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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Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host coming to you live on the radio network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 for birth speech we Bushwick Brooklyn joined as usual with Anastasia the hammer Lopez Hi doing stuff. I'm using the Stasi as normal microphone and it's even more kind of like it's even worse than mine. I was surprised I always thought I was giving you the good one. But now it's all like bent and crooked. You got Dave in the booth. How're you doing? Dave?

Good. Got it not been in cricket in here.

Wow. Why is lord it over us, Dave? I think I just did. All right. But listen, you're gonna want to get your telephones or whatever you use Skype at js or whatever you do to call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 Because today in the studio, we have two special guests. We have Elias Cairo from Olympia, Olympia Olympic Olympia provisions I always want to say Olympic and then you'll shoot me in the face.

I'll support you.

In Portland we met how long ago? Like but in the spring Yeah, at the Oregon truffle fest. And I had the great good fortune of going to a special dinner at at OPI and fantastic so I'll just say for those of you that are going to Portland legit. I'm going to give it the cooking issues. Legit stamp. Awesome. And we also have in the in the studio Samantha What's your last name? Smith Schulich Schulich. And you are a food PR person? That is correct. Wow. So what so like, we're just gonna get this out of the way now. So did you start out wanting to be a food PR person? Or are you just in general by the way? Do you find the term flack offensive or not? No, we're good. All right. So did you start out as kind of a general purpose flag so you could either be selling thumbtacks or food or cars? Are you one of these people that actually enjoys food? I strictly food and beverage. Alright, so your as we as we like to say one of the good ones? Yeah. Because like, you know, like, in a lot of businesses, I'm sorry. You know, like, you know, talking about it's like, you get these people in there. They don't really care what the hell they're selling. You know what I mean? Like Dave over here doesn't care what he's recording just noise. Oh, is

that really what you think of me?

I'm just by You couldn't have a microphone crack game. Come on, you know, it's all love in here. So do you feel better now? Oh, no, I've been slightly dirty so we got a bunch of cool stuff calling calling your questions like I say so for those of you that don't know, Elias, he's like, a hunter, a cure master. Like, you own these two restaurants right?

To real restaurants and then three fast casual like hot dog beer Bartow place

and then also wrote what is it now well wrote a billion years ago and then came out like a year and a half ago right? Yeah, takes a billion years forever book slowest thing I've ever done the SP I'm just gonna get this out of the way right now. My kids both my freaking kids decide last week in the middle of me writing a book that has a lot of meat cookery that this is going to be the time that they go vegetarian. Oh, you know what I'm talking about? It happens right? And so here it is. I'm like you know you what am I gonna eat a whole freakin crown rose by myself. I'm gonna eat like I'm gonna do like a chateau breonna For one like what the

heck am I going to do here but the neighbors over make it friends.

But you know what? I'm just not like that. I'm not like that. So I don't know how it is in Portland. First of all, by the way, you guys over there. And Olympia provisions are the only people in Portland who are guaranteed to be working at any given time. My right so true. Yeah, I mean, like what is what is it with Portland and the lack of like work? They're there.

They're not everybody moves to Portland to work. Some people move there just to retire. Enjoy the frickin rain. But people are retiring when they're like 20 I know. A lot of them. And I get slack all the time for being hard working.

Yeah, Anastasia has got her Portland face on like she has I can't believe nobody's working here. What is really it's all jealousy. It's like why did why didn't we do this? But anyway, I don't know how we got I don't know how it got to the subject of working on workers employed working in it anyway. So So yeah, so this book came out and what the end of 15 or something like that October? Yeah. So it's called American short equality. What how do you pronounce the title American charcuterie question? Olympia do you start with the Olympia Olympia provisions and then American charcuterie quality meats?

I say cured meat some tails way Olympia provisions from an American sugary now there you go. So I had to read that.

I liked that. But anyway, what I'm gonna say about this book, and we actually talked about it a little bit in Portland. It's a super pretty book. Like, I think it's like a really, really beautiful book. And what, uh, and I mentioned this to you, and you actually said, I think, unless my memory is like zonked, I didn't have that much sparkling wine that day. That, you know, one of my favorite series of cookbooks in the world is the Time Life series of cookbooks that came out in I guess, starting in the late 60s and going through the early 70s, where they go around the world. And the cool thing about it is, well, the cool thing now is you can get in for like $2 apiece, or still free it's the you get the whole set people go out right now go on eBay, get the whole set I must have. Yeah, absolutely. Must have. And they hired, not that food photographers aren't real photographers, please don't get me, I don't want to hear it. But they hired people who like were, you know, like, for instance, Sports Illustrated photographers, or, you know, general subject photographers. And so these books have some of the sickest photography, like anywhere. And so like, a lot of the photos you have here have, I mean, they're modern, they're not from the 70s. But they, you know, it's printed on that kind of matte paper. So it's got that awesome kind of flat feel to it. And, you know, you've got a lot of like, you know, not straight recipe shots in total. And so, anyway, so I think it's a really, really, really beautiful book. And I also, I like the way that it's, you know, it's, it's also personalized, you know, what I mean? So it reminds me of like, you know, anyone who writes nowadays is going to be obviously more not that he wasn't technically minded, don't get me wrong, but like, you know, for totallys book, cooking by hand, right was, I think, an extremely personal book that was tackling some technical subjects before anyone else had written on this on these kinds of subjects before I still think it's a we I haven't okay, I haven't read it in over a decade or it's such an amazing book. Yeah, but I mean, great book but so like, you know, I really liked books that are personal but that tackle like real issues in the kitchen and you can tell when you go through it that this is you know, written you know, I know some of the recipes or your summer like you know, the pastry chefs are a bunch of people but written by people who actually know what they're doing. It's not like you made this once and now you've written it down and that's it, which is you know, an unfortunate thing cookbooks speaking of reading,

can you quickly read the thing I put in there?

pre roll and we're gonna do some business you got to do some business. Today's program is brought to you by modernist pantry providing magical ingredients for the modern cook for free videos, recipes, tips and tricks visit blog dot modernist pantry.com. Schedule program nailed it. All right, let me see the book for a sec. I want to read this quote that I think the Stasi is going to love the most out of the introduction because this is like this. We're going back to like, like a war. Catholic and Poreless you grew up like grew up with a Greek family in freaking Utah,

Salt Lake City, San accent, all of that. There's a lot of Greeks out there really, like it's the same climate as like the Spartan and mountain Greeks, sagebrush cold winters. There's a ton of great great greek food. Really. Yeah, so my dad moved out there because copper mine the Kennecott Copper Mine was originally owned by a Greek man and he brought all of this hardworking Greek friends from the mountains to come mine it and then they came back and told their children how amazing Salt Lake City is. least that's how the story goes. And there's a ton of Greeks and a ton of Greek churches out there and yeah,

so like, is there a big cultural clash between like, you know, that the Greek Orthodox and the Mormon Is there is there like Yeah, yeah, you know,

like Michelle and I and believe Atlantis if you're out there, really only three Greeks in our elementary school and the rest were all LDS none of us are beautiful people. There's a little quote in there a little story in there that we got called to the principal's office because we stunk too much like garlic and the kids couldn't focus on my father walked in and like super Greek, like, you know, thick accent be like your children smell like detergent, out of school. Like you're not going there. We're teaching and literacy or we stayed at home.

Well, this is gonna be apropos. So this is a quote about your dad. Where you know your, I guess, you know, paraphrasing what he might say to you need glue. Go cut into the pine tree and mix the SAP with sand to make it pliable. Oh, you were planning on buying glue? Are you lazy or just stupid? So true, right? It's the Stasi like now, Anastasia didn't know you but now she loves you because that's like her. That's her whole attitude. Her whole attitude on it. Also nothing to start she's going to like about it. You spent some time cooking in Switzerland. Yeah, it is crazy. Did you see this place Anastasia, that he worked at this restaurant? Where it's like, someone just I don't know how the hell they got the building there but it's like a Carbuncle shoved onto the side of a frickin mountain. What's that? What's that place called?

That what's called the hotel Asher or burger restaurant Asher. It's an app and seller. Yes. Just fucking leave where? Yeah,

where is it?

That's in the northeast corner of Switzerland that's in the Cancun app and seller but that whole region is called St. Gala. So like Austria, Germany, the Bodensee. Everybody. Yeah, it's like constant all that right there in the mountains. Right about there. How

the hell did they get there? Well, first of all, like, Where are their customers coming from? Yeah, like the

Swiss are super Hardy people and they love to eat when they're hungry. And so like the idea of going on an all day hike to eat like, you know, huge smoke meat and chunky cheese and like some fruit is just what they love to do. And like you'll be out there hiking, thinking you're pretty cool. And like a seven year old grandma will fly by you just being like to do your land and up to the

did you learn to Yoda while you're over there? No,

not very good. I tried.

Sassy and I both love the yodeling game on the prices right? Yeah, hey, I remember that. We who were making fun of temperature, you need to add that in your book to see the temperature like the yodel. If you get the wrong temperature. You're saying Well yeah, that's awesome. And we were trying to remember to and I can never remember the tune. Right? We could never like for some reason is one of the you know, there's this tunes that just leave your head and you can't get him back in your head. And then there's those tunes like the theme from Quincy that go into your head. You can't get them out of your head three weeks later. Yeah. You know, or Rockford Files for that matter, but Rockford Files I feel deserves to be in your head. I mean, you know Rockford Files the Sanford son, whenever those theme songs come into your head, you're like, Alright, good. That's good. That's that's that's just good business. Alright, so before we get too far in a couple of bones I have two pigs with my eyes will fight about it now we're both lovers of nitrates and nitrates obviously, in curing and you make a lot of amusing points about you know, not kind of worrying about because a lot of people are worried about especially over probably on the West Coast, you get all that Me Me, Me Me, me me right all the time. But

literally for everything.

Yeah, I mean, like, you know, the thing is, I think I've said this on air but like it's only been the last three years that people have gotten through my armor at events like usually I can maintain my kind of I'm happy to serve you customers always right kind of a thing. It's only been the past couple of years and somehow it's just like too many hits. And I'm like, I was like

Yeah, and so

because I always ride her about it. You know what I mean? I always ride her like a pony for like for like showing her displeasure family show. But oh, not like that. You know what I'm saying?

And trying to protect you.

Anyway, so like, you know what I'm saying only recently but the so you say that it's 100% illegal to cure meats without nitrates or nitrites but super long cure stuff like dry cure like hams like prosciutto department you can do without nitrates. Not that you need to not that I think it makes it better. But the classic Italian one nowadays is made without that stuff. And furthermore, you can do anything legally if you have the hundreds 1000s dollars to spend that it's a safe for us to prove it. Yeah forget to prove it. You got to prove it but yes in general I think what you're like what I think you're probably reacting to Harold McGee sent me an email yeah about Oscar Meyer now is doing their nitrate free jar nitrate free hotdogs yeah of course hot dogs and it says cured us the the only the nitrates of course that's the standard only the nitrates naturally found in celery. Jokers like they should be everyone should be skewered. This is whole foods fault. Of course 100% Is this freakin whole foods fault. You know, Samantha, you know, flack for them? Do you know? All right, so like, like, it's 100% their fault. It's garbage. I mean, the food can be tastes good, but the labeling is garbage. It's total smoke and mirrors. So for everybody out there, I want you on all of your labels and in all of your food on your menu to write, right this contains no salt other than that naturally found in the ocean. Be great. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, sea salt. Great. Yeah. Right. Because it's the same freakin thing. You don't I mean? Absolutely. It's like you take like eight Bill, what do they do with the rest of the salary? Well,

they just pure it. So they load the they load the soil or chart or whatever they're using for their nitrate thing. They overload the manure with nitrate. So when the spinach or the chard is growing in that it picks up all the extra nitrate the exact same compound that is in regular nitrate, and they puree and then they use that as their salt and their nitrate. It's just the same thing. Total loophole. My favorite thing is that called Switzerland right where I did my apprenticeship and I was like, Hey, man, you know, what are you guys doing about nitrate? Just total brain fart like they'd give a living shit about and they're like, Hey, what are you talking about? We give nitrate to our children when they're sick. It's good for you. It's a vitamin. I don't know what the hell's wrong with you Americans. And I'm like, good conversation. I'm relieved now. Yeah,

well, but the other hand the Europeans have their own issues, right? I mean, every place has its own issues before we couldn't use Anastasia flip through there and look at their Do you see the hot dog picture? I think I bookmarked it. No, I just think it's like this is the kind of picture I like, like a bunch of hot dogs and then like a couple pictures later this this Oh, I know this in it's shoved to the side of a mountain. So question How the hell do they get their food into that place?

Depending on where so that this place is pretty amazing. The one is called the Asher is because they their whole thing is they have these two gigantic limestone water pits behind there that's the only water they can get up there so the water filters through the cliffs and lands in these limestone pits as soon as they're out of water. They're completely closed for the year and then they go back to carrying me hunting me and raising me when you think about that and assassin only got super they're super friggin amazing this place up there to put it into perspective with two cooks does about 500 covers at lunch and they do roasty which is you know boiled potatoes and that you know now there's a tram it goes up the backside and they bring it across on mule but still like the water and all the meat the father and son bring up on mule or like twice a year literal Pack Mule Pack Mule? Yeah. The one the bigger one the one at the end of the road Stein pass that one where you see these sides, Ibex there, this is the path to it. It's up like this cliff and you run across that one the only way to get anything up there is with mule so everything is brought up on mule and they do Steinbach Pfeffer, which is those Ibex that are soured like Sauerbraten and then they slowly braise it and then they thicken it with blood. And so it makes sense then they can it and then they put it on the mules and then they take it up top and when you get up there, you're also going to have Roche de Steinbach. Feffer, applesauce and sour cream.

So what's the portion size? I'm really,

ya know, like a roasty. You'll get a charcuterie board or a cheese plate at any one of these places. And it's like, for 10 in America,

you hiked up the side of a frickin observe it. That's like, it's like I was talking to a Sherpa. And he was like, I was like, yeah, how come you know you're Buddhists and everything, but you eat meat. He's like you have we eat nothing but fat. We live at the top of the freakin mountain. Yeah, we need so many calories. Harriet after climbing every pound Yak and Yak meat yak fat, yak butter yak mill. I was like, That makes total sense. Yeah, that makes total sense to me. Did you get to go hunting when you were in Switzerland? Or no? Yeah,

the guys. So the guy that I worked with that I did my apprenticeship under was the Jaeger Meister of the valley. So he owned this hotel and butcher property.

All right, people. That means hunting master not only cooler, he wasn't

mean the liquor Master, we got to drink. No. He said, if you wanted to shoot an animal in our valley, you had to go to Burger and ask him if there was any unhealthy animals. Could you hunt it? Where should I do it? And after you shot the animal, you'd bring it to our restaurant in our butcher shop. And we'd process it for you. You know, there was tons of different ways we could process sell it back to you buy it off, you use it in the restaurant, but we would cure and ferment and make all of our meat out of like, you know, two to 300 wild animals a month.

So the Jagermeister is literally like a traffic cop for shooting and

exactly, and he knows where they're all at. So like every single day, he's up super early with binoculars, like just scoping for animals. And he took me a couple times with him I was never able to kill an animal but like after a year or three of me like cutting up animals and working my ass off. He's like, tomorrow we go hunting and I was like holy shit.

Like take the one with the busted one. It's not so good in the picture.

Like it's like the sick ones, you know, they don't shoot young ones like there's a story here in there where he shot his first elk. It's very hard to find elk up there. And so it's very small herds and he got an elk from his like all the other Jaeger meisters men. So there's this young elk coming up, you follow it until it's sick and you kill it. And he followed it for 14 years. And he kept every one of its sheds. So every time it shed it every year, he followed it. And then he finally shot it stuck in a snowbank. So like it was on its deathbed. And he's like, I think the other years like he was actually in Austria across from Switzerland. He's like, I see your elk burger. Come shoot. So that voice even though the chairman

so so here's so they're predominantly hunting older animals then yeah. So how's that for cooking with

its muskie, but I love that like I like game funk. Yeah. Have you

been to the Spanish people who do the raised super old cows like Geoffrey Stein garden and Harold McGee, we're like, oh, the seven year old cows by my mother. I mean, they don't talk like that. But you know what I mean? Like, man, a man. Every stone garden man, man, man. But the No, but I mean, like, you know, it's just it's this thing in Spain, obviously, everyone in America shiz away from old meat in general. But I mean, just from a cooking standpoint, so are you. I mean, do people respond to the different texture well over there are like when you're cooking for an American, you can't really translate that kind of recipe.

Totally. Yeah, I mean, like the old like a five year old ibex. Liver, for example. And you'd eat liver all that, like the wild animal liver is so sought after. You're not serving that to anybody in America. They're like they're, they're taking a bite of that. And

I know, like Americans who won't eat dear liver over a year old. Right? You know what I mean? Like, they're like, you know,

no, God, I loved your liver. I know you're absolutely right. I mean, you'll you'll see people hunting the lead two thirds of the animal out there and you're just like, in Europe, that is not right. You're never going to stumble upon like a half clean carcass. It's like whole animal brought out everything utilize everything enjoyed very, very

much. By the way, do you do any low temperature cooking with with hunting, you ever pull out a circulator and bust it down?

No. I'm so old school. I don't even know what I'm like a circulator. Everything I make takes, like, you know, natural fermentation. I know. It's amazing people do God's work with those things. I just don't know how well I mean, the

interesting thing is I never have access to really old or meats. I'm curious about it. Like the you know, I've cooked super old meat. Only occasionally, and you only get it from like weird people. And there's this guy in Chicago who used to sell that kind of meat. But I since found out that he basically not only should he go to prison, he did go to prison for doing like illegal animal practices, so I don't buy from him anymore. Probably good idea. Yeah, you know what I mean? Anyway, so

I can hook you up out I can find all meat for sure. I have a big elk con coming up this spring that I'm looking to get like an old bull elk. So sorry, get one. Are people

worried with older elk now about chronic wasting? Or is that and people not worry about that anymore?

I haven't heard anybody worry about it in a long time. So yeah, nice. I mean, I'll, I'll shoot and although see I get cow tags, right? Every every year, that's where you shoot the female cow. And I usually use those for my meat at home. And that's very often ethically thought they kill the cats, the very young baby elk or a cow and they like that because it's like the veal of it. And I've never been able to do that yet to shoot like a six month old elk I always shoot the mama. Because

now from an ethics standpoint is that if you're shooting the young one, it's like well, he had a bad shot anyway, it's like he was going to die. Anyway, so kill him now.

Yeah, I think ethically people are trying to justify I don't know why I tried to get the most amount of meat right animals that I kill is that if you kill their mom, the cats probably gonna die too. So you just had you have to spend a lot of time like making sure that the cafeteria excuse me, the the cow that you're about to kill isn't about to you know, doesn't have a calf. Right when you're feeling good about

right. It was it also like I think people would be shocked. I looked at the numbers a long time ago, but in the East Coast in hunting areas, like the the percentage of deer that deer now because they we don't have anything else here, right. But the percentage of deer that are going to end up in 100 plate is extraordinarily high, right? I mean, like I mean, like it's more than you'd think.

Here I would imagine. Yeah, I mean, it's a three day season and like 4000 elk or deer get killed in a day or so. Yeah.

Yeah, it's crazy. Speaking of hunting, so you brought something I

did. I'm super happy about this. We I do a lot of bird hunting in Oregon and we talked about it lately and I know that you wanted to get back into bird hunting at some point in your life. And

I want to say I've never gotten to do it. I've always wanted to never done it. You know I've always wanted to. It's not true in Italy once in Italy. I went on a BS pheasant hunt. It was it was their fake it's fake planted pheasants and bird dogs. Yeah, it's fake. I didn't feel so good about it. I ate the bird still.

This was me. Yeah, he's still gonna shoot again. Bird. Yeah,

you know, you know, but you know it's not hunting. Right now

it's it's more I think is more for training the dogs and then getting the rifle ready to vary like your shotgun good at shooting I utilize it once a year. Yeah, at the beginning, I try to tune my dogs up and

this dog in Italy was success stupid to dumb. It was like, it was like at the very beginning of the season and we weren't like the real customers. And so they were testing out like their new dog on us. And so the star said, These people are gonna like, this is how this works. So people they take and they just they disorient the pheasant so that it doesn't immediately take off, right? Oh, that is really and then they put it in a bush, you know what Bush it's in, right? tell you where it's at? Well, in this scenario, they were shooting it for something like you know, and then and then the then they let go the dog and the dogs just sitting there scratching its ear, like Oh. And they're like, hey, Fido, you know, and they're like, Yeah, and like, I don't know what they call dogs. And it's when we were shooting a we're shooting a piece on ancient ancient cooking techniques, and they wanted us to actually go get the animals even though it was Roman, even though the Romans actually would have raised their pheasants in captivity and just broken their necks and not there wouldn't be always like, you know, buckshot shotguns in Roman era, not too many. You know what I mean? You know, and, you know, I doubt the average Roman was sitting there like, you know, hurling rocks at pheasants to try to get Yeah, I mean, like, you know, this is sophisticated group of people. And they you know, they had, you know, they raised pheasants, and then you know, they definitely, I'm sure the Romans, if they were going to train their dogs would have done a better job catch the feather. Yeah. And so like, late, they started chucking things towards the bush to get the dog to look at the bush. That's horrible. It's so depressing. Yeah. And then finally, we're sitting there and we're like, oh, and then it takes off. It was a good bird tasted good. Although I forget you're gonna have so what do you have here? Show me the bird you had.

I got you a chucker. And this is a true wild Oregon chucker. Not so that these, when you shoot these, they're up on the rim rock way above like the rivers like the John Davis one came up with the John Bay, and they're non native to Oregon, but they're the most amazing gamebird so they called interested they're invasive. They're not invasive, they plant them for they planted them for a gamebirds you know, 20 years 30 years ago, and now they've just done amazing so

so how do they taste relative to like, so the size here, they're bigger than a pigeon squash, squash size Squamish

slightly larger, they're about, you know, a little bit smaller than a good grouse or rough grouse. But they are very plentiful, and they're amazing. They live up in the sagebrush. And so they eat a lot of sage and so their flavor picks up like that real wild sage. But yeah, they're, they're super fun and they're like one of the hardest gamebirds issue like they, your dog will point them maybe sometimes a half a mile out. And, you know, you'll you'll get up on your dog and you'll know which direction they're gonna fly and 20 to 30 of them are flush, and you'll miss all of them. And then you know, one out of 10 You'll probably hit Alright,

so I'm looking at this bird here. I'm terrible at plucking birds by the way. Yeah, I'm just terrible at it time to start. Yeah, you should we were not gonna plug this right now or wait like, on a gamebird right. So I know like I know like on like, I've done pheasant not just in that time in Italy, but in France. You know, you go to France. You could buy pheasant on the, on the feather or whatever they call it feathered in the you know, GBA shops, you know? And you go there. And once those feathers set man is a nightmare. Brutal. Yes, it's going to be a similar situation.

Oh chucker? Like those desert birds chucker coil grouse and all the ones that have more fat live in a burlier from hot to cold climate are much easier to pluck them pheasants. pheasants are the most difficult bird to pluck in the whole world very, like they're just removing the skin. Oh, yeah,

I ruined the skin.

Yeah, depending on that one looks like we shot up pretty good. So I don't see many bullet holes here. It looks like it's like in the neck and the wing right there. And that could have been a runner, like it could have I could have winged it, which is ideal. And then the dog grabs and brings it to you. But yeah, you know,

now do you don't hang these things until they start thinking you're not one of those kinds of guys.

This is why I brought you this one. I'm not I'm usually not what I was hunting with this guy. And we had like one of those great days where we each got like our limit which is 15 of those birds in a day. It was an amazing, amazing day. And he told me that he enjoys the flavor of freezing a hole with the guts in them. And so that's what we got here. I have three of them that I have in my life and there's so all like this is how he does it. He loves the flavor morning and he's like an epic Hunter and he cooks really really well so he doesn't dress it out. He doesn't stress you know he'll he will he'll just freeze it all like this. Let the flavors develop in his freezer. Then he plucks it in the drawers, all the guts out and then he roasts it or cooks it further.

So he does draw it before he before he cooks it. Yeah, before he cooks I do that for sure. It's not like it's not like Like remember that. Remember that?

Woodcock we had oh that people hang it with the guts in

Oh my god. It was the most disgusting. I liked it. I liked eating it but for Anastasia watching her face was the Most decisively ate it. This stuff was flying on my face too. So when you're hunting a small bird, right, the flavor probably changes a lot depending on what you puncture, right?

Yeah, totally. The biggest flavor I always say about like the grouse is the best you know, the grouse live in the forest sagebrush, excuse me. So like Chuckers and other desert Hungarian portraits live in the sage, they pretty much have one diet. But a grouse like a mountain Grouse in the spring eats berries. And then once it gets into play later in the fall, it eats like rose hip, and gooseberry. And then in the mid winter, it eats pine, like pure pine leaves, pine and juniper berries. And that's the biggest flavor difference because you can see it when you open up that bird, you open up its crop right here, you'll see what it's been eating. So this one should be full of sage and seed.

And do you cut here and clean out and then you do the triangle by the button rip the stuff out exactly. Like a smaller version of the chicken.

Absolutely. 100%. Exactly like that. Yeah.

Beautiful. All right. We'll post some pictures. It looks like you got clipped on the back a little bit. There

it goes. Yeah, maybe that's where it was. But you know, then again, I haven't ever. I've never frozen a full bird and ate it myself. So it will

give some give some and luckily this is a you know, a serving size for one so my kids just vegetarian don't have to worry about it. Well, thanks so much. Of course. This is awesome. I've never been no one's ever brought a whole bird on the feather to two cookies before. So I guess we should answer some of the high tech. Dave. We got it cool. Yeah. We got some caller you're on the air. What do you got?

Hi, Dave, this is Colton from Vail, Colorado. How you doing? Well, how are you guys? All right. Okay, so first of all, big fan of the show and big fan of liquid intelligence. I actually use that book a lot more in the kitchen than I do for cocktails. But anyway, great book. So I have a couple questions. First one is on ultra text.

Okay. Why do you text and not sparse? By the way? I'm sorry, why are you using text and not sparse.

It's just what we have at the restaurant I work at. But anyway, so we make a spinach tray at the restaurant. And we've been having trouble keeping it green for more than a day. And one of my shelf that what he usually does and what usually works for stuff like that is curing has finished the blanched and shocks finished with a little bit of ascorbic acid, ultra tax and a touch of like some neutral cooking oil. But I don't after all the research that I've done, I can't find a reason why that would work. Do you have any thoughts on that? Any advice?

No, I don't I'll say this. So Ultra Tex for by the way I was switched disperse. But like ultra Tex is a a precooked starch, right? So you know. So what it has the ability to do that irregular starch wouldn't have the ability to do is absorb liquid. So basically, what you're doing is just you're just sequestering some of the liquid in with the starch. So maybe that's helping you out a little bit. It's also going to help run out on the puree. So I don't know if it's going to help with the greening, but it's going to help with that gross runoff that spinach puree has, well you know what I'm talking about? Y'all know what I'm talking about. Right? That was so hard. Yeah, that's why you squeeze the ever loving hell out of it. And this and that squeeze water also is an ugly color typically in my absolutely experience. The The reason I switched to spurs is spurs is what's called it's the same product as as Ultra Tex but it's pre agglomerated. So it's like, it looks more like it looks more like like this quick or something it dissolves easier. Not that you're going to have that much problem with clumping and spinach puree but if you were to throw it in pure water it would ascorbic acid is going to prevent any enzymatic action but the thing you have to worry about with acids is too much acid and you'll start destabilizing the chlorophyll right but I don't know I don't know. Last You got any good keeping spinach puree tricks old school.

Just yeah, I pure it in a blender to keep it really really cold as ice. Yeah. Like if it was spinach puree, just blanch it instantly shock and squeeze the hell out of the water at the cook salads. puree it just barely in a Vitamix and then put it instantly on ice. Yeah, I think keeping it cold.

I think the key for me the key is to squeezing the water out. Yeah, like I'm talking like, do you do the towel thing?

Yeah, gotta water and run it. Yeah,

for those who don't know, we're talking about you put it in the towel and then you twist the towel and twist it and twist it there. Based on stuff Yeah, and then it just you know, all that liquid comes out. Yeah. So I don't know maybe like a do you get a lot of if you squeeze the hell out of you still getting a lot of centerpieces, a lot of liquid coming out of

it. No, it's pretty sometimes you can squeeze it so hard at least for the punter, you have to add a little bit of water. Yeah, I mean, so.

So but you, you find that your Chef's Recipe is working for you or not working for you? You just want to know the mechanism.

Yeah, I, I just kind of wanted to prove them right or proven wrong.

I mean, the best way to prove the best way to prove something right or something wrong is offline at home, make it a different way. Keep it for however long and bring it in and be like, Hey, Chef, I made this what do you think? And then see what they see what they say. I mean, the worst way to do it is to change the way it's done on the line. Yeah, that's the absolute worst thing. You can go time. Right? Yeah, yeah. But like, you know, any, I'm just gonna go ahead and say, say, I'm gonna say this and see Elias, what you think is that if you do something on your own time with your own product, and it's good, and you bring it in, and your chef doesn't have doesn't, won't respect that and take a look at it. Maybe you should be working for a different chef. Yeah,

absolutely. It's gotta be a creative conglomerate ago, it was like fun. I love when anybody comes in. I mean, I make, what 7000 pounds of sausage a day. And I still listen to people salami about the technique that I use, if they have an idea of how to make it more uniform, let's talk

right, especially so improves it, like, you know, I'll take any dogma that I'm running down for years, you show me that, that there's a better way I will adopt it immediately. Absolutely. And I think that's a sign of I mean, in any field, that's a sign of intelligence, you know what I mean? I think it's you know, it becomes problematic when if someone goes so hard on dogma, especially like in print and on TV, that becomes harder for them to change. But that's when you you can tell if someone's a real like you know, if they're really hardcore about what they do and not just about being who they are, you know what I mean? Absolutely, then they'll they'll change so anyway let's do some experiments and shoot us back and say what you know, tell us what you find out David got any Spanish freaks on the on the chat rooms? Me talking about? Speaking of like tips and tricks? A that a we had a warm up question in a couple of weeks ago about how to get easily get the skin the tannic skin off of a walnut now you can buy non tannic walnuts I don't know where they get Harold McGee gets good ones. I haven't spoken him yet. Whether he has any tips, but I said I was going to talk to a guy whose grandpa was a Walmart farmer but it turns out he doesn't grow Walmart's he only grows almonds or Ammons as he calls him. And it's and it's unfortunate because he would have had this guy like you know 60 years ago was in an airplane accident. He was flying he lost his leg and one eye Yeah, he's like still like an almond farmer. So I figured if anyone knew how to do it, but you know, it's easy to get this not easy. It's a pain in the butt but it's technically easy to get the skins off of an almond but walnuts I don't know if you can you blanch a walnut Blanche and do the towel rub