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,

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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.

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Hello, and welcome to cooking. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from an MTS Roberta pizzeria. What the heck happened here says

Jack, it was it was their holiday party. So I came in here this morning and I saw these guys have been cleaning everything up. Nothing but Papa John's and Domino's boxes. Whoa.

Papa John's and Domino's. Yeah. So So you think it's like ironing? You think they're just drinking PBRs

they make great pizza.

I also sell bottles of champagne says so.

So what do you hear says

no oh no. No. Coming here

you know I love I love Roberta's but I don't I don't do their holiday parties. I just are you guys invited? Yeah, just a danger zone.

Yeah, now I have slipped into the danger zone in my head.

It smells like a nasty bar though. Everywhere out there

when he smells like old cake beer. Yeah.

Yeah, like walk through it's like they drink everywhere

stars has her I hated college face on. Yes as aside from biscuits and anything stars is the like, only person I know who didn't enjoy college. Yeah. No offense to you know, Leland Stanford Junior University or junior or fence. Let him take it. Yeah. So anyway, joined as usual with Anastasia the hammer Lopez. And Jack Jackie molecules over there fresh back from New Orleans. How was New Orleans? I

was so good.

Did you have anything good to eat?

I did. I had a lot of good things to eat. Fried alligator for the first time at Kosho

Oh yeah. Cushaw I'm sure does it well, it doesn't just taste like fry cook. That's a good restaurant. I like that place. Yeah,

a lot of good Dan. Everywhere. Yeah. And then suddenly like classic New Orleans places that did the turtle soup at a place called upper line you know says they do it like like it would have been done 100 years ago.

Yeah. And did you feel that way? It was close up? You know it was really close to Sherry at the end in the shower. Yeah. Did it's all about to share at the end Jack You know share at the end no love. That was good. Yeah. You ever read the old documents on turtle soup and the different kinds of fat and the kalam was the calla passion Kalliope someone that out there will be a turtle soup expert. I think maybe Most people now just like you know, with a killer they killed turtles in the back or they buy the canned turtle meat or what?

I'm guessing it's cat turtle meat. Yeah, I'm guessing. I don't know

that. Well, if you look up, what's the name of that book? What's it called? It's out of my head to herders is the place in Minnesota and the guy it's called, I think the bull. Oh, yeah, the bull. It's not bull moose. It's like but the bull something cookbook. He has a bunch of them. And he's just this crazy. Crazy Like, like a lot of weird sexism in it a lot of weird stuff. A lot of like, historical fallacies, but one of my favorite parts is where he tells you how to chop the head off of a turtle. Jack, there are two different ways would you like to know the two different ways to chop the head off of a turtle? Yes, please. Well, the first way, cuz remember, like a lot of times he's dealing with like a snapping turtle. Right? So you stick a stick out and they bite on the stick. And as soon as they bite on the stick who bang, right? Chop the head off. That makes sense, right? Yeah. So what do you think the second way is? Man? I don't know. I guess I can guess.

it out.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. No, no. stick his finger in the tail hole up near the butt area. And then the head pops out because it's like, Oh, hello. And then bang. You chopped the head off?

Oh, wow. Yeah. tough way to go.

Yeah, it's really tough way to go. Someone gets someone gooses you your head pops out of your shell and gets chopped off.

You don't even have time to think about it. You know,

now. It's not right. It's not right. You know, it's like, the thing is is like the stick thing, right? It's kind of like why fishing is so is so well old school fishing on a line is so interesting, because you only get to kill the thing if it tries to kill something else. You know what I mean? Like only through the fishes own aggression? Does it become caught and eaten? Right? Which is why it seems kind of fitting, you know? And same with the turtle going after the stick turtles like a crap on you stick and then you have a cleaver and you're like no crap on you, Mr. Turtle. You know what I mean? Like that's that just seems you know, poking your finger up. It's but I guess the turtle ends up dead either way. But so sad news that happened? Was it last week? It was one week ago? One week? Yes. Yeah. But a week, but a week ago, we were no one hurt as far as I know, which is good. But Sam, Sam Edwards as well as Edwards. And son. We were trying to get them on the phone actually to answer someone's ham carrying question. And didn't know at the time that they were like, at that moment having a large fire. Yeah. Have you heard anything about that Jack?

Yeah, I mean, it's very sad. They're, you know, they're not going to be running for quite some time.

Really? Like, did they lose all their stops? Basically? Yeah. It's terrible. Yeah. So anyway, so really good people to good people Best Wishes out to Sam Edwards as well said words. Fantastic. You know, ham curing. You know, family, they've been doing it for generations and generations in Surry, Virginia. They actually were one of the first people in the US it started buying a lot of kind of what I like to call better pork, like, especially even like the heritage pork and Burks and stuff that heritage meat sells. And when you lose your stock like that, it puts you out like a year. You know what I mean? Like they have stuff that's over a year old. So it's not like, you can just crank up and produce all the stuff that you had, you know what I mean? Not only that, but was it like, I'm not sure which Parks got burnt. But aging rooms take years, you know, these big aging rooms take years to kind of get exactly where you want them. And I remember once saying Edwards told me that, you know, you could take him blindfolded into any one at the time, I think he had three different big curing rooms. And he said that they all had their own kind of feeling to them in terms of the micro flora and fauna that live there that give the AMS hams their particular characteristics. And he said that blindfolded, he could tell you which one he was in every time just because they all developed their own character. And so,

yeah, if I'm not mistaken, those those rooms are no longer

No, yeah, it's like, if you talk to you remember, you know, the salivary of the lacy guys here in New York, but now and also New Jersey, like I talked to them years ago, too. And like, you know, one of the, you know, things that you build up over a long period of time is a stable curing and an aging room because like I say, like, each one is unique and needs to be kind of built up over time. And so it's just really sad. So even after like a year, it's not going to be, you know, the same I'm sure they'll get back on their feet and, you know, because they've been doing it like I say for a long, long, long time. And you know, they're really good at it, but our best wishes go out to them. And, you know, I don't know if it's or we do it or is the radio Are we doing anything? Or is there any sort of

Yeah, we're gonna continue to kind of talk about it. It's very fresh. So we're just giving them a little bit of time. But, you know, we work closely with them. It's one of Heritage's main accounts. I mean, like they were buying their hogs from from heritage. So definitely affected all of us. And we'll definitely be reporting on it more. I'm sure we'll follow up with Samson.

Yeah, well, anyway, so I guess I'll take a crack at that at the ham question.

Do you want to take a caller first? Yeah, sure.

Caller you're on the air.

Hey, it's Harry from Chicago. Hey, how you doing? You're doing cell phone reception.

How secure you're cutting in and out of bed. One sec. See if you can move a couple of feet and then start. Start again. is better? Yep.

So we're doing pastry who is trying to make a non alcoholic macaroni? He was saying between juniper and coriander and pine. He was pretty happy with like a gin component. But was wondering if you had any advice on recreating kind of like a mock sweet vermouth? Or Campari?

Yeah, I've done. In fact, Jack, I don't know if we can search it. But we we actually gave a recipe for a company sold out. It was a couple of years ago. But yeah, we did like a comparing variants. So you can do like a waterbased. You just got to go to you know, whatever. I don't know in Chicago where you get to stuff but like, you know, here we have a couple of stores where they sell all of the various kind of barks and roots and stuff. So you know, Calusa Ian's here is one and dual specialty shop is another couple others, but I'm sure you have some sort of local joint you can go. I forget everything that is is in the compiler because it's been a while. I think it's like Gen chin right?

Try episode 165. It's coming up. But he's talking about compiler there. Right to the listener. Go back and let's start

so yeah, so that I give a recipe there. The vermouth I've never tried to? I've never tried to tackle a vermouth, right? So if you're gonna do a vermouth, there's a couple of things, especially if you're going to do a vermouth for a Negroni, there's going to be a couple of things that you're going to need to hit one. Remember, vermouth is wine based, okay, so in order to get it right, you're going to need some acid in it. Preferably similar acid balance that you'd get in a wine. So, you know, some some tortorich, depending perhaps some lactic and perhaps some malloc, depending on the ratio that you're going to get out there. You could conceivably use grape juice because you're going to have to add sugar anyway, because the vermouth is also sweet. In addition to that, you're going to have to figure out whatever or base, you're going to want to kind of mimic the vermouth. So you're going to need those three components, you're gonna need the Irby component, you're going to need the acid component. And you're going to need some sugar because it's not, you know, in an groaning, it's not, you know, typically a dry, a dry vermouth. It's also typically a, you know, a darker, a darker vermouth. And so you might want to get some kind of brown or matter iced characteristics in there as well. Now, something you might want to consider when you're doing it, because you're doing an actual Negroni. Like, it's a stirred cocktail, right? In a non alcoholic form, unless you add some super bodying agents to it, I just don't think you're going to get the kind of viscosity out of it, it's going to make it drink. even forget the fact that there's no alcohol in it, but that it's going to make it drink like it's an grani. It's going to have more of the bar like it's going to have more of like a like a juicy kind of body to it. And in a grocery what, what I would suggest is is going like a little bit lighter on all the flavors and doing it in the style of a carbonated Negroni because the flavors of a nick Roni carbonate very well. And once you carbonate, something like that, especially something with bitters, and people first of all are used to like, you know, this the sand bitter soda is very similar to a computer, Campari and soda. And in addition to the gin components, and the remove components, they carbonate quite well. And I think you might have better luck with making something that has the feel of a carbonated Negroni than the feel of a sturdy Granny, but that's just my my feeling. What do you think's does? It feels good now? Jack? Cool. All right. All right. Well, good luck with it. Let us know what happened. So shoot us a Tweet at had cooking issues and let us know what happens go on the on the board that they have here at Heritage radio. All right, we'll do it. Have a good day. Now you do. Remember those commercials

like can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can't believe that we still deal with the shitty cell phone reception like that.

Well, you know, it's like, you know, we can't get anything right now. Sorry. You know what I mean? Like we can't get we can't get like, you know, the simplest things can't get right. I'll give you an example. today. I'm trying to you know, get here and the streets in New York we did an admirable job like getting the city kind of cleaned up from the Snowmageddon that we had here it was like what 26 inches or some some nonsense like this Yeah, price all the city it not even a private idiot like a city paid idiot like paid by the three of us like we're paying this idiot, right. And I don't know whether this has any meaning to you, but he's plowing the street. Right. And he's got the plow adjusted wrong. First of all, he's plowing in a rear wheel drive pickup truck that doesn't have limited slip differential. Okay, without weighing his bed down at all. So he's got this like Hyperlight bed that he's trying to drive a snowplow with and, and his back wheels, he doesn't have a limited slip differential on it. Then he adjusts his freaking plow so that it's too high up and he let too much snow underneath so that he's running over like a you know, like a three quarters of an inch of slushed out snow and his rear tires are just spinning and burning rubber and he's going down the highway down the street with his tires gone. Like and the truck is only going like you know half a mile an hour or two miles an hour because it's the equivalent of just like you know, crawling along because he's burning his back wheels up because he's a freaking moron.

Did you help him?

I was laid to come to the show. But what am I gonna do knock on his window? Hey, hey jerk learn how cars work you know what I mean? Like I was supposed to do first of all if you own a pickup truck I wonder is this being like stereotype stereotyping people but if you own a pickup truck you're supposed to know roughly how vehicles work no

don't know I just don't know and then and then just to show like how crazy New York and get some times a guy was was you know that you know the term buskers does busker. Oh man the I'm sure I'm sure Jack as a musician you hate yourself some buskers

this I hate buskers like stars hates biscuits. Oh,

yeah. Boom. I hate buskers lifestyles hates biscuits anyways. So so first of all, first of all, first of all, extremely one of these dudes with the extremely loud like tremulous. Like you know, trying to do the crooning loud voice No. And you ready for it? Rick Astley Never, Never Gonna Give You Up. I swear. I swear to God, I got Rick rolled in the freaking subway. And the dude, he was he was only off key every once in a while. So actually, I was like, You know what, if you're going to be a jerk, whatever, but like, it's the guy was louder than a set of freaking bagpipes. I could hear him two platforms away on a different freakin level. And like, like guzzini There's everyone standing on the platform, looking at each other being like, freaking Rick Astley. What? You don't I mean, it's like, like, I didn't have to just step through like a bunch of mire and sludge to get here now. I gotta get Rick rolled. Anyways, it's no offense to Rick Astley. You know? The guy I didn't want to look over to see if he was wearing that long tweed coat that athlete? Isn't it tweet or the word camelhair. Remember, he's wearing like a long coat in that video. Like imagine just Rick Rule yourself and you can find out later so I don't feel like I should be the only guy that has to freaking deal with that. Anyway.

Hey, quick, quick, quick shout out to Pedro who was introduced to suevey in the cooking show. And he did veal cheeks eight hours. 82 degrees. And man, it was so good. He got a small tear in his eye. Oh, I was very proud. I

liked that. Like a small tear in the eye. You know, the I'm not answering questions I might like like, it's certain things when you get them. Mostly for me it's things that bring up like childhood memories. They can bring like a tear to my eye like in a restaurant or something. It's where stars is the exact opposite anything that reminds her of a child that she's like, I hate this. About lemongrass.

Yeah, I don't like it. I didn't eat it growing

up. You just smelled it in the garden and then you had a universal hatred for it. Yeah. Did you get bit by something in the garden

and what I used to chew on it like I don't know I just don't like it

crazy. Anyways, so like I remember a baby lamb I had like that at a very fine restaurant I was like or when I went to Danielle and they did the Gary Don they take the you know the tableside service but they did it so old school that I was so old school. That's when you occasionally you want to hyper old school. Yeah. Something else I'm going to mention real quick before I actually answered this question. So, you know, I told you I bought this wet grinder, right you know, your blood stars you remember the wet grinder that show that we made the used to make the chocolate and the and the and all the nut butters and stuff like this anyway the one that I had broke so and I'd never ever used it to make real, real, you know food with it that it's intended to do, namely things like doses and Italy's and other and so you know, for those of you that don't know, like the doses like that, so you take a ora doll which is like this, like split, you know, you know, black gram, that would be you know, D haul, so it's white, and you soak it and you grind it and that becomes like a mucilaginous paste and you mix that in with idli rice which is parboiled. So the starch is already somewhat pregelatinized Right. So it's almost like using a pre cooked starch. Well, it is like using a pre cooked starch. And then but it's dried so you soak that and you grind it you mix those two together I did about three parts rice to one part of the of the doll and you let it ferment for a long time and it actually makes you can make these you can make these crepes which you put fenugreek seed into, you can make these crepes which are like doses and they're crispy or you can make these things that look like little frisbee pies. What are what are those things cost us this little like they're, they look like they're puffy. They're puffy, but they're like discs, you know Tama anyways. Like, like an incredible number. Those wretched things made by Smuckers goodness, yeah, yeah, they'll kinda like that. But anyway, but they're steamed. They're, they're delicious. Those are endless, right? So I've been practicing with this, but I've started I just have decided I freaking love this webinar, because it's just such a pleasure use it's so quiet compared to like the Vita prep, you know what I mean? It's just like, grinding and stuff. Anyway, so DAX and Booker did not like playing. At least they didn't like them. Right. So I took we did a potato bar again over the weekend, as I suggested someone else they do. So I took some of the veggie chili because for some reason, Dax wants veggie chili on its potatoes. And so I put the veggie chili inside the Idli and steamed it so that the inside of the igloo was filled with chili So right there you have chili Italy's chili Hadleys then stars what we're gonna do I put this on the Twitter but since you don't read Twitter I can I can tell you this is the first time you're doing this. We got it. We got to read something. We shouldn't actually we really should. We should read at San Gennaro's. We should rent one of the booze and make little Italy Chile Italy's and if you could say it five times fast. I won't make you do it. Little Italy. Chile Elise.

Have you ever done anything like that? What like a street pop up? Have you? Yes.

Well no, that's that's a truck. No, we did both. So did history ever doing I have actually served things at street things but not for a long period of time. Well then you have to be able to save that can you save anyone wants to do Can you say it even once? No, I can't. Jack can you say that tongue twister

I had a look at it. Little

Italy. Chile, Italy.

Little Italy Chile Italy.

Ah Hi. You're better you're you're you're a better men and stars is a woman. Okay, she's just weak. She's sitting there. Like, No, I know futzing around on her on her phone not even trying to say rude for the car on

Thursday.

What car on Thursday? She's talking about her travel plans for Thursday with radio people who don't care. Can we can we start? You have the entire rest of the day to discuss your Thursday travel plans with me the entire rest of the day. In fact, look, we're not even going to have lunch here because there is no lunch here. today. We're gonna be discussing that at any point in time. We're gonna be hanging out at Booker and DAX. We have a bar meeting people I don't know if you're interested in that after this. We're gonna go to a fantastic bar meeting where we have plenty of time to discuss.

Ask for more personal and they don't

care that you can't find a car on Thursday because they're not like hanging out with you on Thursday.

They wish they might still have some Papa John's for lunch here by the way. Thank you a true mom and pop operation since 2006. The Brooklyn kitchen provides the tools that shape our food culture. They stock a curated variety of pots, pans, knives, small appliances, and other kitchen essentials. The grocery department works closely with local farms and food artisans to bring you the tastiest fresh produce dairy and pantry items. Their teaching kitchens allow them to offer a wide breadth of cooking classes from knife skills to pick butchering, from cooking for couples do pickling and canning from home brewing to pie making something new is always happening at the Brooklyn kitchen. Visit them at 100 Frustrating Williamsburg, Brooklyn or visit the Brooklyn kitchen.com Have a question that I think we missed in the fold here through email. Do you mind if I jump in with it? Okay, cool. This from Javier Gutierrez I can't say I'm another one of the crazy guys working my way through the archives. I can only thank you for sharing so much knowledge in the many hours of entertainment. My question is related to making pizza at home I want to create a Nepali style pizza okay, but haven't been able to make a dough that when baked is thin and light. I've used many recipes from Reinhardt Heston and others but none have worked for me so far. Do I need to lower the yeast content or increased hydration? Or am I failing to make the pies than enough to eat? She have the desired result. As far as the sauce for the pizza, what are important things to consider? I know in previous shows you've mentioned adding anchovies. But what are other good ingredients to make a killer sauce would appreciate any tips, techniques or a recipe that works for you. And for background, he makes them using a technique from Heston. Blumenthal's show in search of perfection where you crank the oven as high as it goes here to large cast iron pan on a stove, move it to the oven to use as a base to create a good and fast crust.

All right, get all that? Yes. So you know, Okay, a couple a couple of points here. I think, you know, what Geoffrey Stein garden always used to say is that the only important thing in a pizza really is the dough, like, and everything else is just, you know, window dressing for the dough. And if you don't focus on the dough, then your host, right. And most of the people I know that make really good dough. And this is the way I do it too. The trick to it is extremely long fermentation times. Right. So you know, a very small amount of yeast fairly high, not super high, but fairly high hydration and just very, very long rise times. So you can do that a number a number of ways, right? So you can start with, you can start with, like a more normal, like the easiest way to do it. And then, you know, math, Matthew, from motorino, he like he he actually called me out because what I had done for many years was you'd make a dough that was relatively high in hydration. I forget what I was not super high, like I was doing like I think somewhere in the mid 60s up to I think mid 60s to 70 Somewhere in there. And then you know, I would under yeast it, I would let it start rising. And then I would throw it in the fridge to retard it for like 24 hours or like, you know, 18 hours, I pull it out like four hours before I wanted to make pizza, I would make all the dose individually. So like the night before I would I would break all the dose individually into quart containers, I would spray Pam into the quart containers, throw in the dough, cap them and then throw them all in the fridge stacked so that I could pull them all out and then dough for dough bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, just go right. That's how I would do it. But then, you know, Matthew was like, Yeah, that's great. I guess if you're going to be a jackass, he's like, why don't you like why, like, just use less yeast. And then you won't have to do the fridge retarding step, you can just let it go. So you know, I've tried scaling further and further back on the yeast and just letting the rise time be longer and longer. Also, I wouldn't hold back on the salt salt is going to do is will decrease the yeast activity, but it will live in over time. And I think most of the people who are doing I don't know how to do it here actually. But I think most of the people that, you know, I've spoken to, you know who really liked the job they're doing, it's just a matter of either using or retarding step in the fridge, or just having a really long, gradual rise time. And I think most people use a fairly like on the wetter side of a dough. I know that Stein garden when he was doing his stuff in the oven in his home oven testing was using a very high hydration dough, like one that he could barely handle. I don't do that. But that maybe that's you know, something you need to do if you're dealing with a more normal oven. I don't have a normal oven. Like I've jacked my oven so that I can get up to 850 degrees. So you know, I can treat it like it's a real, you know, pizza oven. The Pan might work he said Jackie said he had the pan upside down right? Believe so you have to otherwise what are you gonna do? I mean, what's your choice, you can get one of Chris Young's approved baking steels, I'm no ChefSteps they have that. I tend to still use stone because my oven can heat up a lot of stone really freaking hot. But anyway, I use that. As for the sauces, I think usually minimal is better. I like thick sauces rather than thin sauces, but a lot of people hate what kind of sauce Do you like says like thin. I like a thick like not thick li In other words, when I say thick, I mean the sauce itself has more of a pasty consistency. But your stimuli apply the stars prefers a thinner, soft, but then you really need a good oven because you're adding a lot more moisture to the top and the pizza won't last as long when it comes out. And you have to apply less. The trick to that kind of thing is just application of less crap like the less garbage you put on pizza. Usually the better in terms of the texture of the dough, at least that's my experience you stars. And the other answer by the way to things that are that that belong on most pizzas, fried egg, just put on the top after the thing comes out. I love a fried egg on any pizza. I like thinly shaved very thinly shaved potato to like thinly shaved the potato toss it in oil salt and pepper and then just like throw it on and I like that a lot ever had that stars Solomon's used to do that they used to make a really good I've had really good potato pizza in outside of Rome like really good bye like it just like thin kind of shaved and but that what stars and I like the most is greens on our pizza day though to bring the greens are like I know like jerks. So here are Berta is right. Every day. We're like everyday every Tuesday. We're like, Can we get some greens on our freakin pizza? And they're like, We don't have greens. We're like, how about this kale salad that you have? Can we just and like and they're like, no, they don't want to do it for us. They specifically hate us. So here's what we're gonna do. Next week. We're going to bring our own greens, it's byo G. We're going to bring the Greens we'll toss them with a little like vinaigrette or something or something simple. And then we'll put them on top. I like I like uncooked greens on the top of my pizza, right? I like that. I like to smash it in fold it in half and have the pizza be like a freaking like salad pizza.

See? Okay, but I like that but more if it's like a white pie, you know? I like it

always. Yeah, and I'll tell you what I like I like strong flavor greens. I like arugula that way can

tell your girlfriend it's good on the two boots. Cleopatra. Well, so

shout out to boots that's what FYI is Jackie want to give them the FYI on the two boots while the cornmeal No, not the corn meal the connection.

Oh, that's why I thought we talked about it on the show. My girlfriend is in the two boots family.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so what the hell you don't need suggestions in New Orleans? I forgot all about that. Like their New Orleans family. Yeah, yeah. And we're

from New York like New Yorkers, but you know, strong tide in New Orleans. Yeah, and by the way, in the chat room stars. We do care. Check out Costco travel for cheap rentals.

Oh, now Dave, just a bad guy can show us a real meeting

or like let's change the format and be more interesting and include more people so that

I don't want to change the format I want to get like so Jack. Most people I don't want to change the format. What I want is to get maybe some like other style of guests and occasionally like who? I don't know like I gotta get someone to agree first. I don't know like who do you think it'd be interesting? Maybe I don't know. Like when we get guests there. Hey, listeners, who

do you want to hear on the show

right there usually a very specific kind of guests right? So like, you know, Myhrvold or Chris Young or ghee or Jeffrey Stein garden or Dave wonder it's a very like, you know, they're in the nerd realm. Let's say

man friendly.

Whoa, man friendly.

I didn't hear any females. That's true. Well

cup for cup.

See at that she came on once. She said she hated Floridians.

She did. Yes. Which was awesome.

Danna come on the show once

Yes, yes, she did. She did she did the bar she and Jordanna Rothman if you want to if you want personal information. Jordanna Roth man who is a good friend of ours used to be the used to be the she wrote the most recent thing that she did that you should go by as Alex do packs. Taco book, right? Yep. Yeah. And anyway, so she's been texting me. Pictures of Anastasia Lopez with like laser beams coming out of her eyes like exploding Mark landers head. Or like, sounds awesome. Yeah. Anastasia Lopez carrying already, by the way, a very scary butcher's knife but also with like blood dripping fangs. Very interesting. Oh, she's very interesting photos. I'm getting from Jordanna.

We got some other requests for guests here in the chat room. But he got we got Christina Tosi.

Okay, yeah. Who's that? Who's that?

That's a very doable, yeah. Donald Trump not doable. David Chang, Alex, Tupac and Dave's

wife. Yeah, well, we'll get her We'll get her. Okay. So another thing is that Jack and I are talking about bringing the blog back semi live semi semi live. In other words, like heritage, right. We haven't talked about it fully. But the the heritage radio would keep it from being like, overrun by Cialis merchants. Right. Which is for a long time, it was like Cialis merchants, I think. And then, and then we might occasionally start putting new live content on it just because I'm sick of not having that outlet, but they won't be 4000 word, like, you know, posts on maximization anymore. Unless I find myself like like nah, unless I unless I feel compelled to do it. But right. And then we go live maybe we'll do the starch program on that the starch you know, the year of starch. I've already started started like, you love starch. You're the freakin pasta queen. How could you be so boring? How's it boring? Everything you'd like is starch. Hey, can we play that? It's a starch. It's a star. She likes a starch make it make it make it my favorite. People gotta watch that movie that love that movie Big night. So awesome. caller on the line caller you're on the air.

Hey, Dave and everyone. I'm on the ham question. Oh,

here we go, Patrick. Yeah. How you doing? Good.

Good. I started to pester. I was planning on hanging them this weekend. So I want to make sure I wasn't having any mission critical errors.

All right. Well, if you want me to read your question, so people know what we're talking about. So I have a question about hanging hams for equalization. So equalization, folks is after you do your initial salting phase. The salt is not equally permeated the ham. So you hang it for a little while and let the salt as they say, equalized before you have the real you have the real what's it called aging process go on. I have some hands that are currently carrying and temperature control 35 degree chest freezer, and I'm planning to remove them for equalization and hang them in unfinished basement that is constantly roughly 50 to 55 degrees. Are there any pest countermeasures you recommend? Now I was planning to put hands and stocking nets and hanging them from the rafters. As the ceilings are low, they will probably end up only three two feet or three feet off the ground at most three to four feet. I'm not sure how impervious The basement is to rodents. I'm guessing it's not. Although the house hasn't had any food products in it for several years. I imagine bugs are less of a concern until warmer weather but I don't really but don't don't really know. In the spring I was going to move into a warmer zone for aging and coat in a fat rice flour mixture per per Paul Bertolli is recommendations in the fantastic book cooking by hand, which is a great book, by the way, people don't read that anymore. Do you know that Patrick? I don't think people read that book anymore. Good book, right? Yeah, I think great, great book, love that book. But it sounded like a coding and equalization stage isn't a good idea. Because you want the moisture loss to continue now, they will not be smoked. Okay. This is all excellent questions. So on the issue of rodents. So I forget which one of the burgers I think it was Morris burger from Burger Smokehouse once told me that, you know, when he was a kid, what they would do is they would hang the hams from very thin wires, right, because rodents can't chew through wire, and they can't climb on the wire. And so they would hang the hands on these like super thin wires from the rafters instead or from from strings or ropes. Because the rodents could climb on those but couldn't climb on just a piece of wire. He also said that when they used to cut slices out of the center, you know, the frying slices for it, they would rub lard on the faces as they as they cut it mainly to stop the drying out to keep the stuff preserved on that side. And he said that they used to keep the hands like that for a good long time. Now, they might have been pretty sure that they occasionally would smoke those things out. So that to prevent kind of pests from going going in there. Now. There's a couple of different kinds of pests you need to worry about. Right. So early on, if you have parts of it that are still and I think I wrote down let me see if I actually did pretty stupid I probably didn't. It's not here she if you go online, the University of Kentucky and the University of Virginia have very good Cooperative Extension websites on carrying ham at home. The guy who did Virginia Tech's one thing was Virginia Tech. B, I don't think it was I think was Virginia Tech. There his name was Norman is Norman Marriott. And he has a lot of good information. And then Kentucky folks have a lot of stuff on pest controls. But earlier on, you're going to have problems with you could have problems with flies, right, like skippers and stuff like this. And so for that the stock and that's going to help but some people recommend actually once once it's you know done equalize it out. You can't do it during equalization because equalizing and getting its you know, initial kind of some of the moisture update some people will rapid full and paper, which is still kind of like moisture permeable, but not insect permeable. And so that's how they'll kind of do things but once you get enough liquid out of it so that the flies themselves aren't a problem. Like the main problems that I've had personally is with various different kinds of beetle and with mites right? And so once you get mites in in your space right there like there you can't like you're not gonna you're not gonna get rid of them, you know what I mean? They they used to use a and the name just went out of my head and like I said, I thought I wrote it down and the thing with the name went out of my head you as you age, these things go out of your head, but there's something that they used to fumigate the actual hands with. That is meant to be like a food grade fume again and but it's been it's been outlawed not for a food safety reason but because I think it's like detrimental to the ozone layer. So they can't do that anymore. So there's nothing I think that you can spray kind of directly on the the the you know me except for they always say like rubber layer, like, if you have an effective area area, cut it out, rub a layer of oil over it. And some people put like, like hard alcohol and then oil over it to try and kill the things around there. Also, like if you get a mite infestation or before you hang up some people before you hang the meat, some people now we'll take like pyrethrin like this like it which is like I guess from chrysanthemums or something but it's like, you know, non toxic pesticide and they'll like spray soak the, the wood in the area with it to wipe out mites and stuff like that. And then they'll and I think it does mites, and then they'll hang it and they go, but like I've had mites develop and you can see mites because they they make this powdery nonsense, you know where they were there. It's actually I think their bodies that be as they're dying, they make this powdery stuff, it's not going to hurt much the thing that really is gross or the beetles, right. And there's different kinds of beetles that eat different kinds of things. But the ones that I used to get would bore into the fat area, right where the fat meets the kind of meat and skin area and you'd see the bore holes, and they'd go in there and I had a real tough time eradicating them. So I think your stockinette is good. If you do