantastic amounts of things you can forage along the beach. And I think one of the reasons is because a lot of it you're not allowed to kind of mess with any more from you know, from a development standpoint. So if you're in a place it's not built up, it's probably got a lot of that good stuff just lying around, right.

Oh, I forgot to give you your serviceberries yesterday.

Oh, I know and astonishes buddies went and foraged in Brooklyn, apparently you said for serviceberries AKA, there's a million different names from shad berries and whatnot. I've never actually heard him were they good?

They were okay. I mean, it's exactly what they said it was, like blueberry texture with a raspberry taste. We made a pie and it was disgusting.

Why was that? Why was the project gusting?

I messed up the crust and then the question filtrated the berry filling and it was

what what did you What did you do for the crust? What did you let's, let's analyze this. This will be our first problem on cooking issues. What did you do for the crust?

I use Christo. Well, it was past mom's recipe and he was like mom makes this you need to make it like this. And I was like all right, so it was two cups of flour, three quarter cup of Crisco, and cold water and salt. And that was it.

Right What happened?

It, it would enroll and when I picked it up, it would crumble apart. So I made a second one. And then that one wouldn't roll so that instead I took the ball and I put the ball in the center of the pie, pie tin. And then I spread the ball out with my fingers so that it made a sort of crust around it. And then he insisted that there be a top crust. And so I rolled out top crust and then carefully placed it on top but it was all crumbly and gross. And then yeah, and then that press broke into the filling and as it was cooking much hot.

Yeah, you didn't you didn't use enough water everyone's petrified about using the too much water. And so they make they make a one that's not bound if you use I can't really in my head, calculate, you know, cut measures of flour to to Crisco. But the you know, if you use enough of fat, right, and you incorporate it correctly into the flour base, I usually add a little sugar because it colors it up really nicely. And so then you know you you put the ice water in and you don't really have to worry about it getting to the gluten developing too much and getting tough as long as you are pretty quick about it. I tend to never use Crisco. And you know, I don't stock it. I think you know, lard is freaking delicious. Larter, larges, amazing the problem with lard is that if you you know, the hydrogenated lard is not so good. But the hydrogenated lard is good from a texture standpoint, even though it's extremely soft. Whereas home rendered lard tends to have a solid fraction and a liquid fraction of the liquid fraction is just to lack liquid to really do it properly. So you want to take the more solid fraction. And if you use lard, you want to be really, really really really chilled, really chilled. But that gives kind of like a little like savory note to pastries that I think is really lacking in most modern pies that don't use lard, but even and then, you know, barring that, even though the texture theoretically isn't quite as good using butter as using Crisco butter pie crusts are freaking delicious. I mean they're Yeah, I wanted

to use butter and Pat was insistent that I use Crisco well then I didn't even have Crisco in the house. So he had to go buy it but I had butter, you know, no,

I mean, the way Crisco the you know, the particular fat melting characteristics of Crisco plus the fact that it doesn't have any you know, doesn't have watering it the way that butter does kind of make it have that kind of unique Crisco texture that some people really really like. I, I don't think it's necessarily worth it. I've never been a big fan. I mean, even prior to transfat days, I mean Crisco, I thought it was good for certain applications, like certain frying applications, donuts, you want to hydrogenated fat because once they cooled down a doughnut fried in regular oil is going to taste in liquid fat, liquid oil is going to taste really greasy, whereas something fried in, in a hydrogenated fat is going to taste more like a doughnut, right? I mean, but the flip side of that is also true. So for instance, you want to fly for a potato chips in, in liquid oil, if you fried potato chips in a solid fat, they taste not oily, greasy, and they leave like this, like grease coating on your tongue when you eat them, similar to what a donut might do. But in a potato chip, that's considered extremely bad. In fact, that is the story behind the whole kind of a let number Alesco. Wow, remember that? Yeah, so for those of you that don't remember, Olestra, basically, there's a technique that they applied, they can apply it to any fat, and it makes it such that you can no longer digest the fat, right. And so this was, you know, heralded years ago as like this is going to make it so that you can eat on limited quantities of fried foods, and it's going to have the same effect on your waistline, as if you ate everything steamed. Basically, that was the that was the deal. A couple of problems with it, were one, when you do this procedure, you're no longer absorbing the fat, but that those fats still tend to the fat soluble vitamins also then tend not to be absorbed. So you're lacking in fat soluble vitamins. That's the one problem. And two, if it's a liquid fat, right, like if you were to do it to make Olestra olive oil, let's say, I don't know how I'm going to put this in a way that's not gross, but it basically runs through your system and not your butt. Right. And so that was what led to the phenomenon. And there is no polite way as the technical term known as anal leakage. Right was what they called it right now. similar phenomenon, by the way, with this new new, like three years ago product called a lie. Remember, you know, you've heard of a lie. It's spelled kind of weird, but that's the diet pill that came out? No, no, it's a diet pill that basically you can eat, and it stops you from absorbing fat. And I tested it and the same kind of thing happens you don't want to consume a lot of liquid fats when you're when you're on a lot, I don't even know if they sell it anymore that stuff a lot. Anyway, so so that back to where we're going. So what what happened was, is they were frying potato chips in, in liquid in an oil, liquid oil based Alaska product. And basically, it just ran straight through the test subjects, right. And that's where it picked up the really bad, bad bad press that if you ate this, you're gonna have all kinds of, you know, gastrointestinal problems, and it's gonna, you know, you're gonna set yourself on spray and whatnot. So but the manufacturer, forget who it was, who did it with, there's Procter and Gamble, whoever they basically were like, Okay, no, it's Frito Lay actually Frito Lay. They, they're like, Okay, look, here's what we have to do, we have to use a hydrogenated fat, so that it's going to be a solid in your body. And it's not just going to dribble through you like your one long pipe. You know what I'm saying? So, so then they started frying potato chips in solid Olestra. And they no longer had the underwear problem, but no one liked the taste of the potato chips, right? Because you don't want solid fat. You don't want your potato chips fried and solid fat. Okay, so what did they do? They invented this new system, this air curtain is hot air curtain, where they would fry the potato chips into solid Olestra. And then they would put it on a conveyor and blast it with hot air. And the hot air would would would nuke the surface coating of the fat right off the top of the chip so that when you ate it, you wouldn't perceive as much the fact that had been fried with a solid fat, all right. And it wouldn't leak anymore, right? But the problem was is that you could always kind of tell thing had been fried and a solid fat. And most people then assumed that they could well I could taste the restaurant, you know, it doesn't taste good. I can taste it. No, you can't. It's the fact that they fried it in a solid fat is the problem. If they had fried it in, you know, in a liquid Alaska, you would never have been able to taste the difference except for you know, you'd have to change your clothes a bunch. I mean, at one time, I thought that I thought that Alaska was going to be the wave of the future and that there would be you know, you know, in the in the dining room of the future every chair would be its own chamber pot, but that has not come to pass. Instead we have we've shied away from that even as a you know, I assume that culturally we would embrace anything MIT allowed us to you know, eat one thing constantly without it having an effect on our system but for some reason the bad press surrounding it still prevented us from from embracing it wholeheartedly anyways Olestra backed and by the way, for a very good account of illustrate, you should read Geoffrey Stein gardens first book The man, I always get it wrong. I always confused and I've certainly said this on the air before Jeffree Star in garden, our good friend, Vogue food writer, you know, renowned author, television personality, lunatic. He, you know, he wrote a book called The Man Who ate everything. And I always confuse it with the Oliver Sacks book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. And so I always like I'm like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for someone who ate everything. I always for some reason, I don't know why I confuse these two books together, but I always do. Anyway, he has an extremely interesting article in that about an early by the way article on Olestra, which I recommend that you go read but the other Well, one of the other must read articles if there if there was such a thing in that book as a non must read article, I don't know. But one of the must read articles in that book is on making pie crusts. And he basically goes through a million different pie crusts, and then ends up hanging out with Marion Cunningham, who was the you know, famous, famous cookbook, author and editor of, I believe, have the more recent Fanny farmers. So there's been a long time since I've looked it up and basically learns how to make pie crust from her and it's extremely simple and I use their recipe now whenever I can, which is you put an absurd amount of butter, cut it up, make sure that butter is pretty cold, put it in the flour, add the salt or whatever sugar you want. Need it in with your fingers until it resembles like course crumbly crap, like some things as big as peas and other things smaller, stir in water, it doesn't have to be crazy iced water, make sure you have enough for it to bind together quickly form it into a dough. Roll it out without much ado, try not to reroll it, and go and that's like, you know that's it. You know what I mean? Makes great. Thanks a great class

KitchenAid when you do an ad,

oh hell no, I use my use my hands and a fork. It's so simple. That's the thing like everyone like the you know, they have these recipes like when you're making puff pastry people use for instance the food processor to cut the cut the the butter and to get flakiness instead of having to make like, you know, that the butter mixture folding over and rolling it a bunch of times with pie crust, there is never a reason to use any piece of mechanical equipment whatsoever. Like you know, just get a bowl and put in the flour, put in the I would say butter but or I would say lard and then barring lard, a mixture of lard and butter barring a mixture of lard and butter butter. Barring that, I don't know whatever the hell you have lying around your house. Yeah, Crisco, whatever. But you know, no offense to the Crisco people, except for the fact that it's because of Crisco and things like it that we no longer use lard, because there was a big switch away. But that's a whole separate story. We'll get into that maybe later anyway. So just put the the flower stuff in and quickly with your fingers, like, rub it and Stein garden has a great description of it. Because if there's anything Stein garden is is extremely anal about not just recording what you say, but what you do. That's why he likes to go into the kitchen and watch people cook. And so if you've ever cooked with him, he'll get something over the over the phone or whatnot. He wants to show up and examine everything you're doing. And he'll ask you constantly, why you're doing X, why you're doing why and doing readings. That's because he knows that regardless of what you say, right, you almost always do something else, or you really don't understand why you're doing what you're doing anyway. And so he needs to basically decode it. And that's one of the reasons why he's been why he's so interesting and why he's been so successful. So he has a very good description of how to do it, but you basically just stick your hands in and you rub your thumb over your fingers, like like almost like you were snapping but across all your fingers, but or like you were rubbing, or like you were rubbing through your fingers, like your fingers were the tines of a comb or a fork and you're rubbing it through. So you just rub it in, and then just stir in the water with a fork gathered into a ball with your hand and you're good to go. I mean, really, it's that it's that freakin simple. There's nothing simpler than making a good pie crust. And yet there's nothing there's a few things that cause as much anxiety among people. Secondly, you know, you know, no offense to anastasius friend Pat here, but Is he is he? Is he a known good cook?

Is he well known to be a cook? Yeah. Is

he a good cook? Yeah. Then you should never listen to him about anything you should like. Here's his mom, his mom's his mom there. No, then you should not listen to him. It's like saying, You know what? My mom, she's a really good doctor. My mom knows how to cure you know, XY and Z, your or my mom's a good surgeon. So I'm going to listen To listen to me about how to chop someone's heart out, really, you know what I mean? It's like, if the experts in the room with you, then, you know, then follow the advice. But if if, you know, if it's just some, you know, it's like, you know, my mom's a good cook well, you know, so what, you know, especially considering that there are 8 million ways to do anything and so and even perfectly and that's my that's always been my issue with you know, magazines like the cups illustrated, or even sometimes when you know, when we you know, when we write or when I write, you know, your urge is to say, this is the ultimate x, this is the ultimate y or the best blah, blah, blah. In reality, there are a lot and there are a lot of things that are good done a bunch of different ways and the idea isn't to find the one best way but to have your way be coherent from beginning to end and to produce a delicious product. There are many paths there are many ways. But anyway, so I've been blabbering on about the pie Chris, why don't we go to our first commercial break call in your questions is 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues

stand down friends find out go back to Cooking issues calling all your questions to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 Jack choosing the music today. Jack what is that? I like that Steely Dan Steely Dan? Steely Dan taking their name, I believe from a William Burroughs. Quote, right. It's I believe, there's so many like unfriend family friendly things. But I believe Steely Dan is from a William William Burroughs book. And it refers to a a toy used in private by women a specific brand of them or men, I guess. I don't know. Is that Is that true, Jack? Because that's true. Yeah. Interesting. Natasha, you're still with us?

I'm having a frozen virgin lemonade.

Well, wait, what? Wait, are you having a Delta lemonade?

I don't know. Some guy just handed it Jesus.

Is it devils I'll turn to the guy and say is this a Dells lemonade?

No, he walked away. He's like it's it's just has lots of pieces of lemon rinds.

That's that's Dells. That's dough. That's you. You have Rhode Island in a cup. All right. So like that's one of the like, here's the thing, right? Everyone says there's no such thing as regional American X, Y or Z and they're full of horse manure. Like yeah, Ron's got a couple of classic things. Anyone that's I didn't grow up and round. But anyone that's grown up in Rhode Island knows Dells lemonade. And Dells lemonade is famous for. You got the slug. It's a slushy one, right. And it's got little pieces of the lemon in it. And it's classic. But they sell a package Dells that I've had. That's okay. But it's not. I don't think it's the same thing that they use if you get it from the real Dell stand in Rhode Island, but I can't be sure any Rhode Island fan should call in and you know, and there's by the way, there's like a Rhode Island kind of New York, Rhode Island culinary mafia. You know, hello, set. Well,

someone's putting together a table of course behind me because it can't be this show without construction going

on. Sounds like a pig is running around behind you. It's snoring. Right. So yeah, Wiley to frame my brother in law is Rhode Island. There's a gazillion New York chefs that are Rhode Island. Isn't isn't Kevin also from Rhode Island. Yeah, yeah. Who else? Who else do we know from around small state lot of chefs. Right? Yeah, yeah. Strange. Okay. Let me see. Oh, by the way, there it says colony questions. 27184972128. That is 718-497-2128. And Stacia, you'll be glad to know that I in fact, still have not memorized it and Jack had to give me a card with the with it with anything you just play with me? No, I really have not memorized it. It's one of those things like Don't you have anything that you just have a mental block on it? You can't that you can't memorize? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, you know, I can memorize many things, the number of the call into the show is not not one of those things.

Say it was such a flow that you think that you'd memorize it, you know, you say the same way every time.

Right? Well, you know, it's, it's funny, it's like, when you're reading something, and maybe this is part of the reason when you're reading something, it literally just goes, you know, from your eyes out your mouth, and it's just that's it, it's gone. And I had this happen. When I was doing the ICP, the International Association, culinary professionals with Christiane is the first time in my life, we were doing a presentation for the awards for the cookbook awards. And it was the first time in my life I've ever used a teleprompter. And I have no idea what I said, you know, what I mean? is like, you know, it's, it's like, that's why, you know, you ever see those things where, like, the newscasters are sitting there, and they'll like someone who puts on crazy in the teleprompter, and they'll just start reading it with the same kind of emotion. You know, I always thought they were dumb, but now I really understand it's that, you know, all you're concentrating on is delivering the text that's on the screen. And the mental activity would take the process at the same time. It's just, you know, too much anyway, so maybe that's why maybe if I actually sat there, I could memorize it, but because I've never done it, and I've just read it off the piece of paper. I'll never memorize it. What do you think?

Yeah, I was gonna tell you la keeps asking you about special treats that you like, so I've been sending them information on special things. Oh, Jesus,

really? Honestly. Okay, so what Anastasia is referring to is I'm going off to Los Angeles. In fact, I have my bags with me. Now as soon as the show's over, I'm going to John F. Kennedy International Airport, and flying to LA we're shooting a pilot. But I can't obviously talk about the pilot because then they would execute me. So apparently they have been emailing Estancia saying what things that I enjoy eating but the problem is, and this is an interesting fact for those that have never met this Dasha is that she's vicious. She's a vicious, vicious, Jack true or false. Thank you. He just nervous because he doesn't want to doesn't want to suffer and the stache is rad when she gets back. But mustache is a Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so here's the deal. I guarantee you and I'll find out when I get there. I guarantee you and stash has only said either things that are embarrassing to me. Or that I actually despise right. And if anything is there are very few things I actually despise. She'll she'll say something like this, get pretzel sticks, even though everyone on Earth knows I detest pretzel sticks because they're not an apprentice.

Typically. I said real pretzels, and they have to be in knots.

I like that. But do they even have those in California? And that's an East Coast thing. Right?

Do they have real pretzels? Fighters? miters. isn't that bad? Right?

Oh standards. Okay. Snyder's used to be one of the best but they've been stale now for about 15 years or 20 years the Snyder's are coming to box have been stale, but that's all school like I used to eat those. That's what the Arnold clan has been, you know, my, I know I've discussed this on the air before but I'm going to Florida soon. Not only to taste mangoes, which you know, maybe we'll talk about later if we have time, maybe not with Natasha and Harold McGee. And I'm hoping to get Tony conigliaro out, but I don't think he's going to be able to go but you know, anyways, right after that. I'm visiting my 92 year old grandpa and my 98 year old. Great uncle, Uncle Luke. I think I told you this. My kids want to visit him because they think he's Uncle Luke Skywalker, they have no they have no idea anyway. He back in the Depression worked in a pretzel factory and so back in because they're all from Lancaster County, you know, Pennsylvania and so they Yeah, so I come from a pretzel eating background. You're not related to me unless you like eating pretzels. And the first thing you learn in my house is that pretzels must be twisted. So what else did you tell them? I like to tell them I but for those of you out there if you want to send me something I hate the only two foods in the world that I don't like are Nacho which is discusses and Harold McGee says he has a nacho that I'm actually going to like, which is a fermented soybean product that to me tastes like garbage. And the and the other is a melon. I don't like melon. So did you tell them to get me plenty of cantaloupe even though you know I hate it.

No, I'm not gonna tell you what I told them.

It's gonna be it's gonna be something like really embarrassing. Like, make sure you know what, here's I'm gonna go out on a limb like there are things that are people are embarrassed by that I am not embarrassed by I am not embarrassed to have a big pink drink in my hands. Like a giant pink, fruity drink in my hands. If it's delicious. I have no I have no problem with it. Right? I mean, what do you think? Like I know there are certain drinks that if I see a dude with them, I'm like, really? That's what you're gonna have. That's what you're gonna drink. But like, I think that if there's a if there's a really good drink, then you know, you know what?

It's like beer. I would embarrass you more than having a drink with a flower garnish and

I don't Yeah. I mean, I don't understand like beer. I really don't. I just don't I just don't I don't understand it. I mean, okay. Okay. One caveat like right now you're on the beach, right? Yeah. Is it piss hot? Where you are? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I mean, you know, a Corona has its place there, which is basically like beer, right? I mean, because it's basically like, I want to have a little bit of alcohol and feel a little bit festive. But what I really want to do is drink seltzer water. Right? Yeah. Right. So like, you know, you feel a little bit bad just ordering a Seltzer and you feel bad ordering a light beer. So you order a Corona, which is essentially a light beer without the light beer label. Anyway, how the hell did we get on this subject?

I have no idea and things you like and dislike? No. Yeah. Because of

California anyway. Okay. So let's get to a real question here. This is, this is from i hope i pronounced this right. Marika Highness Darshan, Dave, perhaps Jose. Oh, we got to call on. So Mark, I'll get back to your one question. Caller you're on the air.

Hey, this is Josh and Sam, how you doing? Dave? Doing? All right. Good question. A couple of years ago, I bought the flavor Bible. It's got a lot of good ideas. But I wonder if you could elaborate on the actual act of balancing flavors. I know, something's too salty, you could add something acidic. And if something's too bitter, yet sweet. But how you fine tune a recipe.

That's interesting. I actually own that. But I always, I always mix it up with different books, who are the authors on that one, again,

I can tell you right off my head. Yeah.

The idea of balance is really, it's really interesting. I tend, you know, every Cook has their own feeling for what they what they do to balance and usually, when you taste something, you're you know, why it's flat. If it you know, if it's flat. Also, by the way, when I'm balancing a dish, what I'll tend to do is take a little bit of that dish out and then play with that little bit of the dish on the side, so that I can kind of see which direction my my additions are taking it. So I don't kind of botched the whole thing up. But if something just tastes overall like like low and flavor dead, I add a pinch of salt to see whether the whole thing wakes up a little bit. And if it does, I'll keep adding a little more. I mean, first of all, like getting the salt balance, right, I think is the is the most important thing. And then the next one is, you know, almost always, you know, dishes, especially braises, or any anything like that, like big liquid based things tend to be tend to lack acidity unless you specifically added it. But, you know, typically you'll add those things towards the end of cooking. So, you know, first I'll usually first check a salt component, and then I'll check a and then I'll check an acidity. And I personally do a lot of like meaty umami, bolstering stuff, either with fish sauce, or with or with soy. So even in non western and even in western dishes, I'll end up hitting it with like a little bit of not like a not a normal fish. That's one of the milder, more kind of meaty fish sauces like, like a sherry from Japan, or IU, which you can get from Japan. Because some of the, you know, some of the more traditional Southeast Asian ones can kind of quickly take on that Southeast Asian flavor otherwise, or tiny bits of soy, and not really so that you know, you've done it just so that you kind of like really like, like, blow something out a little bit, it just really changes it and rounds it into more meaty, so like even like in like a better Mel's, sometimes I'll add a pinch of those kinds of things, I tend not to have MSG in my house, or I might experiment with that. So in general, I don't do a lot of like masking, right. So also I obviously you add sugar to things to round them out. But in general, what what I think in terms of balance is that you want to get, you want to get the overall flavor. Pretty good. Like when you make a stock, right, you don't season the stock from the get go, you try to balance meat and vegetable. And it's very kind of in but when you taste it, you could tell what it could be. But it's very flat because it doesn't have any other things that are in it. And you want it that way because you're gonna reduce it by a lot. And so that's when you you bring out the balancing act first you pop up all the flavors by adding something like salt, which is going to enhance the flavor of everything. And then you know or something's too salty. You can add sweetness, which is going to balance out the saltiness, which was I think kind of the thing you were talking about before the problem with that is that if you go that route if you you don't want to be in a position of his having to tone down another flavor by adding another flavor on top of because then everything just gets kind of overwhelming over time. I think you're you don't I'm saying Do you agree or no?

No, I agree because I've been trying to make like an Asian style cedar salad using fish sauce and egg yolk and I've been trying to hasn't been really going that well.

Right. I mean, I think what you want to do on that because that sounds actually like a good idea. You should try to source this stuff called IU, which is this. IU sauce. It's a sweet fish from Japan. And I don't know who's carrying this stuff, but it's the most unbelievable fish sauce I've ever had. It's crazy because it's a dead cross between fish sauce and like bacon and ham juice. It's nuts. Crazy. Are you a Wii U? Yeah. But the I think it's available now but I'm not sure it's it's amazing stuff. But I think what you're going to want to do on the on the fish sauce is use it as a very minor component. Do you know what I mean? Like like one dash of fish sauce in like a Caesar style thing is going to really pop and bring out that that fish sauce essence especially Are you are you doing it in addition to anchovy? No, instead of anchovy. Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge anchovy fan. But, you know, there's another way to go if you want to go stick with a more Italian kind of flavor set. There's a fish product called cola Tura, which is basically like, like an anchovy like oil doesn't taste like fish sauce, but it's kind of in between, like an like it's not fermented, but it's got some of the kind of the funkiness of anchovies, you can take a look at that. That's you can get that from Italian specialty markets, but they charge an arm and a leg for it. I think, like if you were to go and use an anchovy because I always put anchovy in my Caesar salad, you crush or crush it up for the flavor and also the emulsifying stuff. I tend to use salt pack anchovies, because I liked them a lot. But I think a dash of fish sauce and that can really work. Well the problem how much were you adding before? About a tablespoon? Yeah, so I would I would have just go a lot less mean fish sauce is one of those things where it's like small amounts, like add this kind of ineffable quality that you know that it's hard to get any other way and then you add a little bit more and now it tastes Asian on you. You know what I mean? Which is good if that's what you're looking for.

Yes, I'm trying to do the only thing we're trying to find a substitute for the parmesan or yeah, really, really cheese thing going on?

You mean because you don't want cheese because of the Asian component or because yeah, and it's interesting. You know, the lack of dairy in in Asian cuisine is something I've been studying recently. But also it's funny as the lack of dairy in like Italian classic or a lot of European fish based dishes. And I think that in the one case of dairy in Asia, a lot of a lot of China for instance in North and then you know even throughout the middle section used to eat a lot of dairy and I think what happened during the Ming Dynasty there's a reaction against anything having to do with kind of like Northern invaders that they had just basically thrown off the yoke from and since dairy was considered something that came from kind of Central Asia and the north they were like crap on dairy we don't want to use it anymore you know what I mean? And then in in Italian and European food I think the lack of dairy with specifically with fish based products so I guess except for things like Caesar salad which is not Italian but you know as a European derivative is that fish was eaten on fast days and on fast days you didn't have dairy you only had you had no meat and you had no dairy so you had fish and I think that's where a lot of the you know for instance fish pastures don't have cheese on them because of this ancient not ancient but you know kind of old idea that you that you know on days that when you're having fish you're not having any dairy anyway, but that's aside from the point so it's very hard to substitute for Parma Parmesan, very hard. Nothing kind of tastes like that. I mean, you can make an entirely different thing. In other words, you could use an egg yolk and then do like fish sauce and some sort of like you know something with a lot of enzyme breakdown products in it like maybe like a miso and then you know lime juice. I think it would taste good. It wouldn't taste like a Caesar salad. Do you know what I mean? No, that sounds great. Yeah, and then you know if you're going to want to add some of the texture back you can I mean nothing has that texture either what has that texture mean? You could crumble something like very you know, like what can you crumble mean I don't know if you like template was the idea go vegetarian except for the egg

No, there's no vegetarian this alright fish sauce

What the hell what the heck am I talking about brainless anyway the Yeah, I'm trying to think of what you what I would add for the texture component of that but I will try like a flavor base like that because that's delicious because the acids really going to balance out the mean official awesome and that's classic you know, I mean like and then I think the egg yolk is going to add some body that you wouldn't normally get in a in a thing like that. Bring it closer to to a Caesar salad and you know, there's so many different flavors to play with with me so that I think you can really balance then also not just body but sweetness and the amino acid Yeah, those amino flavors that you get in miso. So I would try that.

You want to talk about? I mean, have you been offered any TV jobs? I know like the celebrity chef is huge. And you're friends with a lot of the big ones. Making some your way. Because I've been reading your article, was it on? A super

public? On? Oh, no, either? Yeah, well, it's an interesting thing I've done a lot of, I've done a lot of, you know, little spots on, you know, the expert for X, Y, and Z. And I'm, like, I say, I'm going to shoot a pilot. Now, if that pilot, you know, takes off, I'll be a recurring character on that show. But, you know, the TV is really hard, because, you know, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. And, you know, the kind of what I'm interested in is fairly niche, you know, so like, we have a fair, we know, we have the people that read the blog, or listened to the show, you know, I really, I really like them. Because, you know, they they are dedicated to this kind of weird stuff that I'm in general interested in. But it's hard to sell on a on a TV. It's hard to sell on TV, because it's I don't think it's mass mass market enough. Hopefully, that that'll change. But that's always been the problem is trying to figure out something that they could sell as kind of a mass market show. That is something that I'm still interested in, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I was gonna request actually opinion, do you think that Mr. Gastronomy will ever make it to like, the Chili's or the Friday's level where these dishes that were, you know, that had been done so much that nobody doesn't anymore? But, you know, they could do it over there without anybody scoffing? Do you think you'll ever reach there for like, the novelty aspect, which modern? Cooks try to