Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

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

We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29,

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Nana better learn learn earner. Welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave oral your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the heritage radio network. But still I'm in my house in the Lower East Side John. John who from Booker and DAX is up there in the Murray Hill. They got into Stasi. Where are you right now to Stasi, the hammer Lopez.

Hell's Kitchen.

Hello. Oh, you're back. He's still in New York. You haven't gone back to Stanford. I

was there. But I was I've been trying to work with amazing so I have to be here.

We mean, you're still have to like socially distance. You just feel better when you're like,

No, I know why we don't have it. Well, why don't you? We can talk offline about it. It's the work with Jose Andreas I told you about yesterday. Okay.

All right. And Matt in the booth, and the booth is in Rhode Island still, Matt? I am in my own personal Hill. What?

I said I'm in my own personal hell. Yeah.

Your personal recording? Hell yes. Nice. That's,

I love them. Why?

Yeah. Nice. So we have our I'll bring him in now just so he doesn't have to sit there and not talk for a while. While we talk about, you know, our Week in Review. We have known him for quite a while. It's first time on the show. Matt sartwell. From kitchen Arts and Letters. How're you doing?

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Oh, hey, listen. So

for those of you I don't know, if you've never been to New York City before. Then you've never been to kitchen arts and letters. But right up on. You take the number six train up to the what is it? 96th Street stop right. 96th Street? Yeah, yeah. And then you're like, right on that hill next to the model shop. It's a weird little block. You're on right? We

we aren't met like many other blocks in the city now. Lots of small, quirky individual businesses.

Yeah, so it's like, so you, you go into the store. And you know, you wouldn't necessarily know if you didn't know about it, but you go to the store and as soon as you're there, you're like, Oh my god. This is the best cookbook store I've ever been in. And this is actually what happened to me so like, some time, Matt, you remember that book? What was it? It was by a guy named wings wing somebody wings, Scott, and or and dove the bread builders book who wrote that the bread builders? Yeah, yeah, so this was, I don't know, this was like 2000. And when did that come out like 2000 2001? Something like that.

I might have even thought it was a little earlier than that. But

maybe what was before it was before 911. Anyway, I, I was trying to research, baking bread, I was beginning to break this this May was late 90s, I don't even remember. And I, you know, the online buying, you know, already existed, you know, it's relatively new. And I had found out on you know, one of the user groups about this book, this book existed, but I didn't want to, I needed to see it. Because it's, you know, I'm one of those people that I need to see a book to see whether or not I'm going to agree with it. And that's subject to this book, by the way. And it it is a classic in the field, I think in its own right, it was kind of a game changing book, at least for me, was about building your own retain heat masonry ovens, and kind of a style of bread baking that wasn't well known among, you know, average idiots at the time. This is when bread in the United States was really, really, really, really bad, in general. Anyway, so I was like, Well, I want to go see this book in person. Before I buy it online. I hear there's a clip bookstore. So I took the trip on tickets in our kitchen arts and letters. And then I bought it immediately from them, because I realized what a gym, this bookstore was, and because not just the books, when you show up to team at kitchen Arts and Letters, knows more about cookbooks than anybody else. So chefs go there, writers go there. And they don't just say, you know, they don't just look for a book, they already know, they're like, what are all the books on this subject? What, you know, how do they fit in with each other? What would you recommend? Plus they can find old books. So it's like, it's, it's, it's like having a store with research librarians available to you kind of at all times and amazing place you need to go when you say it's accurate reflection.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a big part of the excitement for us is, is, is being challenged by the questions our customers ask us, because, I mean, we don't have it all like right at our fingertips. But we love going on the hunt. And sometimes we can answer the questions in a couple of minutes. And sometimes it takes a little longer. But yeah, I mean, to go to sort of go down a different rabbit hole every day. That's what keeps the job interesting. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, we've I know that everyone I know is throwing you curveballs over the over the years my brother in law Wiley do frame is always a big customer and he would always give you crazy tasks to find right?

Yes, and Wiley is is good for keeping us on our toes. And when he has a lot of time on his hands we

so and you know you got you guys are shut down, right? Like everyone else or no?

Well, we're, we're filling website orders. So going in three days a week to pack and fill orders and so forth. But no browsing, but we're still answering lots of questions. Helping people choose books. Sometimes for you know, obscure questions and sometimes very general ones, like you know, I want to start baking bread,

man. Well, you know, don't do it. You're gonna trigger Anastasia Anastasia hates all of the COVID based bread baking. No, no, no.

Again, it's not about bread baking. It's about the couples that are like, showing off their bread baking skills together. That's all that's why I don't resent DAX I told you this Dave. Yeah, but it's

kind of the same hatred. You have a ramps though. No, but you might snap snap. I don't

know. No, it's way different. Yeah, I do like grams but it's the over excitement about something that's been around for a really long time like it's it's it just seems

you mean like their significant other

their over excitement for their significant other? Yeah, who's

been around for a long time and now they have to pay attention. No, I'm

saying the practice of right yeah, maybe that maybe it extends to that to man, I haven't. I haven't gone to therapy in six weeks. So.

So alright, so the so I brought you on, obviously for classics in the field, Matt, but one of the things I want to mention, have you noticed this fact? So I was researching a I was researching a book Look, and I realized that a book that should not be rare is right now, like as of this week $150, whereas prior to the COVID outbreak online, the book was like, $30. Have you noticed that there's been on stuff that's not exactly rare, but people aren't resupplying. They're, they're used stuff. So certain prices on crazy books have just shot through the roof.

Well, online book prices are, are baffling jungle, and there's all kinds of crazy stuff all the time that I see in terms of prices, you know, people put us crazy price on and just sort of, you know, wait for the greater fool to come along and buy it. And I also think that people are like, sitting around and going through their cabinets and saying, Well, I don't use this anymore. I wonder if I could get some money for it. And they're throwing it out there with some absurd priors. And then somebody else comes along and says, Well, I wasn't gonna sell this for 20 bucks. But look, this guy's asking $55 Why don't I asked 65. And, and then there are these bizarre price climbs on books that actually nobody's buying. I mean, the weird. The dangerous thing about looking at Amazon, for instance, is you don't really know that anybody's paying those prices. I watch prices on books sometimes. And you see the same seller with the same book for hundreds of dollars for months at a time. So and then, you know, for us, somebody comes in and says, Oh, I want to sell you a copy of this book, because it's $500 on Amazon, and maybe it's not really getting $500. So it's always good to be patient about about hard to find books, because you just don't know what to believe eBay is a better place to see what the real action is. Because you can see what sold and what people have actually paid. What

like how much is there still an opportunity to just like, go find good books in like boxes of books? Or is that is that gone? The way of the dodo? Does that not exist anymore?

Oh, it still happens. But it was never like, you know, you were going to buy a house in the Hamptons, because you you went to a garage sale and upstate and came back with three rare books and you know, that kind of thing. You know, it's not, you're not going to find the Declaration of Independence in a thrift store that people dream about. You know, we do a lot with selling older books. We we try very hard when we're putting out a list of older books to tell people about them to give the story in the background. We're going out later this week with an offer of a book that was from the personal collection of a guy who was exiled from Naples, because he pissed off the King of Naples, and he fled to England and decided that food was so horrible that he was going to improve the the British dining habits. So he wrote books, he collected marks, and we ended up with a couple of things out of his collection. So you tell a story like that about books and people become caught up, they become engaged and give them context. That's hard to do that online sometimes. If you've got somebody who's just going through a box and slapping prices on them,

how much extra value is there on someone having owned a book?

It depends a lot on who that someone is. And, and also how much you can tell me sort of, you know, cared and engaged about it, but it can, you know, it's the stories, right? If you have, I'm just going to make something up off the top of my head. I don't know that this is out there. But if you have a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child's inscribed in gave the James Beard that's going to really amplify the price. And that's already a book that's carries a high price. So, you know, she described it to beard, you know, I would say double the price of a otherwise inscribed first edition.

So So you're saying I should go out and forge that right now?

Well, I'm not giving any anybody.

I mean, I'm hesitant to even tell you about the book that I was interested in just because I don't want the price to get pushed up. Because it's one of those things where if even five more people want it, then it's going to be a problem for me to get it when the time comes. You don't I'm saying? Because the book that I want to get is online scanned, but it's a the scanned copy is horrible, and I just can't stand readings, scanned books online. As opposed to having a real copy. You know what I mean?

Yeah, it's it's the whole experience of reading online is is is different in some things that works really well. Oh, but it tends to be with something that was written and formatted for that purpose. Whereas a scan of an older book is it can be a real makes it nice.

Well, maybe I'll talk to you about it offline. Yeah. Because it needs to be a classic in the field. This book that I'm thinking of, which I'm teasing everyone with now, is amazing. It's an amazing book. It's fantastic. I'll give this hint, which is not going to give it away. It was rediscovered by Shirley Cora here, and she came up because I had Harold McGee call her to find out information on the author of that French cake book that I talked about last week. His name it name escapes me. He's what was his name? It was a to

Bruce Healy. And

so like someone on, you know, a listener was like, there's no information on the internet about Bruce Healy. He's kind of dropped off the map. So I was like, Well, I saw that surely Cory here had written the introduction or the foreword to like one of his books. And so I was like, well, Harold knows Shirley. And she's still going strong apparently is still writing a book now and someday we'll put would you say if I had to choose one of her books would you do bake wise as a classics in the field or cook wise? I Harold says bake wise.

I agree with Harold. That's that's where it truly is hard is is the baking. We

actually had. We had a listener right in yesterday in the chat classics in the field recommendation. They also noted your podcast was recommended to me by Matthew Voss of Marvell bar in Minneapolis. He said it was his favorite podcast, because it was in every episode since then, the book that they were recommending was cook wise by Shirley gore.

While we're doing we're going to work, we're thinking back Well, I've look, I've only met her once or twice, but she's an amazing person. But anyway, so she rediscovered when she or I should say she wrote about and allowed other people to discover I'm sure she had had it in her collection a long time, this book. So it's only readers of bake Wise, who by the way, which right now, is currently at a relatively high price. And his is scarce as a used book, which is kind of interesting for a book that's so recent. But I think that's just a COVID related phenomenon. You know what I mean? But whatever. But this book is just amazing. I can't believe but I can't, I don't want to pay $150 for it, you know what I'm saying?

You should, you should send me an email. Let's see what we can do. I don't even know what this book yet I

don't worry people we all this will become clearer if you continue to be you listeners of our podcast. As soon as I get my hands on a copy, then I'll do classics in the fifth because as of now, I haven't done any classics that I don't personally own a copy of although again, that could that could change. Like I've never done the gastronomical regenerator because I don't own a copy. I have scans and that's in fact, early on, you won't remember this, Matt but I, I went to the New York Public Library, and kind of like maybe 2001 2002 Pretty soon after I discovered your store, and with a really like, you know, rudimentary at the time digital camera, got their copy of the gastronomica generator and the gastronomica generator, for those of you that don't know, is a book by Alexis Sawyer, who is kind of one of that fairly early generation of their maybe two generations after the French Revolution. French chef moved to England when you know, France was exporting its culinary prowess like nobody's business. You wanted a French chef. Anyway, he was the French chef who would move to England had a place called the Reform Club, and wrote a giant book called The gastronomical regenerator, which was I learned about that, because that was one of the MFK Fisher's favorite books. And so when I was reading MFK Fisher, is how I got turned on the gastronomica generator, I went to the New York Public Library, which at the time, had all of their cookbooks in the public library. They've since been shipped to Jersey, so it takes a day to see them if you want to see one of them, and sat down there for like four or five hours with a camera taking a picture of every page like an idiot. And then I printed it out. I brought a printed out copy to kitchen Arts and Letters. That was many. That was decades ago. But how to get on this was I talking about gastronomica generator, who knows. So like I won't do a copy of that, but at the time the gastronomica generator was like a $400 book, is it still like a $400 book?

If you can find an original you, I think $400 would be a good price. There are, you know, some scans out there and so forth, but they're the quality on a lot of those scans is uneven. So you'd say extra chances. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So what do you guys think we should do? Should we do the classics in the field now? And then afterwards, if we have time answer some questions. Should we answer some questions first and then do classics and Phil, what do you guys think? Which we

do the same person who wrote in with the classics recommendation, I'm surely corer did have a question for you. I don't know if you want to group the two.

All right. Is it a cookbook related question? Because when we have Matt on the phone, we should do some we should if we have cookbook related questions, we should do them if anyone's going into the chat room with questions about cookbooks, as they say, now,

is that not a cookbook related question?

So we could all right, give me the question. Give me the question.

So this was from Mark Kay. He asked if you can make a reasonable argument as to why I would believe the calories my body absorbs from a given food are the same as the energy released by that food and a bomb calorimeter sure they're not well, they're

not there's no way they are. Yeah, okay. There's absolutely no way that they are. That's like a it's a bogus argument. That's why, in general, in general, the whole argument is banana dilemma, you know what I mean? Like, like, the whole way that these things are measured is is is not baggy. You know what I mean?

I mean, that's basically what he was asserting. So okay.

Yeah. All right. All right. Good. All right. So do you guys think we should do like a couple questions and then classics I think we should do class. What do you What? What? What? Alright, right. So the first ever guest edition of classic food hero. All right, Matt, take it away. What do you got for us? I hear you brought two classics in the field

I did. And they don't seem to be that similar though. I think they are linked by a very common thread which is context. The first one is a book by Jane Grigson called charcuterie and French pork cookery. It was originally published in the mid 1960s. For people out there who are looking around there was a US edition with a slightly different title, called the art of making sausages patties and other charcuterie. And this is a book that has been continuously in print for 50 years. It is astonishingly detailed for a book that was targeted at home cooks. But it is it is passionate, it is careful. It is sometimes very offhand about what you might be willing to do and what you might be able to obtain. But it's also incredibly informative about the way French people handle pork. And it's the result of years that she and her husband spent living in a little town in the laoire called tro which was it is a village that still notable for the fact that has a lot of traveler died homes, houses that are built into cave walls in the stone of the region. But throughout the book Grigson is talking about what you would find how you would find these different dishes in shock coutries shops in France. She's telling you about how a home version might differ from what you get in the shop. And she's just really taking your interest incredibly seriously when it comes to handling, handling cork and preserving it.

So interesting thing about this book, and I remember many years ago, this was so 2004 Maybe 2005. I was working for food Arts at the time and the the book charcuterie the kind of Ruhlman Polson book was not yet out. It was it was in galleys, and I had gotten a galley and I was asked to write about books on charcuterie and at the time before the that book came out my copy says it's called The Art of short period of the 1991 Echo press paperback edition. It it was the only book available right and I think I even asked you like except for the extremely professional. You know that that French? That French professional said that was translated and it was like $150 book or whatever. It was the only available

book. Yeah, the cotton so yeah.

So it's kind of amazing that this was the only book available. I remember at the time I was really young when I read it, and it made me a little bit nervous because like all of the rest So I wanted to, you know, now that I have you, I'll ask you the recipes for nitrates and nitrites. They all recommend, at least the ones that I remember recommend saltpeter as an ingredient. And is that just a bad translation out of the French? Was she actually or she actually specifying saltpeter? Which is what everyone prior to the 90s used to recommend for curing? Like, what do you think the deal is with with that?

I think she was actually specifying and I mean, she gives instructions on on going to the chemists to get it. That was that was in common usage.

Yeah. Because I mean, I remember that would be that was one of the reasons why I was kind of loath to do a lot of the like, kind of longer cured things was because of the specification of, again, I was also young and cocky at the time I didn't, I couldn't like look past my own generation, you know what I mean? Because, you know, when I first got this book, which it was sometime in the 90s, you know, I was still in my 20s. Alright, What Does anybody else know? You know what I mean? I, I probably haven't reread it since 2000. Since since about 2003 2004. So I think I should go back and reread it. I think one of the interesting things about America is we tend to focus on the cultures that we learn things from, and especially after the charcuterie book that you know, Polson, and those guys put out and the wave of Italian stuff that happened and kind of the salumi craze. A lot of people's focus on cured meats in general, is very Italian now in the in the US. And I think maybe that's another reason why a lot of people don't know this work, which was much more focused on kind of French, you would think that French would be the charcuterie to be just because of the huge range of security, but really, in the US, we tend to focus more on Italian products. What do you think?

I think that's very true. I mean, it's been a sexiness to, to Italian foods that was coming starting to come on strong in the 90s. And I mean, it's continued to be with us, there was a point in the 90s, when I think publishers were just slapping the word Italian on anything and putting it out there. And that's, that's fallen back now. But people overlook the fact that, you know, we're in English, we're using a French word to describe to describe these products. And there is a comfort level in this book, with with curing me that that speaks of a really long acquaintance she talks about, and my French pronunciation is not strong. So forgive me salwaar, which is basically a Brian crock that she kept on the counter into which you would, she would add things and just leave them there mixing together. So she started recommends starting out with a five pound loin of pork, a boned leg of pork, a hawk, two pound piece of pork belly. And then when she calls a shifting population of trotters, ears, tails, pieces of pork skin, and anything else the butcher throws in for copper too. And this was the thing she would reach into and pull pieces out and use as needed. We don't approach me carrying that way, these days, we've been made afraid of it. And possibly for good reason. But it's a it's a kind of intimacy with the food that that has been lost as we've become more regimented, and more, more disciplined in our in our approach. And then the very specific temperature, the very specific salinity of the water. That's not what she was doing. And that's not what the women she was learning from.

And she let the other good thing is She's a good writer, you know what I mean? Like, you want to read the book. And this is the only like, how come she don't think she's maintained? Her theme among the general public is because she was writing such specific books like her other books, the mushroom feast, any good,

beautiful. Well, I mean, this is I think one of the things that if you were to if you have a listener from the UK, everybody there no shingrix Her work has stayed in print there. It's commonly available. It's highly revered. She died fairly early in 1990. She had cancer. But she was a writer for the observer. She was a weekly columnist. So it's It's, to a degree the way Elizabeth David isn't particularly well known here versus the UK. She never quite broke out.

So the famous French hammer, look at this one section of the book, this, the famous French hammer Shalonda Bian. I've always been interested. I've only had it a couple of times, but she has the first English recipe I've ever seen for it. So, for those of you that don't know, in the I became kind of obsessed with cured hams lot many decades. Anyway, this is it. So this is her simplified version. Here's a simplified version to be attempted after after the hay harvest in a dry summer, right so this to give you an idea of the way she writes one leg of pork to and then she has dry salting, notice she doesn't say dry brining, because that doesn't exist. There is salting and then there is brining. I don't understand why there has to be a word dry. Brian, do you guys understand that? No, there's salting and there's brining whatever. Two pounds salt, two tablespoons saltpeter halftime granulated sugar. She then has a brine with red wine. And then specifies six cups soft or rainwater. And other three tablespoons of salt peter block salt, sea salt, rosemary and olive oil. And then I'll just read a little bit she goes, if you have a hand from a newly killed pig, you will have to beat it with a piece of clean wood. One of those old fashioned butter pads are excellent for this. This brings out a certain amount of blood and also smooths out the wrinkles in the skin. So this is the kind of writing that she does threat a piece of strong string through the knuckles so that you can suspend the hammer over a dish in a dry airy place for three to five days according to temperature, you will find that a pinkish liquid runs out, mop it off twice a day, at least, if you were buying the lake straight from a butcher tell him what you want it for. You will probably not have to go through the above performance. The next step is to remove the bone which is not too difficult provided you have a small very sharp knife and plenty of elbow room. So she just has a very nice kind of tone and lyrical writing. And you know tells you to beat things with bats and then hang them over plates until a pinkish liquid comes out, which is all enjoyable. You should read it right.

Yeah, she has this infectious confidence. And it's, it's inspiring.

enjoyable, I'm gonna also get his mushroom feast cheap. I want to pick that up. I like any sort of feast of mushrooms

mushroom feast is it should be around fairly easily. There is an edition currently distributed in the United States by a British publisher called GrubStreet.

Do you see called GrubStreet?

GrubStreet? Yeah, but

not GrubStreet the website?

No, no, this is this is older than you know than that GrubStreet the website is just a new kid on the block. This is the this is a publisher that's been around for decades and decades and they're actually named for for the tradition in Britain of doing work for hire.

Alright, so do you want to then talk about your second one and then how you think they tie in or shirt

or we also we do have a question for you in the chat about cookbooks. Okay, just just can you recommend an Ethiopian cookbook the best Ethiopian cookbook you

guys are aware, you know, it has been one of the great excuse me tragedies of American publishing that Ethiopian cookbooks have not existed in English, except when self published by enterprising Ethiopian ingredients. There was a book that came out last year called Ethiopia by a man whose last name I am going to pronounce wrong because I don't have it in front of me get brances and it's a it's actually a very serious, detailed book with a lot of regional material. Prior to that, it was an enormous fight to find material on English on Ethiopian cooking. And it's inexplicable to me that something that is so specific and has such a strong cultural character was not well represented

English This episode is brought to you by vendor table a monthly food subscription service for avid home cooks focused on delicious and sustainable pantry items. I recently received the essentials box and one of my favorite items in that box was the rancho Gordo. alluvia Blanca beans so they're like a little white bean almost kind of like a navy bean. And I did it you know fairly traditionally instead of water. I used chicken stock which I guess isn't really traditional. Throw it into my rice cooker. with some rosemary and a bunch of Bailey's, some people don't really believe that Bailey's have a flavor or help with flatulence, but I know they have a flavor and even if there's a possibility that they help with flatulence, I'll add them. Then you hit the rice cooker you walk away from it and you throw some garlic into a good amount of garlic. Came back in a couple of hours rice cooker was done beans were delicious. Delicious. Go to bento table.com. To start your own monthly subscription use the discount code capital H capital R capital N, like Harry's radio network to get $20 off a new subscription and bento table will donate $10 to support cooking issues and all of hrs programming. Alright, so on to your second classic.

Okay, so my second recommendation is a book called flat breads and flavors by Jeffrey Alford. And they only do good. The subtitle is a baker's Atlas. And this is a tour around the world of the different flatbreads produced in different cultures. And the foods that are eaten with them. And it goes through Central Asia. It goes through China and Malaysia. It goes through India and Sri Lanka, through the middle east through North Africa, through Europe through North America. And it covers, you know, familiar things that you might think of immediately like PETA or Tchaikovsky's, but it has, for instance, a non that's made by the Uighur people and CashKaro in western China. It has a griddle bread called Murtabak from Malaysia that is the dough is sort of flung and folded in this elaborate pizza like preparation. Before it's being cooked on a griddle. It has a corn bread from corn and wheat bread from India called Tikka it's it has all these amazing breads. Five breads are basically the earliest type of bread that human beings prepared. loaf pans came along a lot later. And they they're integral to so many concerts. And the most appealing thing about the way these two people handle this book is that they give you a sense about why this bread in this place, is it the terrain, it doesn't require them to grow a certain grain here is fuels for short supply do they have to have highly efficient ovens do they have to be able to cook it over griddled over a fire as opposed to say a retain heat oven which might take a lot of fuel to get up to speed and be useful only in a large community. So they're they're plugging all these things together to show you where this food comes from and why it's eat. They also happen to choose really enticing exciting foods with lots of lots of flavors in here. But it's a I think, beautiful tour of the world.

Now, for those of you that don't know, the these two authors like that, their their whole Migaila. Right, was to they were a husband wife team. They've they got divorced sometime in the mid 2000s. They were like they were a husband, wife team. And they would they would choose a subject right the the one of theirs that I happen to own is seductions of rice, which I believe I bought from you and they would go like all over the world but in generally in kind of Asia writ large, so least the other book that I have, I guess because it's rice and they would see how similar style of ingredient or ingredient like rice or flatbread, in this case, was translated to different areas, different cultures, different uses, and they would have kind of a chapter on each locale and they would have spent, you know, a decent chunk of time and each place kind of learning and also taking you know, great photos of what's going on because that's that's kind of part of it. Right? Would you say that's an accurate it's kind of that was their their MO right.

That was definitely the way with the later books. flatbreads doesn't have a photography, unfortunately that the later books do. But it still has some pretty amazing storytelling. There's an account of their bicycling through I think it's in Turkmenistan and stopped to watch a young woman who's firing up an outdoor oven and she's going to be placing Brad's on the side of the inside of the oven. And as she's getting ready to do this, her mother in law comes out to watch her and And then some of the breads fall from the side of the oven into the fire. And the young woman is almost in tears as their brother in law stands there, glowering. And they see all this without being able to speak a word of the local language. But it's a sense about how integral these foods are to these to these faces. And this

has to say, having a bread fall into the fire off the side mean, I've only done it with a tandoor. But having a bread fall off the fire off the side into the fire is an embarrassing and humiliating moment. Really is really just it sucks. Because once it falls in there, and it catches on fire, if you ever like a you know, have you guys watched The Simpsons where Homer is cooking a whole pig, and Lisa, whose daughter is turned vegetarian and so she somehow like he gets the pig and the pig, like goes on this like journey through the air and like all through all this terrible thing and homers chasing it saying it's still good. It's still good, it's still good. Like, that's what it feels like when the bread falls into the fire and you try to think you're gonna get it, but you're like, it's still good. It's still good. And it's not it sucks. It's burnt. It's got charcoal in it, it's ruined, you've ruined it ruined. Anyway. So one of the things I wanted to kind of ask you, this is an interesting point, is that I wonder how this kind of in fact, you know, five years ago, I mean, after they got divorced, I know they split. And he she's, I think still in Toronto, right? And then, and then he like moved off to Thailand and like kind of became a recluse and wrote a book that no one has read, as far as I know, called chicken in a mango tree or something like this. Yes. About a time is that a good book, by the way?

It's a very idiosyncratic book. There's really nothing else out there like it. But I think you have to already be pretty knowledgeable about Thai cuisine for me,

he moved to a compare speaking village in Thailand and just like, lived there for four years and kind of, you know, started living with a woman from that village, and then wrote a book about, you know, cooking up scorpions and whatnot. Right? Is that basically the long and short of it?

That's yeah, I think that's the short. That's the

short. Yeah. But that book, like no one, I guess, because he, he doesn't have a publishing regime behind them anymore. Like that book didn't do any business. Right?

It was it was not particularly active. I mean, it was not well represented, I think, in the market. And it was a nuff of a departure from what he'd done previously. People who knew his name didn't quite make the connection. Right.

So so my question is, is kind of in today's world? And by today, I mean, like the past five years, right? Where do you think this kind of project would fit in, like the idea of I was thinking about it in terms of a lot of the problems when I'm looking at my own books going back, and I'm for classics in the field. And I'm rereading books that I, you know, I read 20 years ago, sometimes, you know, 25 years ago, and I picked them up again, or historic books that I've, you know, read recently is trying to kind of parse the meaning at the time. What is the how do you think a project like two white folk from Canada, in this case, Toronto, like going around the world mining different cultures for their for their information? I know, that's not how this is actually working in the book, but it's more just like, they're trying to thread the whole world together by looking at the differences in different applications of similar ideas all over the world. But how do you think that that project would be viewed if it was coming out today versus when it did in the 90s?

I think it would still be fairly receptive because their whole attitude towards what they're doing is, is it's it's not patronizing, and they're not trying to say here, we've improved this for you.

Right, they're not appropriating and

I mean, that that they would have met I mean, both of them together we'd say, you know, they're not giving you the recipe exactly as they got it wherever it was ate it, because you can't get the same you know, flour. That somebody who's making bread in the mountains, Tajikistan and scanning. So they, you know, they had to adapt to what they could get in their in their home kitchen in Toronto and to what they thought their readers could reasonably adapt. But they're also really always intimately in putting interested in putting you in touch With the culture that the food comes from, which is different than like, say, my writing a cookbook on why don't we say Ethiopian food and saying well, no, here's my. Here's my ketogenic Ethiopian cookbook. You know, here's my Ethiopian smoothie collection. And I think that kind of

appropriate write that book. Please write that book.

Yeah, the Keto. The keto smoothie Ethiopian cookbook, I can I can turn that off.

Yeah. Well, first of all, I don't I've heard it a million times. What exactly is keto? Is that just high protein?

keto is high fat,

high fat. Okay. Now, are you familiar with the Midwest? Or of course you are the PI shake?

No, actually, I'm I'm intrigued, but I don't think I've encountered it. Yeah. And

there's a there's a Midwestern North Northern, I believe it's like Michigan, Minnesota, that kind of area where, like, there's a number of restaurants where when you order a milkshake, you're like, Yeah, you want a slice of pie in that and you're like, yeah, yeah. And then they like throw pie into the milkshake. And you blend it in it's pie shape. All right, no, but okay, that just that that exists, that's a thing. Right? You know, just take that for what take that for what it is, then. So I would assume that your Ethiopian shake book, you would be throwing in JIRA and doing like pie shake with in JIRA in it, so that you would have the full in JIRA as though you were eating and Ethiopian. By the way, for those of you that don't know I've never been to any help in restaurant in JIRA is the bread that you you know that the tip in the old days was made exclusively with teff, which is a grain from Ethiopia. Now in the US, you're lucky if there's any freaking Taff in your stuff at all. But Peter Kim shows favorite punching bag and the emeritus director of or the, you know, former director of museum of food and drink. He says that if the most Ethiopian restaurants at least in New York, if you call them a day in advance and say you want 100% TEF that they'll do it for a fee, which is a good thing to know. But anyway, so that's the, it's the flatbread that they use, which I know I looked up the table of contents of the flatbread book that you were talking about classics in the field, there is an engineer recipe and is there not?