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.

Today's program has been brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of heritage breed pigs and turkeys. For more information visit heritage foods usa.com You're listening to heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn, if you like this program visit heritage radio network.org for 1000s More

Hello and welcome to cooking on your host of cookie what cooking issues my voice today maybe it's because my voice buds are frozen we have voice bots. voice box frozen it is snowing I could demon out. But I'm still coming to you live a little late because the subway was shafting me. I usually am late and it's my own fault, right sighs Yep. Cuz I'm disorganized and a bad person all around. today. I'm actually going to blame the weather. Although I noticed that Jack made it here on time as deadness, Dasha. So maybe and they're both coming from Manhattan.

That's right now I come from Manhattan. In fact, farther with

you guys on the train today.

Yes. No. Well, yes. FTL F two

F tell. You know, yeah, whatever. People don't care. Call your questions live to 718-497-2128 That's 74 972128 So we have an actually have an event tonight, right? Does he think nothing's gonna go on? Yeah, really? Yeah, I talked to her. And she's like, we're gonna do it. Oh,

yeah. She's excited about a hot drink everything.

We don't have a hot drink.

I told her we were working on merch online.

So we're doing this event tonight at a place called feel NYC and you know one of the partners food fuel food. Yeah, but what's funny is is that our friend who's you know one of the partners there Galeon Quinn, who runs the Bogota Food and Wine Festival or wine and food festival and every keep it straight. She she's from Colombia, she calls it Phil food like Phil like our friend Phil Bravo. And she can't like literally cannot hear the difference between the words Phil and feel so we were busted. We were busting her chops yesterday on the Phil feel phenomenon phenomenon. Phil Phil Nominum anyway, but so I can't believe we're going to do an event with cocktails with people like arriving as it's like got booked dumping buckets of snow on us. But hey, that's life that's how it's cut. We agreed to do it. So we do what we do it we do it. Alright. So we got some questions in on knives. Dear cooking issues team. I have a simple I have a simple knife question. Well, it's not as simple as it turns out most things are not so simple right? On a whim I recently bought a 10 inch knife blank. The listing claimed it was a 100 year old submitting a blank you know sub J's like the French, like the French knives. You familiar with those? Saba to blank French the French knife power During the, like, the old sub k pattern is different from the kind of standard German chef's knives that we all kind of grew up with, like, you know, in the US, you know, if you, you know, if you're my age, you know, when you were younger, no one really had the Japanese or the Japanese Western stuff, they weren't very popular, I don't think until probably the 90s You know, like, you know, somewhere in the late 90s, somewhere around there with us people. So, you know, in the, in the early 90s, in the late 80s, and early 90s, everyone wanted their, their ankles and their voice DOS, right. And if you were gonna get you know, a Japanese chef's knife to do western style work most likely you'd get like a Mac you know what I mean? What the Macs that you would get, like we're semi in kind of the newer style Japanese Western pattern but more you know, akin to Japanese takes on Western knives. These are the ones I was kind of grew up being exposed to. But you know, most of us are most people I knew didn't really have a set of French pattern eyes and French pattern that the knife actual, the the handle style and the in the shape of the knife, but different from the German style actually quite like it. So I so I in fact, my favorite knife that I have, that's a Western knife is because I have my favorite Japanese knives. But my favorite Western knife is in fact, a 10 inch solid shape, knife old really freaking old carbon steel that I found at a flea market for two bucks. And it was you know, it was rusty, but not like too rusty on the blade section. So it didn't have didn't have any real wasting or loss of metal in the actual edge. There was some pitting in the in the belly of the blade itself, but nothing on the edge. And so I was able to take it nothing. That thing's a demon except for people keep picking it up, using it without my permission and then leaving it wet, which really makes me want to people do not first of all, don't use other people's knives, right like don't like unless you ask, don't use somebody else's knife. Yeah, straight up. Like I remember, at the Sei, I had a set of Japanese knives also carbon steel, so they rusted. And some and I had a new Suba which is you know, the vegetable carving knife. It's got a very like flat blade, it's meant for like turning dye cones and stuff into those sheets. And you know, I bought it at a time when the Yen was not quite as good as it is against the dollar now, so it wasn't ridiculously expensive. But still, I think it sent me back like 100 and something bucks and now it's like 150 or $185 knife or something like that. And some some Jacquard picked it up, I thought it was I guess I don't know what the hell they thought it was a cleaver and they hid it into bones and took giant scallop marks out of it and made it entirely useless and then left it wet. So I came back to my knife kit. They were kind enough to put it away, but they put it away and left it ruined, completely ruined. I've never been so angry about something that's happened in a kitchen to my equipment ever as like why would anyone ever pick up somebody else's knife? But so this is the problem about having nice stuff in a communal environment. And you know, my home now because you know people come through it amounts in some ways to communal environment. So anyway, it's hard to keep sometimes carbon knife in good shape, which is you know, why you should be protected? Is this making sense? It's not really the question, but have you ever had a carbon knife now, the advantages of the carbon steel knives are they're ridiculously easy to sharpen, they take you know, they don't, they're a pain in terms of you know, taking care of them like whenever I use mine, I wipe it down after use and I put a thin coat of oil on it you know at the end of the night. I wipe it after each use and then at the end of night I put a thin coat of oil on and put away and it's been fine for years but it's just a little more use but takes an edge extremely well definitely gets last longer than the new the new Steel's the edge the new Steel's that they have are crazy you know and so you know I'm sure from an actual performance standpoint but the fact that it takes an edge so easy so easily means that you you know you can couple swipes on my on my on my stone, and the sucker is you know, like like a like a slicing machine. It's my favorite thing to slice steaks with steaks Okay, so I bought a 10 inch knife blank and the listing claimed it was a 100 year old subject a blank recently discovered in a warehouse warehouse in how do you think you pronounce like I should know because it's French right? But TA is Ta pronounced written in English fears. But I think it's probably ta

how's it how's it spelled fears like fers? No, I

th I get I would guess it's like TA or something like that. Ta I don't know. But you never know what them right could they could be like Deus you're supposed to pronounce the RS on that one. You're like, of course they don't understand douche. That's my favorite thing about French people is that they don't understand the Duchenne so they're like shallow shallow sack of us. You know. I'm not going to German Anyway, I have problems.

I've heard the pronunciation. What is it, tear, tear, tear.

I was pretty close. And made from Virgin steel not used today with this story, I couldn't pass it up. But I've been having trouble finding someone willing to transform the blank into a functioning knife. I was rebuffed. Like that buffs a good word, I was rebuffed by one custom Brooklyn knife maker. And he could not point me to any other knife makers who would be willing to do the job. And he suggested that this require heat rather than just sharpening as well. I really have a good eight inch chef's knife at home that I keep sharp with a DMT system. Those are the diamond. Anyway, I like them to empty. But so this is not an especially urgent task. However, just holding the blank makes my current and I feel like safety scissors against Excalibur. So who and where do I go to turn this blank into a real knife, preferably here in New York. But maybe this task is not as simple as I had originally thought. And then it's from Patrick. And he put in the description from from the eBay. And by the way, for those of you interested in this problem, the person who he bought it from if you if you look such a blank, there are some eBay auctions currently from the same guy still up, you can still go buy one of these if this is something that interests you. Yeah, it's not as simple as you thought. If you if you go look, if you guys look it up, and you go on eBay and see what we have here is you have a blank just after the forging step, right. So it's a whole, you know, blank with the metal entire, but it, it looks like it's only gone through the first step. So what happens after you forge it is you have to do something called a kneeling. And the annealing is to make it soft to work and get rid of some of the stresses. So you're going to kneel it and annealing it, you're going to take it up to a fairly high temperature, like somewhere like 14 150 or so Fahrenheit, and you're going to hold it there for a while, and you gotta cool it very, very, very slowly. And what that's going to do is it's going to bring the metal into a very soft state, it's easily worked, and I think it also gets rid of some distress. And that is, so that you can do the kind of the grinding and to get it down to almost finished except for the actual edge itself, you want to get it down because if you look at the picture that you have of the blank, it has a lot of forging marks in it that you can still see in the picture. After you do that, right, now you have to harden the guy, so you have to you're going to kneel it, then you're going to do kind of whatever work you're going to do on it, then you might do something called normalization which is another thing similar to a kneeling but not quite as not quite as slow a cooling the reason you call it slowly is when you heat that steel up to a high temperature you change the state of the metal that goes from being you know, a mix of whatever it happens to be in whatever state it is partially probably hardened from working partially not in into kind of an Austin titik state which nonmagnetic state and then if you call it very slowly, it forms into you know, very soft structures, if you call it very quickly, you know, a portion of it, hopefully a large portion of it turns to martensite which is a lot harder, which is what you know, hardened steel. So, so anywho so you want to call it not as slowly as it kneeling, but relatively slowly, to kind of, you know, produce a finer grain structure and get rid of any kind of imperfections in it that might cause problems with the, with the with the hardening, which we're about to do now, I don't know whether that stuff's fully necessary or not, but a lot of people seem to recommend it, then you're going to heat it up again to that same high temperature and then quench it like a mother in oil very quickly so that the metal does not have the time to to go into its softer state instead frozen in the harder martensitic state right that makes sense, then it's really shattering like it's going to be shattered brittle like glass. So then you need to take it and heat it up again to a tempering stage which is lower temperature that you know is much easier to accomplish because the other temperatures are like 14 150 that kind of thing. You need a real kind of a forge or a kiln to do that right. The other one is a little bit lower as a temporary thing that can be done to kind of more reasonable steps so you do that to kind of make it not as brittle as the temperate maybe once maybe twice depending on who you listened to. And there you have your blade after you temperate then you have to put scales on it right you know, wooden parts right pay you don't have to use wood you could use whatever you want like a lot of people use like phenolic compounds bone write whatever you want and riveted down sand down the sand down the handle so it's nice and then put your final polish and your edge on it. So in other words, to put it in a you know to put it this way, it's a lot of freaking work and to have someone do a one off custom job on something like this is going to cost a lot of money like much more than just going and buying a high quality old sebatu A chef's knife at least I would charge a lot you know if I I was going to do something like that. And that's probably one of the reasons why the custom knife maker that you that you dealt with was like, why would I do that I'm a custom knife maker, I want to make my own knives. I don't want to do that to this other knife. Now, they're probably being a little bit of a jerk about it. Because everyone's everyone who doesn't like that for a living, like, including myself. Like when someone's like, once someone comes to me and wants me to make somebody else's cocktail. I'm like, why would I do that? That's ridiculous. You know what I mean? But so everyone who does this stuff for a living, like they're kind of jerks, but, and they're kind of not understanding towards someone who's not directly on the inside of their business. But that's just the nature of someone who cares about what they do? I mean, probably, it's gonna be hard to find someone who cares about what they do, who is willing to do it for a reasonable price? And who doesn't care about the whole process in general, does it make sense does it anyway, so I think you've bitten off quite a bit, but I think it's a really interesting project. If you go on kitchen knife forums. There's a guy there named Devin Thomas, who's a very famous maker, I've never touched one of his knives, but there you know, a chef's knife from David Thomas is upwards of like 1500 bucks if you can get it because they're made one off their custom. And he's a maker of crazy, crazy pattern Damascus style steels that he makes himself both stainless and carbon Damascus steels, and he wrote in that he bought one, like 20 years ago from the same guy and made a nice knife with it. And this is what he says to do. Should you find someone who's willing to do it? He says, uh, Neil, at 14 150 for one hour, dropped the temperature to 1275 for four hours and then cooling the furnace to harden it soak at roughly 1500 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes, and then quench in oil and then temper immediately for one hour between 350 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit, one or two times one time for more toughness, sorry 112 times for more toughness in one hour for more wear resistance ie longer keeping edge. But that is not something that the average person I think could do. Although I have to say I love the older Saba chinos I love them anyway, does that make sense? Devon Thomas, you should go take a look at his knives by the way. I mean, I looked at him you can't even you can't buy him it's crazy. Like I think maybe Matt from from Chef Matt from sambar might have one because he's kind of a knife nut anyway. All right. Should we take a quick break let's take a quick break come back more cooking issues.

Today's program has been brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of heritage breed pigs and turkeys. For more information visit heritage foods usa.com.

And we're back so that's interesting. We're being hosted by the parent company today huh? Oh yeah. Yeah,

they they got some pretty good pork over there. Yeah,

I didn't know we were the largest distributor of heritage pigs and turkeys heritage breed Yeah. But are we are not the distributor of the largest breeds of pigs and turkeys as far as I know.

No. The opposite

the turkey the turkeys are delicious. Anyone who's had one knows this but they're not like the jacked up like you know super like Jim going birds that they're athletic birds fly. Yeah, yeah, I mean, like, you know, I forget how much they weigh that what was how much did they weigh at Thanksgiving time you remember? No, I don't remember they were like they were like on the more like on the 15 pound side yeah,

that's more common.

Yeah not on like the 25 pound like my mom like

Monster Turkey 1819 is as big as you're getting with those guys.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we should we should figure out like how to get the like I'm sure they could grow some sort of like a giant mega heritage breed Turkey if they wanted to. Wow, only only you could find out how we can do it. We of course the heritage breed pigs will grow bigger. You know, if you let them live longer. You have the advantage of letting the pigs live longer. What depends on what you want, right? I mean, like we slaughter our animals so young, typically here in the US, which is one of the reasons if you go back and you read dry cured meat products by Fidel told her which by the way, I don't recommend it's not a very scintillating read. I mean, it's good from an informational standpoint. I'm sure it's horribly out of date. And fetal told was written other books since this one which was written I think, in the in the late 90s. And I own it's a technical book, the boring I mean, it's not boring. It's, it's boring. I mean, like stars, you would find it intensely boring, but it has information in it that I'm glad I have in my head now. One of those Usedom information is that the muscular enzyme, makeup of an animal is dependent on its age. And that for dry, cured long age dry cured meat products, the enzyme balance or the enzyme makeup rather in older hogs, is more conducive to creating a higher quality longish product. In addition, the meat from older hogs or older animals in general tastes incredibly different now. Jeffrey Stein guard who by the way, like wants to get in touch with us but then he didn't call us back I haven't talked to Jeff for a long time but Jeffrey so here's two different styles right of thought. So you got your Harold McGee and your Jeffrey Stein garden, both of whom went to Spain to taste very old meats like so there's a bunch of restaurants in Spain that specialize in you know, you know, cooking older animals like seven year old cows things like this, you know, older things that we don't get here in the US I think and I think even older mutton very age mutton things like this. So the GI there's like stars knows McGee is like just explaining kind of how awesome it is. And like maybe I can, you know, how can I get it up above and Stargardt's is rubbing in my face. And he got to have this awesome stuff that I can't have, you know, say, saying God loves loves. It's like Stein garden, was invited to one of the Ortolani dinners that they had. Maybe Maybe they did, maybe they didn't have it at I think it was Syrah and also maybe once at Danielle back in like the 90s and robes in my face all the time. He's had the order line and like how was he like, delicious? Because he doesn't care that I can't have it. You know what I mean? or I shouldn't say doesn't care. He revels in the fact that I want it and can't have it, I think, which is not to say he's mean, he just likes a good. He likes a good nose rub. Yes. You know, I mean, anyway, I owe him a call. Okay, well, was it was it talking about? Oh, if you don't told her. So the age of the animal also, not only from the enzyme standpoint, but the actual flavor of the muscle is going to be different. I don't have any personal experience on that. But all the data shows that or at least the data from the late 90s shows that older pigs equal better pigs from a ham standpoint, I'm talking about curing hands long, long term h prize. I don't know. Whatever. That's neither here nor there. Okay. Hi, Dave is from Sam. Hi, Dave, can you talk a little bit about your philosophy of dishes and flatware? I don't think you've ever talked in depth about the subject on the air. Sam. Well, that's interesting. You know, most chefs who cook food for a living they care extremely deeply about their both the plates I think mostly about the plates, right? Or not, not the plates all service where and then probably after that, about the about that the flatware and I think that there's kind of you know, at home, it's a lot it's a lot different. If you're gonna go professional, right? Especially in like a super high end restaurant, a low end restaurant, you just need something that's going to show off the show off the food well, right. So you go something simple, but a lot of high end restaurants. Like you know what, like Mark has how many different kinds of things that Del Posto Yeah, but you know, the thing is like the cost investment because it a high end restaurant, the the service, the plates that you have needs to be of the quality that you're like, you're not like, Man, this is thick and crappy. I could have this in my own house. And it's not a big, you know what I mean? Like it needs to have a certain level of quality and panache. But it needs to be tough enough to not get totally banged up, or else the costs are gonna go through the roof because each one of these plates cost you remember he was saying how much some of those plates costs, like those ones we shared at our event. We shattered at the Mofaz event a couple years ago, we shattered probably how many 1515 or 20 and they're probably like $75 plates or something like that. Anyway. So you know, if you're going to have something for a long time you have it but then you're bringing a new plate in you have to think about how many different dishes am I going to get out of this plate? Right So like I've been to restaurants and I won't name any names but they're like a really like this weird plate right? And then because they invested in this weird plate, I get this plate three or four times during the meal on a large cost out meal and a tasting plate. You know what a tasting menu and you're like enough with the crazy plate. You know what I mean? enough you know what I'm saying? says have you ever had that happen? Where like someone like they buy that like I don't know it's shaped like a wave or like some sort of crazy oval and then they bust it out like three and four times because they kind of need to know I haven't had that. Yeah, I mean the flip side of this is if you have a tasting look so you can either go on a tasting some people do the almost entirely one plate right and then the plates blank canvas, and then you have to choose a plate that you like that fits your style. Typically white thin, beautiful, right? And then you're gonna need another one that is slightly dished like maybe you get a charger to slightly dish that way if you serve something it's not a full on soup but as broth you need don't want with a wide lip that something can go into it right then you need some form of soup, usually, you know, I would go for a wide soup. Because you go wide soup, you can do a lot more than you can do thin, it's more elegant to have like a wide soup and a thin soup, right when you say stuff. And then if you want to salt and pepper it, that's when you pull out the like the cheap dish, that's where you go to Chinatown you go, and you buy, like, you know, the less expensive stuff and the pretty colors, like the ceramics that don't cost an arm and a leg, and you can kind of buy on a lark and switch out for a plating thing here or there. Or switch up if you have something weird in the socket cups and other things that are, you know, that are less, you know, less expensive. So, I mean, if you had to and even at home, I would say and this is what I've done is you invest in, you invest in a good, very kind of neutral, but you know, beautiful like basic set that allows you to do chargers that allows you to do normal play stuff, smaller stuff, like bread, butter is you know, big plates. And, you know, maybe like, you know, a more wide flat soup, and then a regular soup bowl and then just buy a bunch of weird, weird stuff that you do for one offs, like for events and parties and stuff. What do you think you agree with that? On the on that mean? Like, you know, the the exact opposite extreme of this is Grant tickets at Alinea, if you've ever eaten in a linear read there No. Have you been there a couple of times and it's like all customized hyper stuff you know hyper customized different things but I think that's very difficult for the average person to a pay for and be to support in their in their kind of restaurant. I mean, like he has dishes, he has dishes that are built for dishes if that makes sense. You know, does that make sense? So I'm saying dish is built for dishes for specific dishes. Pieces of ceramic things to eat dishes off and what you don't say flatware. You know I love I love flatware. But I don't you know, I don't think about having like lots of tons of different kinds of flatware. I'm not a giant fan. I am when I go to the old school like French places do you like going to old school French restaurants? I love it. If there was a time when I you know, I don't know, I went to a bunch of in a row and I was like, but then and I you know I kind of lost the kind of love for it. But then you know, I remember once years and years ago, I hadn't been to an old school French restaurant a long time and I went to Danielle and I had like the whole love full on old school. Danielle French like nothing new like nothing that had been kind of invented as a technique. You know, after a scarf. Yeah, like they just busted out all except for it was Dominique Ansel was the pastry chef at the time. So there's newer stuff there, but I mean, like, really old school French stuff. And I was like, This is awesome. You know, I mean, this is like super awesome. And then they bring out the fish fork, like the fish fork with a little notch in it. So for that kind of stuff. I liked that in normally I'm like, you know, I just want some normal, like good quality. flatware I don't like a lot of weird handles. I hate the weird handle. I hate anything that feels weird in my hand. I like I want that. I want the fork and the knife to be like essential extension of my body. And I don't want any sort of weirdness there. But that use does not make you fancy flatware. Remember, do you like weird handle?

Oh, yeah,

really? I hate weird handle. I hate a thin handle thing. Well, if you're doing a thing, we were like what kind of a thing like French thing? Oh, yeah. But still like you know, a high quality like you don't want you ever been one of the things that sort of makes like a handle. It's like a like a wire almost. And it's like this weird created handle and you're like when you're holding it, it doesn't feel substantial. No. So my wife designed flatware for a while. And it's one of these like, salty how there's like every every business has the salty old guys. He was like that we got the prototypes back. And Jan was looking at him. The guy was like, hey, yeah, those are nice, but they're never gonna sell. And Jim was like, why not? He's like, they're just not heavy enough. Doesn't even he's like, literally he's like, it doesn't matter what it looks like put the sucker on a scale. And if the knife and fork don't weigh X amount, they will not sell like so you know, she beefed it up a little bit so that the weight was right. But if you hold something thin or light in your hands, you're like, This is not a satisfying implement. So you know, I think and ever since then, I was like, Damn just crusty old dudes. Right. And I feel for haft in my hand. So I like a good heft in my flatware. Now drink where it like you know also at the bar, if you've ever been to Booker and DAX we don't really stock lots of like Looney Looney Toony glassware, you know, I'm a kind of a believer in getting a relatively small number of glasses and and you know, just going that way, you know, but bars a little bit different. So you could invest in a boatload of different weird things. But in general, all of the drinks are designed around certain volumes anyway. And so unless you bring in a whole new category of drinks, like when we brought in the red hot poker drinks while we're like okay, now we need a coffee cup. We don't stock like five different coffee cups for each different kind of drink. You know what I mean? A huge different red hot poker drink, or, you know, most shaken drinks fit in either a coupe glass or the two thirds coupe glass. And so that's all we have, you know, and it hasn't really served a purpose for us to have a zillion fact, we don't even have high ball glasses because we don't do that kind of drink. I kept I keep on telling the bartenders though, I'll buy the high ball glasses if they can make a drink. That's, that forces me to buy them. You like high balls? Me too.

What do you think of like the cocktail and a mason jar thing?

What do I think of the cocktail and a mason jar thing? I look I'm gonna piss some people off mason jars are not particularly pleasant to drink out of because the lip of them is really, really thick. And the only really reason to have a thick rimmed glass is like a coffee mug or something like that, that you kind of want your lips to be around and you want the mass of the of the of the glass to provide some sort of either cooling and are warming property to it. In general, I favor glasses with thin rims. So you know coops have thin rims. You know, old fashioned glasses have thin rims. And in fact, the thinner the rim, the more I enjoy drinking out of it, as long as the glass itself has enough weight. So I like you know, like on an old fashion, I think it's nice to have, you know, not an preposterously thick bottom, but a fairly thick bottom and a fairly thin lip. So mason jars have screw lids on the top and so are always beefy. And they also think tend to kind of obscure kind of the cocktail on the inside. Now for a theme event, I think they're fine or like, you know, for like, if you're going to have a lot of ice in it and in a drink. I think it's kind of okay, as long as you pre chill it, but I never I never reach for them. That makes sense. What do you think says? What do you think Jack? You disagree

with me? I can't stand them actually. Wow. I mean, like if it's a cold lemonade with a lot of ice and a straw, maybe I guess but I agree with you. It's not a pleasant thing to drink out of.

Yeah, you're putting it putting it in a tough spot. Don't they use those here at Roberta's?

I wasn't gonna make mention to that. Yeah. See, I

thought you're just trying to get me in trouble over.

I wasn't gonna mention that. Yeah, but I mean, you know, think of like a pint glass versus a mason jar for a beer.

I'd rather have a I read a pint every time. Yeah, I actually I like pint glasses. That's like the thickest rim that I like drinking something out of as a pint glass. And I liked them because they're sturdy. And when you put a pint glass down, you're not like, I'm afraid I'm gonna break this sucker. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but you're also not like, why am I why am I you know, drinking out of out of an iPad. You know what I mean? Like, Mason jars, like so thick. It's like the thickness of a frickin iPad.

It wasn't meant to be a dig in any one place. I mean, you know, a lot of places do

that. I know. You know, and then like the worst of all, I'm really gonna get in trouble. Look, here's the thing, like, any one of you out here out there. If you use it, I'm sure you can do something to pull it off, right? I mean, like anything can be pulled off like stuff that normally I would hate. How many times have you heard me say, Man, I thought I was going to hate that crap. But it was good. A lot, right? Because I'm opinionated guy, and I got but like, have you seen these people who like put mason jars on stems?

Oh, man. Yeah, I've seen that. Why the hell would you do that?

Why would you do that? Here's another thing. Like, let's say you had a drink, that you were somehow I don't know, gonna going to package and sell to somebody, then maybe it'd be fun to have a jelly jar or like a or a mason jar. Because you could actually like it would look like a canned thing that you could buy. You could buy it at a store. That might be fun. You know what I mean? I don't know. Whatever. You're getting me in trouble. Jack Jesus. No, Jesus. All right. Dear Dave at all. I was intrigued by your recipe for pressure cook eggs, which I found on the Cooking issues blog, but I've had some trouble actually making it. When I squeezed the egg whites out in into the ramekin some of the yolks float up to the top instead of neatly divided muffin as you seem to get I get a spongy mass with pockets of egg white in it. Any ideas? What I might be doing wrong? Also, should I be putting in some water at the bottom of the pressure cooker or not Thanksgiving? Good work. Good work, Alex. Okay, Alex. When I press there's a couple of different pressure cooking tricks I do with eggs. The ones where they turn brown where it's like a Hamid egg, the which you should all by the way. Any anyone who's listening to this they own on food or cooking right? Pretty much anyone, right? If not, if you don't, I'm not calling you out. You shouldn't like feel embarrassed, you should just go on to your local bookstore. Or if you don't go to your local bookstore, go to Amazon and purchase Harold McGee's book on food and cooking, right? Yes, yeah. And in that book, he describes something called a Hamina egg and a Hamid egg is an egg so like, you know, I've described this on the show a couple times. I'll do it again. Let's say your your cat. Let's say that you observe kosher laws you're not allowed to cook on the Sabbath. So you have a large oven In the in a village environment, let's say, and the oven has retained heat. So you put all of your stuff in there the night before, including eggs into the stew. And it cooks for, you know, for a long, long period of time, at a relatively decent temperature. And as it cools off it goes. Now those eggs, so called salmon eggs, they turn brown, not simply from absorbing flavors, but because egg whites are Alkalyn. And the more Alkalyn, you make something, the lower temperature you need for my art reactions to take place. So even at the you know, at boiling water temperatures, you can get mired reactions in an egg white, if you cook it for a long time. What's a long time 12 You know, 1824 48 hours. So I've cooked eggs at, you know, at simmer and boiling temperatures for that length of time. And indeed, they do turn brown. And not only do they turn brown, they get interesting kind of brown flavors, biscuity notes and stuff like that. So, you know, back when Niels and I were at the French culinary you know one of the things we said well, why don't we accelerate this with a pressure cooker, and you cook the eggs, and you put them in a pressure cooker and they come out within an hour. They're like a nut brown and the egg yolks smell like kind of chicken livers. And the whites are brown, you gotta be but but here's the trick. And I think here's the here's the thing, when I do that kind of an egg, I do not crack them before I cook them, I cook them in the shell. And not only do I cook them in the shell, but I cook them at a simmer for a good six, seven minutes before I put the pressure lid on and take the pressure up to to full pressure. And the reason is, is that I want that if I do it the other way I get too many ruptured eggs, right. So you want them to set before you before you take the pressure way up. Now the other thing is, is that if one of these eggs the shell does break, it leeches the brown color and the flavor out of the egg into the water because those mired products are water soluble. And so you want to make sure you keep the shell on when you do that you cook it for about 45 Let me sorry, yeah, 45 minutes to an hour at second ring, which is 15 psi. And then you let it cool. Slowly, don't uncap it all of a sudden, because then you the eggs will blow up on the inside, right so you let it cool down, you open it. And then you have your your homeade eggs and they're great. Now, the other kinds of eggs that I do when I'm doing in the pressure cooker, I separate them before I do them right so I do I can do a yolks in the in the in the pressure cooker and I can do egg whites in the pressure cooker, but I never cooked them at the same time together I separate them. Now the yolks I was trying, I can never get the yolks by themselves in the pressure cooker to taste the way that they do in a humming pressure cooked egg. They never get that chicken giblet flavor. But the trick that I do have with it when I made those muffin things is that by adding a small amount of baking powder, which is again, a mistake, I wanted to add soda to it because I wanted to make it more Alkalyn so that it would have some of those same flavors that it gets when it cooks in the egg itself. But the person I told to go run the test for me put in a powder instead. And the actual yolk turns into that muffin thing which isn't one of the things we did on the blog. And then I later found out that's in Modernist Cuisine as well. I later found out that you don't even need the pressure cooker, you can just mix egg yolks, sugar flavor and baking powder and then steam it in a regular oven and it turns into a button and the amount of baking powder you add changes the texture from something that's very kind of dense and cakey to something that's very kind of hamburger bunny. And they're good like they you need to get it just right like I like it when there's a little bit of soy and a little bit of sugar in it. But some people really like them. And some people really don't like them those things. And then the whites will brown you know you make the route but you I've never as far as I know, I gotta go back and look at the cooking issues blog, but I don't think I ever cooked them together and there's no way I could ever get a yoke to float in the middle of it. That just wouldn't work. Right. Right. Okay. That answer that question? Pressure cook takes we haven't done that in a while have we? Not that I remember. Now. Sounds like but but on the other hand, I wouldn't remember because I don't care.