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.

With 20 years in the culinary production game ourselves. We're hoping we can give through these conversations an insider's view into personal stories from the field, as well as an in depth behind the scenes look into some of the most popular food programming. In today's evolving culinary media landscape.

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,

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram.

broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn, you're listening to heritage Radio network.com.

Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host and cooking issues coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. Join today in studio of course as always witness Dasha the hammer Lopez how're you doing this Dasha? She's she's coming fresh off of looking at spaces for our new business. Yeah, yes. Anything good? Yeah, there's some great places Dave? Really? Are you just saying that? No, it was awesome. We got she got a crazy she got a crazy sarcastic look on her face people so she thinks she can get away with like doing that without me making a comment on the radio warehouses. Windows know why when I started has never worked in a place with windows before. Have you ever worked in a place with Windows? Yeah, and jobs that paid me. So you want me to stop that check? Oh, hey, Drew. Enterprises. If you're listening, please stop paying stop talking about something else. No. Okay. So you admit that drew is pain? Okay. But Anastasia doesn't like to work in any sort of room with windows. So if you have a maybe a sub basement for Anastasia to work in anything. She has one other requirement. Besides the fact that it can't have any natural light. It must also be extremely loud. Right? There has to be a refrigerator working in it at all times. Like like a large one. It also has to be uncomfortably hot at all times.

Have you ever been to Patrick Martin's his office?

Yeah, yeah. And you have to have people try to store things in your office at any given moment. Large things. Yes. That's That's what Natasha like anyway, calling all of your questions cooking or cooking related to 718-497-2128 I didn't memorize it. I haven't written down. That's 718-497-2128 All right. Today's show is sponsored by monitors pedantry. These guys love us right Jack? Yeah, we love them. Yeah, nice. Anyway, today's show is sponsored by modernist pantry supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients but hate to overspend for pounds of supplies and only a few grams are needed per application and associates to overspend? Yeah, do monitors pantry has a solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients and packages it makes sense for the home cook or enthusiast and most cost only around five bucks, saving you time, money and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocolloid pH modifiers, or even PF modifiers means buffers, right right buffers, pH modifiers, or even meat glue. You'll find it at modernist pantry and if you need Something that they don't carry just ask Chris Anderson and his team will be happy to source it for you with worldwide shipping by the way worldwide shipping. I was in Colombia and apparently a lot of this Colombia the country which you know, I just got back again. So we'll talk about that maybe these guys have trouble getting some of the stuff down there. They were telling me everything's really expensive like mica was really really expensive. Jelena is really really expensive. I don't know maybe Chris ships down to Colombia? I don't know. That's Colombia with an oh by the way, not with you. Okay. Where was I? With worldwide shipping monitors pantry is your one stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. This week modernist pantry is introducing his perfected guar gum. This exclusive formulation has advantages over traditional guar first, it is pre hydrated, which speeds the hydration while eliminating lumps. It also eliminates the need for slurries and pre mixes it and handles it with virtually no dust. Secondly, perfected guar gum does not have the taste that is typically associated with guar which is serious it will not take the flavor of your recipes. Use perfected guar gum as a one to one replacement for traditional guar fans or cooking issues in order $25 or more before the next week's show, we'll get a free package of perfected guar gum, simply use the promo code CI as in cooking issues. 57 When placing your online order at modernist pantry.com visit this video visit modernist pantry.com today for all your monitors, cooking meats perfecting guar gum. Ah, yes. So we use a kind of guar called tgic flavor free and tea whatever it is 4 billion whatever from tip gums, aka tick gums. And we've used this kind of guar for years. I don't know whether this perfected guar is the same as the flavor free guar but I mean Tic Tacs like they're like kind of like the leaders or the least the original kind of flavor free guar kind of situation traditional guar gum, if you've ever tasted traditional guar gum guar gum. Okay, so guar gum and locust bean gum are both derived from seeds and they're kind of you know, they're fairly old. You know, Ie been around a long, long, long time. Because basically they're seeds, ground seeds, hydrocolloid there thickeners not gelling agents, and locust bean gum LBG for short, locust bean gum is always been kind of of the to kind of the the older, more handsome, sexier, and like, you know, more successful brother to guar because it like has a lot of good good properties. One of which is it doesn't taste like crap, traditional guar tastes if it's beanie, it tastes almost like like black eyed pea flour or something like that has that flavor that it's from like a ground up see that? You know, it's kind of hard to deal with them people use guar a lot because guar is a lot cheaper than Lucas Bingham. The other thing that guar does is that you don't have to heat it, you know, up over 70 Celsius like you do for locust bean gum to get it hydrated. So guar gum has advantages for monetarily for large producers. But it always has had kind of a bad taste, it's typically used guayule Seaguar. In ice creams, typically GWOT. Ice creams are stabilized commercially, usually with Carageenan. And they use Carageenan, which is a seaweed because it it's very has synergistic reactions with milk. So you only have to use a tiny amount of it to get the milk to gel properly. And when it gels up that stops crystals from forming, which is why they use it they use Carageenan to stop basically crystal formation. But then you have to add a second thickener to the system to stop what's called a way off with liquid actually separates out from the weak gel that's formed by the Carageenan. And that's what the locus being or the guar gum is for. And typically they use guar because it's a lot cheaper. The flavor free guar is awesome. Now the stuff that they say is pre hydrated. What that means when you pre hydrated gum gums are typically difficult to hydrate because they swell in water and form lumps. And so you don't want lumps to form. And so half of using hydrocarbons, which are new H thickeners properly is figuring out how to hydrate them. So people like THC gums and others do a thing called agglomeration where they take smaller particles that hydrate fairly easily. And instead of packing them into just like a fine powder, they pre agglomerate them into kind of these very coarse looking little they look like miniature they look like like has like pilih look as though it's like kind of microscopic Grape Nuts. You've seen these before in the stash right? They have a weird kind of texture to them. I typically I don't have problems hydrating because we use vitae preps, but this could be something useful if you don't have a higher speed or speed mixer. I've never used pre hydrated guar before. I don't really like pre hydrated Xanthan by the way which some people do, which is another kind of miracle thicker anywho so what I use guar for guar is if you make a an ice cream, you can go and look up super stretchy ice cream on quick news.com and we make a super stretchy ice cream using Kelco jell F which is gelatin, which is awesome because it forms a fluid gel and it's also flameproof. But if you add guar to it. It's a weird synergy that you know, I don't think I've never read about other than our site. It forms a stretchy ice cream similar to select on Derma which is the Turkish orchid ice cream but it has an added advantage the Turkish ice cream doesn't have that you can light it on fire right isn't letting a fire lighting on fire always an advantage anyway, so go on modernist pantry and get your Glar I love the word gore.

I wish the Ben guar would advertise for guar gum.

They should they should well, we should change the name of the gum to spell it the way guar does is quite still around by the way. Yeah, they are ya. You're not that kind of a free you never went to this kind of concert. Right? No, you're not you're not into that kind of decapitation rock. No. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. All right. So John s writes in. And he says, Great show. Listen every week. He's called him once before. Hi, John S. My wife and I and three year old son are coming to New York from Wisconsin. My wife won a Pan American Bingham prize for her novel Stewartsville congratulations, wife. I looked I looked up that novel, and it had like very, very good ratings on the Amazon. I don't really read novels. Ustasha reads novels. I don't I mean, it's one of my bad traits is that I don't read fiction I basically only I sit around constantly reading nonfiction, typically about food occasionally about the Civil War or you know, the CIA or something like that. But anyway, so they're staying in Carroll Gardens Brooklyn of a still school by the way, we're still you know, it still still is, you know, it's a community in in outside of Miami and Biscayne Bay these like, like dudes, for some reason. I don't know why they built houses in the bay on stilts. They're like literally in the ocean, like in mud flats on stilts. And right now, there's only seven of these houses left, because duh, they get wiped away by hurricanes because it's a freaking hurricane country down there. So there's seven left. They've been around I think, since the 40s, or something like that. 40s or 50s. And people are trying to save them anyway. weird little and apparently the novel is about the early days of stilts, Ville. It's kind of a good word, though. Still, anyway. So there'll be flying during the show. So they're actually in the air right now. Or else you'd call it in. John says, I'm a tech nerd and a foodie of I hate the word foodie. I hate the word foodie. Don't you hate the word foodie? mustache, or doesn't, but does it not bother you? Is that one of the things that doesn't bother you? So he doesn't see it? So basically, if you use any word substance, it will bother one of the two of us but typically not both, right? So don't ever show Anastasia leave with a disease on it for instance, because that like 30 or a foot with a disease on it. That's you know, that's the thing is people can have it someday I hope Miss Dasha not because I want you to have like a horrible foot like skin problem. But just so that like it kicks you have the habit of worrying about it. Like if you have some sort of a horrible foot problem just for a day. No, hope I have it. Yeah, just for a day that would not cure you of getting worried about it. Anyway. So for me, for her it's horrible. Like skinned is like skinned is all this kind of things just can't stand it. For me. It's the word foodie. And I'll tell you why. It's because it's it smacks of food fat ism, it makes it seem like it's a fad, as opposed to basically being a new, you know, a way of dealing with with with life and foods. So, in fact, the term originally in the 80s was was kind of like, just like yuppie people, there was a book, you know, about foodies, and it was making fun of it. And, you know, basically saying like, here's a bunch of people who, you know, guess I just mix it into a fatty joke. People who don't, you know, who have nothing better to do a feed kind of, you know, just a bad smacks of bad stuff, right? Yeah. Anyway. And so it was kind of taken on by people who are interested in food. It's kind of a badge of honor, but I just think it trivializes the whole the word foodie. I think trival trivializes caring about food. Anyway, that's just me anyway. So I'm a tech nerd. And I'll say food lover, instead of foodie. And wonder if you have any recommendations for sites to see in New York this week? Unfortunately, we're financially constrained, or else you go to per se or WD 50. And all that, and with a three year old in tow, and by the way, yes, it'd be difficult to go to people to go to per se with little kids, right? It depends on your kid my kid. No, my two kids, they would take that restaurant apart. Right? Right. That would be it. Yes, we enjoyed. Mario Batali is Eataly by the way, we love Mario Batali at this because he really was so good to us at the museum fundraiser last week or two weeks ago or eight years ago when was it seems like last last week. We can have we could have ago when we visited last as an example of the type of thing we're interested in the criteria we're looking for something food lover interesting that we can't get back home in the backwoods of Madison, Wisconsin. Something is not terribly expensive, and is kid friendly ish. Like Street Food, Cooking stores, restaurants and tourist attractions. Well listen, I don't I don't go out. So I'm kind of a I'm kind of bad. I'm gonna put my friends here. Sambar is that really expensive? I don't know. You can go to sambar at lunch and get all the ducks stuff. That was good, right? Yeah, we had a really good meal there with the ducks stuff. I you know, I would do that. And the good thing about Sambar is it's kind of loud enough such that the kids aren't going to really be a problem. You know, because no one's going to notice because it's loud. For food shopping, I mean, go to the Palos on Grand streets like the greatest Italian I love that store. Go there. It's a Uh, you know, you might have to wait a long time so go ahead point when there's not a lot of you know, traffic or you're gonna be waiting there a long time with your kid my kids have taken that store apart but they're very friendly. Try to get someone in the family to help you out because they know a lot or else Renee, who's really cool over there like so Louis sound Murray County or Renee Anyway, go to the Palos it's a treasure here. What about what is it? Is treasuries place kid friendly? No. No. So very rosy not friendly. I mean, OTOs very kid friendly. Yes. Love it. You're like kids, they love it.

I didn't have no idea. I don't have any

I mean if tourist attractions Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, that's awesome. Yeah, right. What about food? Anything? We'll think about it and after the after the break we'll give you will give you some more some more stuff to do. Okay, here. Oh, yeah. Hell you're gonna be in Brooklyn come to Roberta's. Yeah, come out to Roberta's. I see a three year old in front of me right now. I didn't want to say anything. Oh, yeah. No, but seriously, we just got reviewed really well over here. There's some kids like literally looking at a table filled with kids of all ages. I see. Like I see like a zero year old. Like a three year old and a five year old with only two adults. I'm pretty sure

the next project and Roberta's is going to be like a McDonald's playground in the back. That'd be sick. I'm kidding, but

kind of a lot of kids here. Kind of kidding. Listen, here's my here's my suggestions with Roberta's come early. If you're gonna come dinnertime, lunchtime is not a problem. If you're going to come for dinner Jack, am I right or wrong? Or come early? Otherwise, you're gonna be waiting a long time. Yes. And it's gonna be a lot louder. So what time do you have to get your

check? I'd say seven 637 o'clock 630 or seven.

It's a good time if you have a three year old anyway. And by the way, if you don't come to Roberta's don't call in again. Just kidding, but I'm not gonna start shuffling out call me a D bag on the air. Nice. Nice. Okay, too. I've been making a lot of bread using the long rest method. Initially, a recipe from the New York Times improved by cooks illustrated it's definitely got the best texture with white flour. But I like to make it with half wheat flour. I'm assuming whole wheat flour. When I do this, the bread is less chewy, more cake like and less toothy. The texture is just not as nice with adding wheat gluten as an ingredient help how much? Any other suggestions? Okay, so assuming what we're talking about here is the recipe that's actually Jim Lee. He's from Sullivan street bakery. His recipe which is kind of the No need recipe that became popular I guess. Mark Bittman wrote about it when in like 2006 or 2007, or something like that. So Mark Bittman actually gets credited with this recipe, because when he wrote about it in the minimalists on the New York Times, it spread like wildfire across the internet. It was insane. Crazy, just like your buddy lately, and it's actually worked for him for a little while, right week, week, the week before she came to work for a different kind of a lunatic than me. So So anyway, so the basically the Bitman writes about this, it goes it goes completely viral. nutbag, lunatics it's everywhere by the way, Leahy's bread here if you've never been to New York, Sullivan street bread and its various imitators and spawn are fantastic. Fantastic bread really great bread. So anywho so he writes a something goes nuts in 2008. Cook's Illustrated so that's why it gets credited to the New York Times right? Even though he just came out with his book fairly recently like a year ago. Right? And his book his his basically book, what's editor is the same person who's going to be editing the I'm going to write a book is going to be writing that book. And so his book called like, it's called my bread or something like that. Or bread my way or my bread Norway. Your bread my way. What does it anyway, so it says book but the Maria Garner Shelley who I'm working with is a genius complete genius. She writes on the cover of this thing no work. No work, Brett no work no need no work that book sold like like wildfire for a bread book. It's a nice book. Anyway, so sells Jillian copies. This is extremely popular technique Cook's Illustrated in 2008 comes out with a book of sorry, comes out with an article on it where they modify it slightly. And that was written by no relation to Natasha Lopez, Kenji Lopez who used to be one of the main testers at and recipe writers at cooks illustrated before he moved on to two Internet startup so so what the hell's going on here so the basic thing with a no need bread lay he style is old school lay he style is use a very small amount of yeast and a very very high hydration right so you're using a lot of water and you know per flower like he's using his recipes are insane, like unhandled double insane kind of hydration knows why. Because he's looking for these really big kind of bubbles. Now, these lows won't really hold their shape in an oven if they're baked traditionally, but he doesn't bake it traditionally, because here's what he does. He has a very small amount of yeast and lets it rise for a very very with enough salt to make it taste good because that's a lot of SP people don't have enough salt and then let it rise for a very, very long time like 1214 hours or more after which they he, you know, takes it out covers flour, and let's it just moves it around a little bit in a bunch of flour to add some sort of structure to the dough otherwise there'll be no structure and then lets it rise again in a heavily flowered cloth and then throws it into a preheated dutch oven. And that does two things. It holds the shape of the bread and it traps in the steam and so it gives you a really nice crust. Now, I have not baked this way, by the way so this is all just based on like my knowledge of talking to everyone in the universe. He does it this way. This is not the way I do it anyway. Everyone likes it. McGee wrote an article in New York Times on this technique, where he says yes, it makes really good bread Nicky's knock on the whole thing isn't that the breads not good is that the breads are very similar, it's very similar kind of open course. You know, textured, like large bubble Chrome, which is what people are shooting for people like that look, as opposed to the heavily needed, you know, less resin breads that had typically have a denser crumb anyway. So the technique is predicated one on his high hydration, which is going to make very big open bubbles to on the cooking technique, which is going to generate a nice crumb and have, you know, produce a lot of steam, and three on the long rise time and what the long rise time is doing two things. One, people say it minimizes the taste of the actual yeast that you're adding, right. And two, it'll, when the yeast is acting over a longer period of time, it's supposed to make more complex flavors, including acids like acetic acid, and all all sorts of different wonderful flavors, and also modifying the texture of the dose somewhat by the long by the long resting. In addition, you don't need to need if you're going to let it rise for a long time because Kneading is essentially the process of hydrating the gluten and providing structure for the gluten. The gluten will form its own structure, the theory goes if you just let it rise for a long time, and let it develop for a long time. So the kneading becomes inconsequential and in fact, you can't need dough with as high hydration as the stuff that Tim lay he is using. And so you have therefore you have no need no work bread, it just takes a long time. So now people the cooks illustrated Kenji all it was like I don't want to wait this long for my No need bread. So what does he do? Kenji, you're obviously use content ups the hydration ups the sorry lowers the hydration somewhat to make a dough easier to handle needs it for like 15 seconds, my my guess is to help the structure Development Early on, because he's not going to rise as long right? So he needs to move it around a little more help the hydration a little more. And to he cheats a little bit by adding beer and vinegar and a beer and the vinegar are there to fake the flavor of a long fermentation. So it's basically let's fake the flavor of a long fermentation and try to get something done quicker. And so that's the Cook's Illustrated, you know, short need like 1520 seconds or minute need bread. That is also it's not but it's not nearly as high hydration. So this is what we're talking about as a long explanation for what the hell we're talking about. But what if you didn't know what we're talking about? Then you wouldn't know we're talking about so then he's saying you know, the question here is if you're making it with wheat flour, it doesn't work as well what's the problem first of all wheat flour is going to require a higher hydration so if you're doing a Cook's Illustrated recipe which is a lower hydration bread, you're going to need to add more hydration to get your wheat flour to act the same way Secondly, wheat flour probably needs to develop longer it's first of all it's just never going to hold me flowers is never going to get the same texture the kind of whole wheat flour you're using if you want a really nice texture with a whole wheat flour because it's I don't know the way it's ground usually ship hottie flower like ship hottie flower is amazing stuff. Keep it in the freezer because it always has bug problems but like Laxmi brand should party flower I use that for pancakes and whatnot so if you're having the problem that the brand is too coarse and it's actually affecting the texture of your of your bread move to a different kind of holy flour and see whether that helps you out I've never added may have added wheat gluten to whole wheat breads but it's appeared like decades ago and it's I don't remember exactly what things I used to dope it in all the time adding wheat gluten, I mean you add like a you know percent or two of vital wheat gluten it might help out but I would up the hydration a little bit and I go back to doing a longer rise is what is what I would do. In fact McGee and his article says some wet doze can still benefit from needing and one is whole wheat dough because he says McGee quoting whole grains tend to absorb more water and produce weaker gluten networks and I found that needing as the recipe directs gives a lighter loftier loaf. Alright, so

that's that although I will say that I do although I haven't baked bread a lot in a long time I do do a lot of pizza and my my pizza for I always rise my pizza overnight always like I used to do a technique. I've moved to a no less work technique now I used to make what's you know like what do they call it a Bega whatever I do have 100% water and I mean 1% water and flour equal ratios. Add the yeast let it rise two times. Let it rise up and then beat and then add the extra flour and then let retard that's called retarding in the in the fridge basically until the next day and the pizzas always been great. But now if I was talking to Michael, Matt sorry Matthew Palomino, who has motorino pizza also here in Brooklyn, which apparently is like some great pizza. I haven't had it. In fact, I haven't had it, but I can guarantee his pizza is good, because the guys had the got the right attitude about cooking. You know, spend some time with him. And he's mean to go. We should go there and have this pizza. Yeah, motorino. But, you know, Charlie Trotter once said, that you could review a restaurant just by looking at its floor because he's a neat freak that crazy. Can't review a restaurant by looking at its floor. But I can kind of review a chef by talking with them and seeing what their attitude and Matthew Palomino, even though he's Belgian, and we're for Laurent Turnbow. He has the right kind of like, demented mental attitude to kind of get it right. Like he's quite quality obsessed. In fact, in fact, he has kind of a big we've already talked about it in the show. He has a big brother kind of a thing with a camera where he can look at anyone's pizza as it goes out. Even if he's in like, he's in an I was in an airport, JFK with him. And we're flying and he looks at his iPhone and looks up the pizza that was being produced at the restaurant at that moment calls up and just starts yelling at the person who's making the pizza. Yeah, so like, I love that. That's hardcore. That guy that guy's knows what's up. So we gotta go. We gotta go check that guy. Yeah, Annie. Well, I'll give you one more thing on pizza because you know, my husband gets up to 850 degrees because I've modified into pizza oven, so it makes it really good pizza. Oh, and when you're gonna make pizza dough, like if you want a higher hydration, you're gonna get that softer and more Neapolitan feel where if you go for a lower hydration, you're going to get more of that kind of American feel. And I don't really think that one is better than the other. I don't look I like a neapolitan style pizza, but I don't think it's the be all and end all I think whatever you want to eat at the time is the best one right? And one last thing on pizza before we go to our first break. I'm going to give you a secret when I was building my current apartment before I had the oven in there. We used to order pizza a lot. We order it from a place here in New York City called Lombardi's which is a well known coalfire pizza problem is, is the crust from Lombardi is is always soggy it's not a high hydration so it shouldn't be kind of floppy soggy but it is when it comes from the thing even though it's a good tasting pizza. So here's a secret for you. Take a blowtorch turn your pizza upside down right on a on a platter and blow torch the crust until it gets until it gets crunchy again Now blow torches I don't typically like because blow torches. They if there's any fat they pick up the kind of torch case but there's very little fat on the bottom of a pizza. So it tends not to pick up towards TIG torch taste out of it. So just towards the bottom of the pizza with a blowtorch until it crunches up again, flip it melt the cheese you can do it with a torch but you know you better if you don't because the cheese is fatty. But anyway and so that's my reheating technique to get delicious crunchy pizza All right, let's go to our first commercial break and we'll come back cooking issues seen your picture and your name and lots of others is your dream come true I like your grip and when you smile back come back it's your and Welcome back to Cooking issues calling all of your questions to 718497 to one to eight. That's 718-497-2128 You gotta get you gotta be a little more mellow with that music in the back. Right?

If it was up to us, we'd play Steely Dan all the time. Every time.

Really? Oh, yeah. Is that your that's your that's your jam. It's your house jam. Oh, yeah. Nice. House. Yeah. Okay, so I guess we'll start the second segment with a shout out from Adam, who we met in person at the star chefs international chefs Congress not to be confused with the ICC, the International Culinary Center. What kind of a cluster you know what that is that they're both named the same thing. Anywho he says what? Okay, he says, Hey, Dave, in this Dasha, I hope you all know how much I and the rest of the silent listeners appreciate what you're doing. Cheers, Adam. Well, thank you. Appreciate that. Although Don't be silent call. then your question is do 7180 My god I forgot already said 184 and 72128 That's 718-497-2128. Okay, now, got a question in saying, doo doo doo gotta get to it. You speak often about how you use your immersion circulator a lot at home, I built one and it works great kudos for building one. But I found that a lot of good quick family meal, I have not found a lot of good quick family meals, which would use it. Can you give us some examples of where you find it useful at home? I've done chicken breast which was decent, if bland and the fish tilapia I did was just plain bland and boring. Well, you're lucky if tilapia all it is, is bland and boring. I mean, tilapia is the fish where, you know, the best thing you can say about it is that it has no flavor, right? If like any flavor that it has, is going to be bad. You know what I mean? So, you know, I would stay away from tilapia, if you can, I mean, I guess it's farmed and sustainable. Nonsense anyway. And the specifics will be nice, what to add to the bag for flavorings, time, temperature estimates, etc. Perhaps a recommendation for prep and freeze in the bag applications for quick weekend night meals. Okay? Now, it is true that the circulator doesn't really excel at speed, it's not really what it's what it's best for. You know, I use it in the house, most often, for just unattended cooking, I do, the thing I do most often in the house is steaks, right? So when I'm cooking for my family, I use a circulator for steaks all the time. And that's, you know, I think I've said it like a million times here before, but the recipe is stupidly simple, I sear it. I with I put salt and pepper on it, because I'm going to serve it, you know, pretty soon after I cook it like within a couple of hours. So if you don't solve it, if you're not going to cook it right away, put it a milk, butter and garlic, chop garlic melted butter in the Nook, pour it into the ziplock bag, putting the steak seal it under water, which there's instructions for on cooking issues.com. And I throw it in the circulator, and then let it ride for anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half. And then whenever I finally get the kids rounded up, I flash it off in a super hot pan and send it out and it's delicious. And not bland, because it's been seared to its Oh yes, and I use the butter with the garlic in it to make garlic bread. Some of this is my kids favorite meal that I that I make for them. Other things like for instance, if I'm going to do a party, if I'm going to a party, then I'll do hamburgers in the circulator, right like kind of like I did for the eater piece, but usually smaller, because it allows me to do all my work beforehand and then get the burgers out perfectly during the party. But if I cook burgers for home, I typically don't do it in circulator, because it's not, it's like the workflow is not the same, I just make a different kind of burger. So when I make burgers at home, I'll make a thinner burger, which can be cooked more traditionally, instead of the kind of burgers and making a circulator, the you know, like eggs, if I'm going to poach eggs, if I'm going to do 10 people and they're coming over, you know what, I'm gonna cook a bunch of eggs, they 20 Hell do it in a circulator. But you know, if I have to cook like two or three eggs, and I got to do it right now, I don't use a circulator. So it's not typically something I do for hyper quick kind of meals. If you're going to have the thing set up all the time, like on a counter in a water bath, you know, then you can kind of use it to better effect and it is really good for reheating things that are in the ER we thermalized things rather that are in the freezer so you can have something in a bag and you can read thermalize it a circulator fairly effectively, but again, it's not the quickest thing in the world. So it's really good for pre prep stuff. I'll try to think more about that. Anyway. We have a caller caller you're on the air.

Awesome. Hey, I am one hoping you can help me I am wondering how to cook a goat head. It's kind of scary looking. And I don't know can I eat the brains? Can i What do I do with

it? All right, go ahead. Very good. So I used to eat as a child lambs head quite a bit. I haven't done a lot with goat's head but they're very similar I mean I doubt you can even tell them apart once they've you know been killed and skin and whatnot. You look the brain is delicious. I'm not gonna lie the brain is delicious. I don't tend to eat brains anymore since since Mad Cow came out and like you all the you know, all the new spongiform Encephalopathies have come out because I just don't know when the next one is going to happen. You know, so I tend not to eat brain tissue anymore, even though I find it delicious. I don't know whether I'm just being overly reactive. But the problem is, is that you don't know for 10 years that there's been a problem and you don't I'm saying so I tend to stay away from brains although there to be clear, there have been no cases I know of of anyone ever human ever getting a disease from eating a goat or a lambs brain as far as I as far as I know. Never. I mean cow brain. Yes. No one has even really traced like elk like elk. You know they have a thing called Chronic Wasting Disease out Wyoming and so, Montana, so if you those elk, they can pass this between each other. And then they get basically a similar variant to a mad cow, which is basically a variant of Jakob Crutchfield of brain eating disease. And so, anyway, that apparently hasn't jumped human either. So, you know, I just, I'm not telling you to be scared, I'm just telling you that, like, you know, the problem is, is that after all that I look at the brain, it's not as appetizing as it used to be, you know what I mean? Look, my favorite part of the head is like the tongue in the nasal passages, they're delicious. Now, you can a couple of ways you could do the head, like one of the classic ways is to kind of like take a flavorful broth or stock and kind of poach it and simmer it and that until the meat falls off, and then rip it up and make like, you can make like a tester out of it or something like that the same way that you would for same as you would for a pig's head. Right. But good, old fashioned way, is just roast it, you know, split it in half, and roast it and then eat all of the parts out people like here's the other thing, right? People like there are the eyes. Eyes really aren't that delicious. I just don't think they're delicious. I mean, I have no problem eating them. I just don't think that they say great. You know what I mean? What about Eunice Dasha? I haven't, you haven't tried it? I thought we had this discussion maybe someone else had discussion with. But it's so obviously what the way we used to do we use this wrote me I was a kid before I was tech, you know, we would just roast a sucker in the oven. And I think they served it with a tomato sauce. I'm not sure if they call it a cup of sell. But as lambs head and delicious, like all the meat in the nasal anything basically, or the most effective way. And if you don't want look, it depends on whether you want to freak out your guests. Like if your guests are like old school Italians from the north end of of Boston, then they won't be freaked out because just tell him it's a lamb said instead of a goat head. But you know, if if you're if the people you're gonna be eating with, they're gonna be freaked out, I would pick the meat off. And then and then make it into something but all that stuff's delicious. The tongue, you know, the texture is different. And the great thing about meat in the head is you have all these various various textures. You have the textures that come out of the cheeks, you have the textures in the nasal passages, you have the textures and in the tongue. Again, if eyes if you if you like it, and brain if you're willing to eat it is all good. Yeah, I mean, do you have you have a circulator? I'm sure you could circulate? I'm sure it'd be delicious. I've never actually done it. I've only ever done traditional cooking techniques on it. Okay, awesome. Right and tell us how it worked. I love I love an old school. I haven't cooked the lambs head in many, many years. Actually, that's not true. I cooked one in Italy two years ago, or three years ago, but I forget how we cooked I might not have cooked it, I might have just butchered it. They taught me how to when I was in Italy last they taught me how to split a lamb said without a saw just using a knife. It's too long to go into now. But the secret is basically you it's gross, but you use the eye sockets as handles to hold it so it doesn't slip around as you're as you're smashing the knife through it and splitting it in half the I think my my head's already cut in half. Very good. Very good. Very good. So I won't go into it. But maybe I'll try to remember I'll try to go get the video of how you do it. Anyway, thanks for calling in. Thank you. All right. So Michael writes in with a couple of questions. He enjoys our show, Natasha, thanks for doing it. Here's a pretty basic question I was hoping you could answer. I've always heard that you should heat your pan before adding oil. And similarly, I've always heard that you should keep your oil in the pan before adding food. Are there any good reasons for this, I've often broken both of these rules and have not noticed any negative effects. Okay. So what's going on here is pretty simple. Most of the time, when you want to get your pan hot for searing or something like that, that the the idea of it is, is to get a lot of energy stored in the pan, such that when you put your food on it right, it can put a big wallop into it. And and and give it a nice good sear. Now, most of those searing things, you know, in order in order to store enough heat into in the in the pan to get it to work properly, you would have to heat it to a point where the oil would completely degrade and start smoking and have a lot of problems. So to get around that you heat the pan up to a ridiculous amount. And then you add the meat and the meat, you know drops the temperature of the oil and the pan down with thing but you have that wallop of heat. That's why they tell you to do it. So if you're not looking to get a very quick, fast crust, then there's really not necessarily a reason to do it. Similarly with the oil. If you're don't want to cook for a long time, you want everything to be smoking hot, you do everything a very high temperature. So when I'm doing low temperature cooking, I'll tend if I'm using a cast iron pan, I'll heat the cast iron pan for a long time because it stores a lot of heat even though it doesn't deliver it necessarily as quickly. And I'll pre heat the oil in the side pan up to just below it's kind of smoking temperature. Then I'll dump the oil into the cast iron pan and immediately wants to light on fire. So I throw the steak into it and see it very quickly. And that's because I want to get across very, very quickly on it. So if that's not what you're looking for, there's no real isn't to do it. You don't if that makes sense. It's Ash. Oh no. Okay. Also, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the Komodo or Moshe Komodo, or Komodo I guess style of grill. I'm considering purchasing one since you can do everything from high heat grilling to controlled low temperature cooking, use it as an oven a kind of Tandoor, etc. Are they worth the money in your opinion? Okay, so what we're talking about is these ceramic egg shaped grills and it was a sneeze bless you. He is a ceramic I never say that this is an honest to god sneeze it's an honest to god sneeze Shut up. But it's a long standing joke with me that the first time you sneeze I say bless you the second time maybe bless you the third time Shut up Shut up with the sneezing. You know, go blow your nose or something. Which is a mean thing to say. And I always say this joke because I go into sneezing fits. If you ever go into a sneezing fit Yes. Where you sneeze constantly and then like you'd like someone's trying to talk to you and you're like, like, you're trying to hope anyway, whatever. Anyway, so you know, she makes me out to be such a meanie. It's really not the case. Anyway. So ceramic grills, they're kind of egg shaped. And, and basically you load them with coal in the bottom and they have damper in the bottom so you can open them up. And they light fairly quickly. Because they're chimney shapes, you get good air draw through them and people like them so big, big. What's a Big Green Egg is one of them. Primo grill is another one of them. The Komodo or Kumar wherever they are, based on a Japanese style of shape is one of them. And I've never actually used one they are not cheap. They're like six 700 bucks. But their main thing like a tandoor, which actually I do have some experience with because like I said, we built one for the shoot we did with Anthony Bourdain. And I actually loved cooking in it because it takes a relatively small amount of fuel and these have the same benefit takes a relatively small amount of fuel and can make a very, very high heat and can make a fairly low heat. The other great thing about the ceramics is it tends to stabilize over time. So if you're going to do like a long cook it it stores heat fairly well and radiates it back giving like a nice even heat and you have to choose. Now the thing is it doesn't move very quickly in either direction. It took me a while to get it stabilized. But the coals are gonna light fairly quickly, because you have this rush of air coming in and then going up like a chimney. You can use a fairly small amount because it's all concentrated, it doesn't like spread out over a huge area like a kind of an unenclosed grill as it keeps most of the heat internalized into the oven and then shoots it out of the top. Which is why when you're learning to put in Tandoor, you can burn the hell out of your hands. These have unlike a tandoor have a grill in the top so that you can grill like a normal human being, although I assume you could take it out and use it like a tandoor if you want it to. Anyway. So the so I, you know, have people seem to love them, people who use them. They seem to love them. I've never used them. I'd like to have one and I would probably use it half as a tandoor and half is something else.