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.

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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this week on meeting three we rethink surplus by exploring how innovators are promoting sharing mindsets and responding to excess in creative ways. The whole

lifecycle of food would be the third largest greenhouse gases that are behind China and the United States if it were a country

you know in the age of COVID where a lot of those institutional processors did grind to a halt and a lot of farms had to dump milk in Pennsylvania. Even while supermarket cases were bare. The organic market stayed strong

they source all these ingredients they do all of this work and then they just boil it for a few minutes and then they throw it away

tune in to meet three available wherever you get your podcasts

Hello and welcome to cooking issues this is Dave Arnold host of cookies just going to lie on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday you know whenever we want to but basically around noon time right basically around and I'm here in the Lower East Side of Manhattan we got Anastasia in Cancun How you doing this Tasha great you don't even I don't even she's just as you know hammer Lopez I used to introduce you like I think better you know

yes but then you scratch my hammer abilities

squash squash or anything abilities man she's least we got we're Connecticut heavy today we got John in in Connecticut. How you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. And Matt in his up there in Rhode Island so we're full on Swamp Yankee right now. Yeah, but again, unless you're unless you're doing a pre spring 55 gallon drum tire fire with a handle of Jack Morgan along one of our many rivers along the coast here you're not a really a true slump Yankee you know I'm saying yeah, I witnessed that person. They are something they are something okay. Oh, before I start anything you guys didn't do anything anything good food or not food related in the past week anything?

No.

Trying to do like a brace lamb pasta dish that didn't work out the way I wanted to. But

what didn't work was that so? In other words, had you braise the lamb and you were using it as the leftover or did you braise the lamb specifically for doing this and were you do Especially like, what,

specifically for doing this, I don't know. I wanted to like take the idea of a roasted leg of lamb and kind of like make it graze so I did a lot of garlic, anchovies. deglaze with some white wine and some vegetable stock through lamb shanks in there and raised them and took them out, reduce a little bit. thicken up the sauce and add more garlic and anchovies and like wine, parsley, and radicchio. I don't know, it's just like, just, it's just missing something. Need to figure it out?

Did the radicchio make it bitter or was it decent? Do you have the good stuff?

Was the good stuff? It wasn't overly better? kind of been around for?

Yeah, I mean, the Stasi remember the French Culinary Institute when they had like the radicchio Consorcio come in, and they had all of the like, really super fancy stuff that they brought in. I was like, Oh, this is pretty good. Because like, I'm, you know, I had been used to the the garbage stuff that you get starting in the 80s. At some point, we were like, in the US on the East Coast, right? We were like lettuce was iceberg, right? And then all of a sudden, people were like, Oh, if you were gonna be fancy, you got romaine, and then all of a sudden in the 80s, they brought out radicchio, and they were always the tiny, they've been around forever little, like purple. Like they look like mini cabbages, and they were just bitter and kind of useless and expensive. Remember these? Anyone remember what I'm talking

about? I don't really know.

So like radicchio was like a thing that everybody wanted? Because it sounded fancy and looked fancy. Right? But it just wasn't very good. So I've never really liked it. But do you remember when the Consorcio came and brought all the super fancy stuff? So yeah, that stuff was good and good. Like, you know, lightly, lightly sauteed lightly cooked down. Can't believe none of you remember the garbage radicchio? I've hated it my whole life as a thing, just because I was exposed as a child to garbage versions of it. Anyway. It is good. So what was it missing? You had it sounds like you had a lot of stuff. You had salty stuff. You had a mommy stuff? Did the? How much anchovy? Did you add to the anchovy? Take it in a weird direction that you didn't want or what? No, not at all? Like, I

don't know. It's just it just it was just like missing a backbone of flavor. I don't know. Maybe I could have reduced the braising liquid some more. So it was more concentrated. I was just I don't know, like, lacking a punch. No, say no. Is there no tomato in there?

Maybe maybe like a little paint little paste. Little paste up in that piece.

There was a little paste on the veg sock. Yeah, still not enough. So back to the drawing boards.

Okay. I've been experimenting. So next week, by the way and get your get your questions in now. This is your one shot giving you a full week. Well, not really. Because, you know, this is probably going to when is this going to go up? Matt? Like Friday?

It'll probably be maybe tomorrow morning.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. So if you hear this before next week, I we've gotten a bunch of questions in about the a nova combi oven, right their home combi oven, which is I think like $600. And you can have like all of the it does the SU V that does everything, the steam and all this. So people have asked me a lot of questions about it. And I've never been able to answer those questions because I've never used one but I have one I'm testing now. And we have Scott Hyman Nygaard is going to be on from a nova. Next week, he's going to be our guest. And we're going to talk about the oven. So if you have any questions you want to answer about it. Preferably send them to me early early, because then John can get them to me and I can maybe do some testing because to be honest, I see these questions usually a day before the the you know, like actually the morning of the show. And so you know if there's something that you like, want me that's going to that is you know, interesting enough to test actually test. Let me know earlier, right, John? Yes. Yeah.

Here's anything food related. Did you hear that Mr. Potato Head is dropping the mister.

What is he now? Well, it's

not gender inclusive. Is his wife okay with this? No. So she is also dropping the missus?

So, okay, so hold on second. So now there's just Potato Heads.

Yeah. And Hasbro people are upset that Hasbro sounds like he wants them to people want them to drop the bro. Are you making that fart rail? Right now reading this

actual AP or AP AP dot onion dotnet This is all so it's not Hasbro anymore. It's more

who is the brand of toy now called anthropomorphized potato.

Yeah,

well hold has been Bro. Like that? Yeah. Or is it more like Hasbro? Yeah, like that like yo Hasbro Do you I Hasbro bro like that that's what they were in

the American Girl doll is now selling a boy doll I don't know how they're gonna

Oh, first of all was Hasbro formed by the has brothers?

I don't know I don't know I don't know adding this

to has and has not brothers see people this is what actually is going through anastasis mind she's like I'm not listening to anything about an oven. I'm gonna read the AP news wire coming in.

I wanted to bring in some stuff so I brought some

potatoes it's not actually foodstuff although I will say that Mr. Potato, the Mr. Potato Head is a very big cocktail concept, the Mr. Potato Head concept of cocktails. It's a it's a you know, plugging up the Mr. Potatohead was, I mean, everyone's done it forever. But I think it was Phil Ward who coined it as a method of cocktail invention where basically, you know, you take the structure and you just pop stuff off and on to change and and make up different cocktails. So you know, a margarita minus lime plus, you know, yuzu Mr. Potatohead. That was the theory of cocktail construction.

And you drink out of a Mr. Potato Head.

No hole full of holes. Yeah, yeah. No.

Right parts. Ahead.

I don't know if you I don't know if you know this, but you work with someone who's not only a trained MFA sculptor, but also a product designer. With 3d printing capability. I can I can seal up, we could take a stock, let's just create a potato head. Yeah, what so what I would recommend, what I recommend, is you actually leave that I always remind because remember, you open their butt. And they crapped their body out like a sea cucumber, and then you like put all their stuff on their face, right? So if I was going to do this, what I would do is I would make away the secret when, if anyone else does, so isn't what I would do, what we will do is I will construct a a potato head, like almost like a Capri Sun pouch that sits inside of the potato head body. So then you don't have to worry about washing it and you can still as you're drinking, like reconfigure it. So it comes it sits you reconfigure it, and when you put the straw will drill a hole through its forehead, and you can and you can drink it through that

one garnish with an apple head.

Oh my god potato on Apple on. And I want you to know, we were way ahead of the curve because we've never gendered our apple heads. No, yeah. Yeah, way ahead of the curve wavy ahead of the curve.

Just wore hats, which they weren't gendered. Yeah.

It depends on the hat. No, I mean, like my Easter bonnet, when I wear that I'm making a gender statement.

None of them were

able to come up with your last full bar concept in 12 minutes, because this was pretty good. You guys.

My original so like, you know, look, I have contests that I'll never

do. Yeah, french fries, tater tots says oh my god.

And we'll call it like Ken will play only Cannibal Corpse because we're eating potato heads with the bars. So it's, I don't actually listen to Cannibal Corpse. But I mean, the idea that like, you know, if the the waiters are, the servers are dressed as potatoes, maybe that's too much. Maybe Maybe Maybe people are dressed like people. Right? And then like, well, what if we like what if we have them in like completely, like genderless Slenderman outfits so that everyone looks like they could be plug and play? You know what I'm saying? Like everyone looks blank. You want everything to be blank? Except for the potato heads.

You want them to shine? Yeah, yeah,

yeah. configured. That's taking a little too far though. I don't think people are gonna want to where and when DAX went as that I first of all, I don't even know where that Slenderman thing comes from. But DAX went as it wants his Halloween and it's super creepy looking. What is it in the reality? What is the Slender Man? What is there like a

kid teens novel series.

I think it is Dax. Dax went out as one year and he was he was it was fundamentally a body sock that went over his whole body and then he put like an outfit over the body sock and he just looked intensely creepy, like faceless. humanoids are creepy. You know what I'm saying? Like super creepy.

The internet says it is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepy pasta internet meme that created by something awful for muse or Erik Knudsen in 2009.

There we go. Okay. All right. All right. Uh Yeah put that in a time capsule Yep. When chance

chats like talking about you know actual food stuff and if you want

yeah give me give me give me some they can't stand this crap

well they would also like you to know that apparently this whole Hasbro thing just stems from them deciding to put I think both Mr. And Mrs. Potato Head in the same box but anyway whatever.

I believe that I believe that although they sell 8 million let me tell you something about people out there people if you've never made a product before when when you're only making a couple of products, you don't want to have a bunch of different like skews SK use right because you have to pay for all these different boxes. But it's actually the opposite if you are a big company because then you flood the zone to sell more. So it's like the Doritos in food right? Let's go back to food for a minute right? In food. You like why is it that they make 8000 Doritos? Why is it that they make 950,000 different varieties of Lay's potato chips Oreos? And the answer is when you go into a store and you see the same Oreo that you've seen your whole life, right? You may or may not pick it up. If you're not a regular Oreo buyer, you probably like Oreos, but you're probably not going to pick it up. But if you go when and it's like double birthday St. Patrick's blah, blah, blah Oreos, and it's a different package. You're like, oh, there's different Oreos, and it makes you buy more Oreos in general, regardless of whether you buy the special one. So in over the past 2015 really the past eight years, but like it's been starting maybe 20 years now in the making, companies have just increased the number of SK use, they put in a particular lineup. Because adding things to a lineup makes the entire lineups sell more, even if the really little niche ones don't sell that many, right. So they're not actually competing with each other, they're increasing their entire brand. And so the idea that you're trying to save money on a box, when really you're just flooding the zone with potato head stuff. The question is really, it might not be an issue if, if you're only going to one place for your potato head style things right, then it doesn't really matter. Right? But it's kind of like Pac Man Miss Pac Man, they have a rivalry someone might get both. So why would no one's gonna buy two potato heads if there's no difference between the Mr. Potato Head and Mrs. Potato Head? But if there's two maybe they get two maybe they compete maybe you get one for one kid and one for the other. So I don't know. I don't think they're actually saving money. I think it's a different thing. I

can confirm that this works on the food side because we are occasional Oreo buyers. And Kate saw that there was a lady gaga package of Oreos, and she's like, wonder what's up with that? Bottom. They're real bad. They're just very colorful, thrown away and why they don't taste as good.

Taste is good. My mind,

man I don't remember anymore. And I was like this is not enjoyable and then you're left being like, I still would like an Oreo. So the next time you're at a grocery store, you're more likely to pick up the actual Oreos that tastes normal.

Or listen, I want some Lady Gaga Oreos. I want to know what's not pleasurable about the Lady Gaga Oreos because I like almost everything Lady Gaga does. Right? By the way they ever catch the person that shot her dog walker? Don't know. That was some random stuff.

That was weird. All right, chat question about vegetables, okay. Alfa Romeo and Juliet asked. I've learned that my partner prefers crunchy vegetables to softer ones. What would your go to crunchy vegetable recipe be? Yes, I've roasted everything and love to fry but would love any ideas and inspiration that the cooking issues team has? Thanks as always, and then there's two follow ups. Do you want to hear the follow ups first? I don't know. You tell me holding trout responds and this is this is very cooking issues old and drought response. Your question isn't directed at me but you can soak the veggies in a calcium hydroxide solution. Honestly, I think almost adding calcium bath would help you can also use something like NOVA shape to reinforce the pectin calcium crosslinking with certain vegetables with us can also be Listen

Listen, listen. Listen, calcium hydroxide is a is interesting. And I've written about this on the blog, by the way. So calcium hydroxide, calcium crosslinks and makes things stay firmer longer. And, but basic things and basic things make things stay greener, but make them break down actually faster and make the pectin break down faster. So calcium hydroxide is interesting in that it, it kind of has a it. It kind of pushes both ways. If you want stuff to get soft, make it basic. If you want stuff to stay crunchy, make it acidic. So acid plus calcium even though the calcium is not going to be which was the solubility go enter some calcium like calcium chloride plus acid is going to keep stuff real crunchy but the real problem is is that as any real French person will tell you and John as our as our closest to French here, you know Bill chic like French lover right? Is that the French don't understand our obsession with vegetables that are undercooked Am I correct? Yeah, so and the old school French cooks at at the FCI were always like, NO NO MAN No man No, because like people would like, you know, undercooked their veg because here every one was like you want your vegetables to be out then you're like, No, you want it to be cooked but not much, right? And the whole idea of being like the cook them the French way is to is to do that. Now. That said it is my firm belief that you should eat the vegetables however now you liked them. But what you haven't specified is how crunchy your partner likes these vegetables. Does your partner actually like raw vegetables is what I'm asking. Right? So it's like certain vegetables your partner might want the the texture of raw, but without the raw taste. And that can be done with like a relatively high temperature blanch that doesn't boil it or cook the pectin down right. So like they might hate for instance, if they're like me, they don't like the raw starch taste in a pea shoot, right? But if you if you lightly blanch a pea shoot in shock, it's still crunchy but it loses that raw taste all of a sudden I like it right. If your partner actually wants raw, raw tasting vegetables, but you're sick of your classic crudity, I say why not try a banda Kouta because Ben your calendars are delicious. So you get yourself some anchovies. You get yourself some butter, some garlic, some oil, you make it into a little into a little hot base. You make it it's a bath, it's warm. You dip your stuff into it. That's delicious. And then you can also have some bread with it and dip it and it's delicious. You guys like Manukau to anyone here anyone here Bandy. Kata fan. Yep, yep. Yeah, yeah. However, I think I don't know whether I've told this story. I've told the story with Miley about van Dijk out on the air. Probably no, no, not recently. Not recently, not in the last 100 episodes. So yeah, he's alright. So I've said this many times. Like I became friends with Wiley do Frane the chef and donut untrue Pinilla me because I say entrepreneur like that. Because whenever any one time anyone says they're an entrepreneur, my assumption is they're one step away from being homeless. You know what I'm saying? It's like entrepreneur is not like something that, like, if you have a business, you have a business, if you're an entrepreneur, it means you can't tell me what your business is. So either you're doing something illegal, you're in porn, or you're or you're you don't really have a business so you with me on this Anastasia? You don't you have a different feeling about? No,

I don't think see it like.

Yeah, so you think entrepreneurs a valid thing to say that somebody is? If you say somebody is like a food entrepreneur, that makes more sense, but if they just say on true, what do you do an entrepreneur? Like, what does that mean? You You're on the street selling singles? Like what like, what is like, what is it? Like? What? What is entrepreneur? You know what I'm saying? Like, why aren't you being more specific?

Yeah, with that, who says that? Like I don't I haven't run into anyone who just calls themselves an entrepreneur.

It's a very, like New York City streets thing. You know what I mean? It's like, I What, what do you do? I don't know, what do you do like that? You know what I mean? A entrepreneur. He's either with the mob or something. You know what I mean? It's like, it's the same thing as saying, what do you do import export? That means you're a criminal, right? Anyone who says they're Import Export, and they don't tell you what they're importing and exporting? Criminal, right.

Joanna would like to throw a multilevel marketing into the entrepreneur mix.

Oh, yeah. Right, which is criminal, right. So they're basically they're doing something they're doing something well, should be criminal Ponzi schemes, some sort of Ponzi scheme. This happened with Booker and DAX DAX got into some sort of pyramid scheme. And thankfully for him, he was at the base of the pyramid, so he didn't get messed up with it. And Booker was like, it's a scam. It's a scam and taxes. Like it's not a scam. It's one of those things where like, everybody gets five bucks for getting somebody to get into the system. You know what I'm saying? And I was like, No, you know, your brother, you know, usually he yells at you for the wrong reason, but you know, Booker's 100% Correct. You This is a pyramid scheme. He's like, but I made my money. I was like, Yeah, but the math proves that within a couple of cycles. There's more more people. You need more people than there are people on the earth to pay everyone $5 He's like, Man, I got my money. So he didn't learn the lesson.

So I'm saying early is what he learned.

Yeah, I don't want my I don't want DAX. I mean, like, I don't want DAX to. Because here's the problem with pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes. And by the way, we wouldn't we get accused of Anastasia Bernie Madoff a food

you were called the Bernie Madoff

with food. Yeah, because we were because we were, we were two and a half months late delivering Sears halls to people with the first Kickstarter, two and a half months late on a product that we made from scratch that no one has ever made before two and a half months late. You're the Bernie made awful food. So I was like, the trick is, is that when people start their pyramids and Ponzi ease and all these schemes, is it no one wants to get out when the getting's good. You know what I mean? That's why they end up getting hosed. And first of all, it's unethical. Oh, that's not we're talking about what were you talking about?

There was a food question

roasting while we crisp, crisp vegetables.

All right. All right. So anyway, banya Kouta. So, while he was that's what it was entrepreneur, Wiley was had WD 50 At the time, and he wanted to go out with Miley, my sister in law, who runs the Food Network magazine, and started it runs it. And so they were having their first date. And they came over to my house. And she had a really nice dress on because they were coming over to our house just for a drink and then they were gonna go out. And I was like, I made a banyan powder. And so I had like this, like, I had like these little cast iron, like awesome little cast iron thingamajigs and it was full of the hot, hot, anchovy grease and, and a plate of like crudities and I fumbled and dumped the entire thing on her dress. I just dumped an entire container of like, hot, hot, stinking curries on her dress. Yeah. And they have two kids now. Yeah, blessing, blessings upon you. Yeah. Which brings me up. Anytime when you're at somebody's house. We're sorry. Maybe someday someone can come over to your house again, let's just assume that within a couple of months, people are allowed to come to your house again, wherever you are. Something that in, in my family and my stepfather side of my family that they always did that I loved. Is it related to you know, spilling bandicoot or over over Miley was I've never made it again since then, by the way, so I haven't made Vanja Kouta because it's like, you know, traumatic for me. So like, I haven't made it in probably 15 years or something like this. So anyway, so. So my stepfather's Father, you're the butcher. I've talked about him on the show, we'd sit at this long table on a Sunday at the house. And at the end of the meal. He would always pour some red wine onto the tablecloth and kill it. So that like no one had to worry, and everyone knew it was going to happen. So no one had to worry about whether or not they were going to mess up the tablecloth so they just took that off the table. I always thought was a nice gesture. It went through a lot of tablecloth so I only do it if somebody spills something on the tablecloth I will immediately spill something on my own tablecloth just so that they don't feel bad but I always thought was a nice gesture. Anyone else have that have that customer in their house?

That's a nice thing to do. Yeah, it's a nice thing to do but like if you don't have a washing machine like it's just you know

it's more it's more for like later in your life if you're in that situation where you know you're the it's your house you have the tablecloth and you just want to make everyone feel welcome you know I'm saying but I tell you what it really takes it takes a load off your mind especially if you have people who aren't like your normal people there and they're all nervous about like you know you getting bent at them anyway. Any more chat food questions there Matt?

No, well other than scheffau chimed in to suggest spiral or the use of spiralized veg instead of chopped says

nothing goes nothing goes but as soon as you cook a spiralized veg the things cooked Are you saying I leave it raw so that you can eat unpalatable veg? Can I make a plea for cooking kale Please, can I please just make a plea for cooking kale. The Kale was not invented there look like all of these kind of like greens and brassica stuff are all extremely closely related different cultivars of relatively similar stuff, right? There have been for generations people have raised greens that tasted good before they're cooked. Why if you're gonna eat one raw, why don't you eat one of those raw if I never have raw kale again, I'm fine because you know what I really like raw cut up as crunchy cabbage. Cabbage is delicious, raw uncooked, almost any kind of cabbage I would rather have than almost any kind of raw kale. Now cooked kale is delicious. But

think of all the vitamins and nutrients in the raw kale. So healthy for you All right. No, I know.

Yeah. Come on, man. I mean, look, here's another one for you. Like spinach, right? Like, I know that a lot of you eat raw spinach. Oh,

no, no, no, no. In California, there is some spinach that tastes really good raw like amazing.

miniaturized. Smaller. Yeah, but not many tries. Not to tiny one that hasn't. So it's it. Okay. Let me ask you this. Has it gone from being roughly coin shaped to being frilly? Yeah. So it's still coin shaped? Yeah. Right. So that mean, obviously, you can't eat the raw spinach. Once it turns into a filth machine. It's all frilly and long, right? Yeah. But you're saying you're saying they have these varieties. And you're saying that this this finish that you got in California, you would choose as a raw green over other raw greens?

Yes, I would buy it every like Pat, like so much of it every week and give it to people too, because they were like, This is amazing.

I would love to try that in the same way that like, you know, you're at the time boyfriend when you and I were working. You and I were slaving away? And you know inside was going well, we're the Stasi and I got our respective others a free trip to Japan. That's

not true. If you gave we got three tickets. Me, you and you gave us a Gen Mark paid his.

Yeah, and I paid taxes. But they got to stay in the best hotel in Tokyo for free. And they got all the food in the hotel for free. That's a free trip the trip? Yeah, how much more the trip was than than the airline tickets. Yeah. And remember, I got we got more than that number of tickets because I flew coach the entire way. But like, anyway, that's why keep using the word free. Hey, you show up in Tokyo and you get to stay in the Park Hyatt for free, that's free. You get that you get the use of their of their concierge, and they get you anything in the hotel, including all the restaurant stuff that's free. Like literally like taking a poo in that hotel probably cost more than the airline ticket over there. Okay, especially when you're flying deep coach, which is what we did. Like I was sandwiched in somebody's overhead bin as I was flying over there for the 14 hours. All right. So let's just put it that way. So they're getting to chill in the hotel. They're getting their spa time, Anastasia and I are working. And he goes to what he says is the best sushi experience of his life and has as the dessert raw eggplant. And Nastasia and I are like, what? And then he's like, yeah, yeah, raw eggplant. So apparently in Japan, they have and I've never been able to find it. I've never eaten it. There is some variety of a plant that an ad will know that this was an 80 year old this that's something that someone that's can buy it, slice it and put it on a plate and you're going to eat it as your fruit course after after dinner as your dessert in a sushi restaurant and enjoy it. And he said it was like the best thing ever. And I've never had it and I'm still jealous to this day. Like you know, eight years later, I'm still jealous. Yeah, you know, Aren't you jealous to us?

I do wonder. Yeah,

yeah. And so like you know, now you have me wondering about this like magic spinach. That's like I feel bad for anyone that's never had like, like what I the best tomatoes that I've ever had that I can get almost every year but if you're not in New York, you can have it so like you can have a good tomato maybe but you can't have the one that I'm telling you about. You don't even know if I'm a liar. I'm not it's delicious tomato but I mean, what are you going to know? Same way with the with the eggplant. I gotta try that eggplant. Anyway, so I would like to try your spinach but in general I think spinach should be cooked because what I hate is the squeak hate the squeak What do you guys think of the squeak?

Do you not like cheese hurts?

I love I love a squeaky cheese curd. Okay, right? I don't want a squeaky green because it's first of all a squeaky cheese curd. There's something nice about it right? was like a grain is like it's like what am I why am I chewing on neoprene? What is this? You don't I mean? It's just unpleasant. I just don't like it. And yeah, I don't like it. I love Coke spinner. So how the hell did we get onto that? All right, Matt, you're gonna let me know if there's anything else we need to address in the chat room Correct?

Yeah, sure. After I confirms it's been it's film on two teeth as the worst but yeah, you're good. We're good here.

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here. What else I hate though, how about this when you're cooking spinach? This used to happen so many times. At the French culinary it's French culinary. They used to have a final and then you know they would have outside judges come in and judge the students but they'd always have one or two people from the school also judged the students final so sometimes I would do it and aside from you know people not salting before they send it out hate that is when they would run out of time and they wouldn't squeeze the spinach before they before they did the first the final dressing and put it on the plate and it gets that disgusting black liquid flowing out of it you know I'm talking about though John, thanks thanks so much for piping up. So you just you cook spinach and you throw it in the colander you shock it you train it you pull it out but you don't squeeze it then you think you can just put your your your whatever salt dressing whatever and put it on your plate and you're good to go if you don't squeeze the spinach it sits there and bleeds gross to filth. Anyway I hate that gross filth what's your favorite way to have cooked spinach?

Yes you like it in the pan with nothing else and cook it down

so you don't like cream in it? Nope knows I assume you salt and pepper

salted after Yeah,

no snow spices no alliums at all. Nope. Wow. Okay, plain Jane. What about you John? What's your favorite Spanish? I

like Korean Spanish a lot but also playing with like garlic and chili flakes.

God and Matt

get on John's train there

I always add like not to make it sweet. So like my standard veg cook in general by the way. Not really was special I do was finish is salt, salt, pepper, salt, pepper, sugar, a little bit of sugar. Not to not to make it sweet. But just to glaze it a little bit so like typically when I'm doing veg, like carrots like Brussels I blanch beforehand like so big big veg I blanch beforehand and then pan it small veg I don't but yeah, it's always it's always salt, pepper, a little bit of sugar, sometimes spice and then you know depending on whether I'm doing Allium but for plain veggies, just salt, pepper and sugar, I think a little bit of sugar always, always helps and then a little bit of moisture and then you cover it with a lid and you take it until it's almost done lifted, let the rest of the stuff evaporate off open so it doesn't over steam and then jiggle it until it gets the nice coating on the outside. That's my standard pan veg anyways. And with Spanish I like to add a little cream to it cuz I like a little creamy spinach. So if I'm going to do spinach and I'm going to make it right away I'll do it maybe the way Anastasia said because if I'm going to add an extra liquid to it to cream I don't have to do it but if I'm going to do it for a bigger setting or if I'm going to do an advance, I will boil it and salted water shock it squeeze it so it stays green. And then I can add the flavoring to it that answer the question on spinach and then non spinach veg. Yes, okay. Mark wrote in via email a couple of salt questions Firstly, to salting after cooking diffuse through meat the same way as raw meat. Well when you saw raw meat, right While the meat is cooking, there's a faster transport in and out right so the the So I would say, first of all, also the meat is a higher has a higher moisture content when it's raw. And it's also kind of more open, it hasn't contracted down. So I would say salting meat after it cooks is going to cause less penetration, much less penetration than salting it beforehand. But I mean, again, like salting beforehand, it's it's complicated, it's much more complicated in that second, assaulting vegetables do anything similar. I'm thinking salt diffusing through the veg also having an impact on the proteins and said veg, a lot salting vegetables beforehand depends a lot on the vegetables. So if you want salt to have a big effect on some vegetables, you need to cut them a lot of vegetables have or bruised them, a lot of vegetables have very thick kind of coatings on them, like waxy cuticles on them. And so if you salt them without cutting them, really not a lot happens, right? At least not right away. So you need to wait a while for that to happen. Whereas if you cut them, then you know the salt can get in there and and really kind of affect it quickly. And you know, one of the biggest things that salting does is is osmotically dehydrate things. So you can think about egg plants. So it's not really you're not really affecting the the proteins aren't that important in vegetables, right? Maybe they are, but they're not right. But what's important in vegetables is the pectin structure, and also the moisture content. So like, and the salt that you're using there doesn't really affect the texture of the of the pectin that much at the levels that you're using things like we were talking before, calcium really would or the pH right. So adding acidity to something will affect the texture of a cooked vegetable. So, but salt will dehydrate it. So like when you're cutting an eggplant, you cut an eggplant, you salt it, and that is going to osmotically dehydrated, it's going to draw out that kind of gross liquid or if you're making cabbage and you're going to do coleslaw, or whatever, you slice it. You salt it, you let it rest for a couple of hours and it gets a lot of the moisture out. And that way your coleslaw that you dress and it's fine to table isn't going to turn into a weepy week for the next day. If you want to have the coleslaw the next day you're a monster. If you make a coleslaw today for tomorrow and you don't pre salt your cabbage before you do because it's going to turn into a watery mess that happened any of you guys ever? No, I don't think so. Do you Have you ever made coleslaw and served it in a day? You ever made coleslaw for tomorrow?

No. No.

Guys are no help today. You can at least pretend to people like it's a show. Pretend. Acting for life. I don't ever want to I don't want

Am I playing a character right now? What's my backstory?

Your backstory is you're a swamp Yankee from Rhode Island. I can do that. Yeah. No, I don't want anyone to lie but I mean Geez lease, you know, it's like I'm getting nothing for you guys. It's like It's like getting nothing. Throwing them off getting nothing back. Have a girl wrote in so wait. So happy girl is that like getting an epidural and they're happy about it? You think that's what that name is?

That's their last name. No.

Handle is happy girl. Like they're happy to get an epidural, which I think most people are. I think most people if they need an epidural are happy to get it. That has been you know, I've never had one but that's been my experience with other people getting them that they're quite happy to get them. So happy to roll writes in about quicks tamale so many years ago, like 2010 or something. I did a blog post on Nick's normalization, which is the technique where going back to calcium hydroxide, where you take calcium hydroxide, and you you par Cook, typically corn, and then you let it sit for a while and the calcium hydroxide breaks down the skin on the corn makes a little bit softer. You then grind that into masa. And so that's the massive and if you don't have the calcium hydroxide, if you don't do the externalization then it's just cornmeal. It doesn't taste like masa. It doesn't work like masa. It won't make a tortilla the way masa does. Anyway, so one of the things that I did, and I don't know if I was first but you know, the first person I ever saw do it put that way, doing alternate, like non traditional, kind of like European grain stuff with that techniques. I was doing a lot of right back in the day and ride tortillas right and externalize tortillas are delicious, but they're a real pain in the butt so I tend not to do them that that often. And I also experimented with trying to do quick, you know quick Nick's normalization, which is where you do it in a in a pressure cooker and and see whether you can kind of get rid of either the soaking step, or you know, part of the cooking step just to make it happen faster because it soaks for a long time, but I didn't have very good results. So the question is, I saw that you tried pressure cooking blue corn in the next Amol. But wondered, and the reason we did blue corn was because we had a 50 pound sack of it. Right. But wondering if you tried regular yellow dent corn? No, I didn't. I the only one I tried was the one that I posted on the blog. And I didn't like the idea enough to try it with the yellow. There's not that much difference really between the mean there's a difference in the color actually, you know, obviously in different varieties, different flavors, but there's I don't think there's that much. There wasn't that much of a difference between the yellow corn and the blue corn we had in terms of their textures. What I would say is that it's a lot of people only really have access to popcorn. And popcorn is hard to externalize, because it's real hard and maybe pressure, Nixon realization pressure cooking decriminalisation, if you want to try something that might work and be fun, try, I would try maybe next analyzing popcorn in a pressure cooker because that might take away some of the things that make popcorn is such a pain in the butt to work with when you're doing an externalization. So anyway, take that, take that one and try it or don't. Warren Johnson wrote in via Instagram. So back at the ask, he wants to know what was the recipe for the shagbark hickory syrup that we used existing conditions for the Macintosh Plus cocktail, which by the way, I always hated that name because I get it's an apple joke, but I don't really like the Macintosh as an apple. I think it's a trash can apple. Not a Macintosh fan. Like last season last apple season, I went out and I picked one off of a tree. And I was like, It's fine. It's a standard Apple kind of flavor. But I would never ever I don't even know why they named the the computer after that. Like, would you ever if someone's if you're on your deathbed, and someone was like, call out an apple and you can have this one life last bite of an apple before you die? Would anyone on this earth choose a Macintosh? No. No, no. Trash can. It's trash. It's worthless. I mean, it's better than a delicious, right? It's, you know, Red Delicious. Red Delicious is a filth machine, but especially the way that they are now anyway. What was the recipe for the shagbark hickory, and any suggestions on how to approach recreating or substituting this at home? Well, I wouldn't try to recreate it, I would force I mean substituted, I would just recreate it first, you got to find yourself a shagbark hickory tree. They're one of the most easily recognized trees in the winter that you can get. Because, you know, if you just Google shagbark hickory tree, and like look at the pictures of the bark and look around in your neighborhood until you see that kind of bark, then you've I beat it right? It's not there are no look alikes that are going to mess with you. It's just that's what there is. Now, another thing that you might not know, if you don't know where the Shagbark hickories are around you and they're located, I don't know if they have them on the West Coast, or whether people have planted them on the west coast. But they're there all the way through at least Ohio. And I think all the way through an upper sections through Wisconsin, I don't know how far south they I know they go they probably go all the way south. I don't know whether they go through the plains states anyway. So you can there's lots of applications now where people have geotagged trees. And so you can go and find the trees in your neighborhood on a map on your phone, very useful for foragers out there. So anyway, find one and then just peel the outside bark off you're not hurting it don't peel so much off that you're getting to the inner part. Just take the stuff it's going to slough off anyway. Wash it just to get the you know, the outer you know, dust and whatnot and bugs and all that kind of stuff. I've wash it, break it into small pieces. You know, when I say small, though, I don't know, like, inch and a half long, something like this. And then so it's still a little bit wet because you've washed it right so that the recipe I'm going to give you is the one that I actually ran the test on so you can rejigger this however you want but I did 378 grams of that park. And then I put 1600 grams of water into it in a in a container and I put it into my vacuum machine and I did a vacuum cycle on it three times to kind of get the liquid to the inside of the bark and start the infusion before I heated it right. So you can omit that but it just won't be as good. Or you might have to let it steep longer than I added 700 grams more water and the reason I did that was because I couldn't fit a bigger thing of water in my vacuum machine. And again, you could do without the vacuum machine I have it just not quite as good. You can you know what you to do. If you don't have a vacuum machine Get the bargain, put like a grate or something so it stays under the water. And before you boil it, soak it overnight. How about that, then you bring it to a boil, you let it steep for 10 minutes you strain it, it should be already kind of dark. Then I boiled it down to about, you know, point six of its form or size. Technically I did point 615, but just want to reduce it by like a third or so. And then I add an equal way to sugar to it. And that's the syrup. All right. All right.