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

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

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

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

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

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

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

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

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Today's show will be brought to you by Bob's Red Mill believers in good food for all learn more at Bob's Red mill.com/podcast.

My name is Hannah Fordham. I'm the membership coordinator at her does radio network. But even before I joined the team, I loved listening to Hrn during my subway commute, it made the time go quickly and left me feeling inspired for the day ahead. Hrn listeners tune in from all over the world. But there are a few traits that we all have in common, no matter where we listen from a curious palate, the fierceness to make a difference and a hunger for lifelong learning about the culinary world. As you know heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit. To deliver the most ambitious entertaining and of the moment stories in 2018. We need your help, we need to raise $150,000 By December 31 To accomplish these goals and to keep your favorite shows on the air. Together we can make this hrs most exciting, impactful and delicious year yet, no matter how much you choose to give. You'll feel awesome next time you tune in knowing that we wouldn't be here without you. Become a member by donating today. Join us at Heritage radio network.org/donate And you'll immediately start enjoying benefits such as VIP invitations to HR and events where you will mix and mingle with your favorite hosts. Plus, we have great member swag. Show up your Hrn pride with a T shirt or keep your hands safe in the kitchen with an HR and potholder memberships also make a perfect holiday gift for all the foodies in your life this year. Why not give the gift of food radio. You'll hear your generosity and action for the year to come. help keep our lights on and our mics hot by pledging your support today at Heritage radio network.org/donate Thanks for listening

this is Dave Arnold, your host agents coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 from Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, not joined as usual with Anastasia hammer Lopez because she has family obligations to attend. We do have my man David in the booth How you doing? Good, how are you? Doing well and special, special guest special guest host today, Jack Schramm, Jack Schramm, formerly the head bartender of Booker and DAX future head bartender of the as yet unnamed as yet unannounced bar that we will be starting sooner rather than later. It's not our hope, Jack.

I think he just announced it.

Well,

everybody knows there's gonna be a bar. It's just what, where, when, how?

Also, some of you who came to Booker and DAX and had some of Jack's fine drinks may not know this. formerly worked at Milk Bar can answer all of your milk bar questions. Also, formerly was a Food Studies person at NYU. So he went he went home. On breaks. Would you study some I studied food. Oh,

right. No, ma was very supportive. Everyone was supportive. Yeah, they Yeah, their food. Food humans. Yeah. So care about what they eat. You didn't have to know there was no, no need to explain. I worked at a butcher in high school like it. It made sense. All right. It was a logical kind of Butcher was it just a small family owned? It was like 100 years old. Yeah. The community in Alamo California.

Where the heck is Alamo? California?

East Bay that just like 40 minutes east of San Francisco. And then not very exciting part of the Bay Area. Remember the

Alamo? Exactly. That's a different Alamo. Different very different. But it may be Alamo the car rental places from where you were you were working. I doubt it. That from Alamo, Texas, I would assume so. Hey, interesting fact. So. So I think I told Jack that some people have heard this. My my stepfather's father who you know, died this year in his mid 90s was a butcher for many years. And his, his father actually started the butcher came over came over from Italy in in like 1906 or whatever started the, you know, work for a couple of years started a butcher shop in the north end. And when he died, I got you know, his butcher knives and just hung it up his scale. Oh, that's awesome. I've never picked her up yet. Check out this. It's 1912 Pat. And so you know, it's before like 1924. So it was like early on in their shop and stayed in their shop the entire time. They were open. And it was made in Boston, which is where their shop was caught and Chadwick car and Chadwick Bucha scales, it's still got the legal it's still got like the inspection sticker the legal for use, inspect, like tag on it. And it's an all spring scale is all it's pretty sweet. Does it

still function? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, craftsmanship.

But here's the thing, right? It hung low in the butcher shop. So the top of it was impeccable. Like, clean, impeccable. Yeah. And people could see over the counter underneath. Right? It had like, where are the two because it's a hanging scales and old school hanging scale. They were the two rods go down to hold the platform onto the spring weight thing. Like, decades of like, lamb grease oozed over and there was like this, like, you know, like these dams of lamb grease underneath. That's pretty sweet.

There's no dirty floor like the areas of a butcher that customers can't see. It's It's terrifying. Yeah. Things that you'll find. Yeah. Yeah. Decades of animal, just raw animal build up? Well, I mean, it solidifies over time. No, absolutely. But still, you know, it's like, it's like layers of sedimentary rock. Yeah, but made of animals.

And it has that it has a texture of like asphalt. Yeah, it's like, you know, some thick, fully firm, fully firm. Nice. So like, I'm going to use that in my next My Next, go and expand. Right.

And that'll be the title of the episode. Thanks. Fully firm. Yeah.

Nice. And we're not even talking about pectin, methyl esterase, which is something I wanted to use at the bar. Oh, by the way, calling all your questions I said this before but calling all your questions to 718-497-2128 that's 718-497-2128 or you can send them on in into the chat room. But Jack SRAM has all of the booker index specs that I do not so for instance, he actually sent them to me but I can never find them fast enough but probably in his head he still has most of them. So all of you, you know, we're like how do you make the thunder not I'm like well, I know roughly how it works but I don't know the actual actual specs and so we can you know, Jack here

it's been over a year but I've still got them all pretty good. Yeah. So blah pins

asked me for one when he sent me those beers to spin out and I never sent this back to him because I don't know. You know, like, I just don't know somebody specs it unless it's my actual personal spec. I didn't have to make it on a day in day out basis. And so I just don't know it, but Jack does so calling all of your spec, and we're still going to do that a book or index reunion. We should do it maybe like at Like as we're about to open to a booker and DAX reunion special

Yeah, that sounds great. Here. I know everybody would be super into it.

Yes. Before shifts so people can come in. Absolutely. Yeah. So any any news in the world of foods and or drinks? Jack that you can think of?

Not not in the broader world of food. I feel like what what's exciting right now is anything.

Everything and nothing is always exciting. You're learning everything's exciting. What about you, Dave? You have any cooking issues over the weekend before I get into these?

Beef stew in the slow cooker? Nothing remarkable.

What kind of slow cooker Do you on?

It is Oh god, I'm blanking on the name. Of course.

Now let's style are you an instapot person? Well,

it is a wait, it isn't instapot Yeah. All right. So it's a combo slow cooker pressure cooker. It's great.

So you're part of the instapot revolution. I guess. That was a genius move. I mean, like for years I was saying why don't they combine all this crap and then but I'm too stupid instead I'm building like torture torture attachments and and all this other stuff. The jetties I never built a jetty. Oh, you just like to talk about it. I love to jam things into the jetties. Well, who doesn't? Yes, I like the way I like to jam. You know, when I have a carrot. I like to jam my carrot into a machete. Obviously, that's yeah, that's what the majority is for. That's the majority is accepting carrots. That was maybe one of our all time greatest running gags was people calling in the Jedi stuff anyway. So how was your beef stew? Oh,

it was delicious. Yeah, yeah. Okay,

so my problem with pressure cooked beef stews in general. And pressure cooker in general is fantastic for a lot of things. And you should get the hit pressure cooker book and all this. But the issue with it is remember that in a pressure cooker, there is not a lot of reduction. So when you're throwing meats into a pressure cooker, and cooking them Allah stew style, they tend to be very liquidy. When you pull them out, like let's say you're doing a chili or some something like this. And so you need to adjust your liquid levels going in. But, buddy, but but but if you adjust your liquid levels too low, your Scotch, your Scotch, which is no good. So in general, a lot of times what I'll do is I'll try to hover that level right around where where it's going to scorch. And if you had like, maybe your instapot never scorches, maybe it's like good at that or like, you know, I use the I use the Breville. Now, what's it called like that? What's the what's the Breville called? Like? It's called, like the temperature freak. It's literally called, I think the temperature freak, or something like this, or the precision freak. And I think it has the word freak in it.

Do they understand that you are their target market when they named it?

I think so because they sent me one for free. Is it called it? They looked it up? Is it temperature freak? Something like this? I don't know. Yeah, give me a minute. But so with that, you know, you're not going to scorch your product because it's never going to overshoot too much. And I guess you know, I'm in a lot of, you know, work with like the Cuisinart, and stuff like this in terms of scorch. I mean, really, when you have a pressure cooker the advantage that my problem in fact, my I shouldn't say my mom doesn't listen to this, so it's fine. So my brother in law was like, so should we get this instapot it's only 1000 watts. He doesn't talk like that. We usually get like 1000 watts for your mind, because you know, I thought maybe we'd get one of these things and I was like 1000 Watts is kind of weak, right? Because my problem with these electric pressure cookers is is that you're gonna want to brown your crap before you cook it in a stew form. Do you brown your crap before you did your stew? No, I did not Jesus Why were you following some sort of dump meal? Would you pour from Dr. Pepper in the damn thing beforehand? I

mean, it essentially was like a dump meal I guess. Yeah, just yeah, I've done this before. It's slow cooks for 12 hours so it doesn't need Browning

what doesn't need Browning

oh god here we go.

What liquid did you pour it in?

I use a combination of a one and water I told you this is nothing remarkable it's just

for God's Jesus what's the point of being alive without the my hard reaction shame

me for my slow cooking.

I'm not shaming you for your Slowking well so cooking by the way is different from pressure cooking and slow cooking you know exactly so definitely brown stuff before pressure cooking. Yeah, well I mean what you're doing as you're faking those those things by with the A one you're just you're using it what is a one anyway it's a one wash your sauce plus ketchup plus water plus vinegar. What is it? What

is a one sounds about right but uh yeah, by the

way, wish your sauce fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. Love it.

By the way it's the Breville Control Freak smart induction cooker Control Freak control runs $1,800 at West or no William Sonoma,

so it does contain the word freak.

Yes. Control Freak

freak. Anyway, it's a good it's a good unit. It's a great unit. I like it. You know when I saw you saw the the induction I want induction to take over like I want it to take over like you know it wasn't. My pot doesn't work. Really your pot doesn't work. You were like how many pots like of the pots that I already own before I ever owned an induction overhand Half of them work on an induction unit and the other half can be like, you know, wiggled around. Yeah, the main ones that don't work is if you own any big, like inexpensive aluminum pots like turkey fryers, which I do, obviously, you know, I mean, anyway, yeah, point being like, IKEA now sells an induction unit for like 20 bucks. So back to what I was saying on the slow cooker. So the instant pots only 1000 watts. And the problem is, is that if you're not an enemy of quality, Dave, you're gonna want to brown your meats before they go in. Or, like let's say you're okay, did you put the onions into the stew? Yeah. Okay, thank Christ. You put some monies into this do now.

Did you were living in a society you know? Right. Did you?

Did you at least sweat the freaking onions? No. Okay, so if you're going to do any such things like sweating your onions or Browning your meat,

I need the Stasi here to back me up today where she

family obligations. So like my point is, is that 1000 Watts is a little low for Browning meats, it's just a little sluggish for Browning meats. And if you're doing relatively large things, it takes a while for 1000 Watts to heat your stuff up. Now if you're slow cooking, who gives a crap? It's not you know, who gives a crap or slow cooking your slow cooking? Yeah. So he gives a crap even as a rice cooker really? Who gives a crap unless you're making a boat ton of rice. It's really not that much of a load and the amount of time it takes that much of a load and the amount of time it takes to get up to that. Like have we spoken about the limbo maniacs on the show before? The song the metal thing so toilets flooded the load won't fit anyway, the terrible song terrible song, but really good musicians. It's one of those Limbo maniacs was one of those limo maniacs was one of those groups that had a lot of good musicians with terrible lyric ideas. Just terrible ideas. Read terrible songs. You know, bad. vocalization. Like you played live. Yeah. I never saw them like that. When you see kind of like YouTube. Yeah, you too. All I can think about with YouTube is like they lost me when they lost the Ning running and Nina like, I'm a big fan of YouTube back in the negative and negative I got Yeah.

guitar pedal list. Sure. Sure.

That's like when YouTube is when you hear that negative thing happening? You're like, oh, yeah, you too. Yeah.

The streets don't have a name. Yeah. Then like, you know,

I'm still with them in the brain. Brown day too. I'm fine with that, like later on, but like this newer stuff. I just not, it's not my it's not my cup of tea snacks. I'm not with them anymore. Anyway, lines are being drawn. So back to back to this instapot thing. I think 1000 Watts is what I would love to see is a 1500 watt induction cooker. instapot. So like, you know, like my Zojirushi rice maker, which is like very high high wattage induction unit. I saw one by the way. I think I mentioned this on the air. When I went to China, I realized how far behind we are in rice cooker technology because I thought I had a really nice rice cooker and I have the nicest rice cooker that the average person could buy here in the US. I got it as a gift. I didn't spend my own money. But I picked up this one in China. And I was like, damn, this is a nice release cook. I was like, Holy crap. I picked up the rice pot. And I was like, I wouldn't be proud to own this pot. Like this. Just the insert pot. I was like, this is nice.

High quality. High quality is a Rolls rice. Oh,

by the way, one of our head punches and we'll talk about puns and names when

you get you up the rimshot Oh,

I don't know. Oh, anyway, she ate it if you did. So I asked. I asked the guy I was like, How much does this cost? In the end? He's like, that's, that's $1,000 I was like, Ooh, I was like, You know what it feels like $1,000 If I guess if I was gonna get married again. And I ate rice every day. And everyone was in that wedding spending mood. I'd be like,

get me the length this rice cooker. I want to start with and other

rice cooker. You know, I mean, because I would use that rice cooker. At least 1/30 As much as a car. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, and a car is like $30,000 Yeah, absolutely. So you know, I mean, and you can't drive you know, you can't you know, I guess you can't use your car as a cooking implement. There's several books written on this on using on using your tailpipe. No, usually the engine block but most of the stuff was written for relatively older vehicles. I don't know if they ever did a motorcycle follow up because first of all, like you know where the heat on your motorcycle is is really dependent on how the engine layout works but I think they expected you to have some sort of like you know, you know straight six or something like I don't know, I don't know what the heck they were. I don't know what they're expecting you to cook but they have a bunch of recipes that all you know boil down to wrap your crap in aluminum foil, strap it on, you know to your engine block are thinking They kind of jam it into the top into like the valve cover area, and then just drive until it's done. So it's mainly items that you're not worried about overcooking. You know, I'm saying,

Yeah, I would never, never attempt but in a pinch, I mean, post apocalyptic.

I, you wouldn't, you'd never attempt it. If you're driving from like San Francisco to like Yosemite or up the Sierras. You would never be like, You know what? You know what, why not?

I'm gonna save some time at the campsite.

Yeah, yeah. So you know, that did tell you that. I'm not going to get into like, your last time I was over there. I had a picnic at where the Donner Pass was, and literally a picnic. Yeah, where the people were, you know, eating the people. And it was all I could talk about. My wife was like, oh, it's like, a that's disrespectful, and be like, What the hell? That's gross. I'm trying to eat. We're talking about people eating people. And I'm like, Yeah, but we're eating our picnic where the people eat the people. You know what I mean? It's like, I couldn't get around

it were far enough removed that Donner Party jokes. I think they're okay. Yes. Pull out too soon.

What about that? What about the people from that point alive and in Chile, where they crashed and the people ate the people. They're still alive. Those people who ate the people, the people who got eaten were not alive. And don't make the jokes to the people that ate the people that made people relate to people. Yeah. Anyway. Oh, got the rimshot. So anyway, back to the instapot, I would love to see an instapot like that. And also, you know, you were saying before Dave, enemy, enemy of quality, I'd like to make a distinction. So everybody knows, we are all this is the difference between a low quality individual and an enemy of quality. We are all low quality individuals, because we are all fallible, we're all weak, we are all low quality individuals, right? The enemy of quality, we aspire to be better quality than we are. And that's, that's what makes us redeemable low quality individuals as opposed to, you know, non redeemable, right. And that's the whole thing we are we're, I feel we are worthy of making ourselves better, and therefore we're okay. But in fact, as I've said many times, as everybody knows, if you don't have a little bit of you know, of self loathing, how are you going to get better?

Absolutely. You need you need to have that drive to improve right

all the time. If you say you're like, Oh, I'm great. I'm so efficient. Everything I do is awesome. You're useless. You it means everything you do is

gotten done for you to get better. And you're horrible that

you're there anyway. Not not not my point. But going ahead, you want to go and yeah, but enemy of quality. Quality, as opposed to low quality individual is someone who actively works against quality, a Satan, the devil, enemy of quality.

So making the choice to not get better and to not improve systems

and actively ruining things. Yeah. Right. Like, I am not sure where I come down on pre browning. But we'll get into anyway. So we have a caller. Yeah, I call it you're on the air.

Hi, Dave. Quick comment about the Instant Pot discussion. And the beast using this since y'all were on it for so long was on sort of instant pot. No, it's alright, I'm a big fan of the Instant Pot, as many people are, I was really surprised at how nice the liner in that is. I sometimes will take that out and use it on the stovetop. And in fact, that's my big because the power on it's not super great. Like you were saying you can get things jumpstarted on the stovetop with the liner and then move the hot pot liner to the Instant Pot. So you can do all your searing over a high BTUs burner and then move it you know to the Instant Pot proper and then it'll get up the pressure really quickly.

Oh, that's an excellent point. Because yeah, I can't do that for instance with my rice cooker insert or with the Cuisinart insert because they're Teflon coated and they're not rated for that kind of stuff. But from my reading the instapot is a an uncoated stainless insert and so it shouldn't care what the hell you do to it right?

Yeah, in the end, the cladding on the bottom is actually pretty thick so it does a relatively good job. The only complaint is that sort of narrow just because it's a you know liner pot so it's not really going to evaporate off a whole lot but it's it's quality I mean it's you know for I think 65 on Prime Day for an instant pot

Nice. Well that's a really good tip actually I didn't because I didn't think about you because like I'm so used to those inserts not being a either being so thin that you wouldn't like you scorch like a like a mother if you put it onto a burner or be you know not being rated for it like I would never put my rice cooker bowl on on a burner. That's a good tip and, and are you like me when you do that? Like what I typically will do is is I always do meats in in batches, and then throw them in the bowl then so the liquid drip off back into the thing to evaporate a little before I dump in just so I don't water everything down too much you follow the same kind of protocol when you're doing the pre Brown.

Yeah, I do the same thing. Sometimes I'll even, you know, get a couple of Dutch ovens going, and then move it all just because I'm a hate, you know, it'll take you an hour to properly brown everything separately. But then if you have a couple of big things on the stove, you can just get your mirror off. You can do your meat and batches. More clean up but faster. So

yeah, I mean, the one Yeah, I mean, it'd be nice if someone figured out some because it's just the multiple part cleanup thing. And I will talk about this that there's time later I tried. I attempted to try a new cleaning technology over the weekend, unsuccessfully. So and while I have you on the air before we go to the question that you're going to talk about what are your thoughts on not pre Browning or pre sweating your alliums

the alliums in particular, either one

just to your thoughts.

I don't know I always brown it off, beforehand. But I very rarely, I'm always going for the darkest. You the darkest gravy the most my rd roasty saying and that's the thing is that if you're not doing a conventional braise, and you don't get that evaporation, you're not getting that browning on top that you would normally get even if you didn't sear it off. Like if you're doing an oven braise with the lid off, or something like that. So if you're going to be doing it in a closed environment, that's when I would always hear off first because this higher, yeah, higher tip my our products are not going to get. So

I'm gonna go ahead and say that you're on the side that's over here. You're not on the side of the booth. on that.

Can we just clarify? Does the Browning need to happen for both slow cooking and pressure cooking you're saying or just pressure cooking?

I'm really both but the thing is that you're cooking for so long with the slow cooker. It's gonna kind of happen.

Right? Right. You know, it just sounds like people are

stuck for this year at the beginning. All those flavor compounds also developed over the course of the 12 hour cooked right

and as I said we do brown before pressure cooking. Okay, listen, this further questions,

issues challenge someone take this up, someone take this up, do it two identical pots, two identical recipes, one pre brown one, don't cook 12 hours report back someone someone out there, that room has the energy to do this chat room, someone step up and help us out, call in, we'll give you a we'll give you like five, six minutes of reporting time on cooking issues to report your findings. You call in you let us know whether or not there was a big difference. Now if you're really a high quality individual, you will or not as low quality as you might otherwise be. You'll do a triangle test with people so they can see if they can tell it apart. But okay, so if anyone wants to do it, like, I'll give you even more time and more kudos. If you do the triangle tests, maybe we'll give you some sort of a prize. Like maybe we'll give you a heritage Radio Network food radio since 2009. T shirt? I don't know. I'm not saying we will, because I don't have the power to do that. But maybe anyway. So now what's your question?

Oh, one final thing on Instant Pot, just be real quick. I was actually really surprised looking at their little recipe book that came with it, how friendly to quality they are. So like in their beef stew recipe. It's brown, brown everything off first. And then there's, after you've cooked the meat, then you strain out the mere PLA and get the stock back to normal and add like vegetables in stages. And it's very built very linear, very clean. And it's you know, it follows best practices, which is kind of weird in this appliance, which is sort of sold as like a, you know, it's an eight in one wonder thing. And all you have to do is press a button and walk away. But then you look at the recipes and they're like, Well, if you were a decent human being and you gave a damn, this is how you would actually do it.

Well, I like to hear stuff like that. Maybe the people who make it or cooks I don't know who makes it. You know, that sounds like good people that bless them. You know anyone? First of all, like anyone that like advances quality in a non judgmental way, unlike what I was doing today. So judgy so judgy Yeah, look, we're among friends. You can be judgey among friends, I think. Anyway, let's see. What was your question?

Here's my question. Got a quarter boneless Suriano ham come in, as well as Edwards. Oh,

stop. Is he selling them again? Or is this old stock,

they're back in stock. Sold out. They've got some bottomless quarters and fully burned out ones available, but they're going fast.

Let me interrupt you for one second as well as Edwards who was a longtime supporter of the Radio Network. Hear him. I've known him for many, many, many years. You know, since I don't know like, oh four something like this was is one of the finest ham producers in the Surrey area of Virginia. Tidewater, Virginia. You know, family's been doing it for eight, you know, eight bazillion years. His grandfather wrote an article in the 60s about how he was going to a ham was going to hell in a handbasket because they got rid of peanut feed or the whole nine that guy Real Deal Guy, as well as Edward. Anyways. A couple of years ago, his his establishment burned to the ground. There were wild dogs running on his property eating scorched hands, and we all cried bitter tears because his, especially his his high end ham, which he called Suriano. I disliked that name intensely. But it's, it's a very good product. And I'm happy to see that it's back right now. Go ahead.

Yeah, and also just had to like, go get it, because it's going to be gone. If you want some

really high quality ham really beautiful. Nothing brings the salt or the funk. Like it worked. Yeah.

How old? Are they right now? Are they are they where they are? They were saying 400 days. 400 days. Nice. That's good. That's good. Good cutting time. All right, so go ahead.

And so the only time I've ever had this ham was on by one visit to Booker and DAX. Yeah.

Did you get the taste? Like a one

kind of random night that I happen to be in New York City. Like, unexpectedly my flight got canceled. And someone said, Is there anywhere you want to go? So I went there. Got the ham plate. And the pork buttons, because we had dinner reservations afterwards.

So did you do it? Did you put a slice of ham? Did you tuck it into the pork bun? Because that was definitely the moon card. But that was that's a turbo button.

Really? Yeah. The new place by the way, will not have buns. One thing it will not have is pork buns. Because to be honest with you, like there was a guy named bonito, who was the original pork bun maker at Booker index and prior to Booker index just at sambar. And he would it this is how he operated. He always had the same pleasant look on his face. 100% of the time. And it was air when in. Funds came out. air goes in. bonds go out I love

markable stuff. Just a feat of endurance and strength and every

one person every bond perfect. No no light tackle no dry edges.

Oh no. Just a perfect layer of hoisin just oh no Miss

pays place. cucumber slices. Oh, absolutely not every like when you looked at his station, people would order like a billion bonds, please. And like they would all look like perfect. Like you would like Decapitator Kermit the Frog right through the mouth open because that's how he would lay them out. You know what I mean? And oh my God,

and he maintain the steam level in his been basket perfectly. They're always so pillowy soft. Yeah. Never soggy. Never dry or cold.

So NATO was a good a good man. Yeah, yeah. And he's not dead. He just went to go work somewhere else. Yeah. For more money anyway. Oh, I didn't say that. But I did. Okay, so you have this. You have a quarter of us which quarter of the of the ham Do you have?

I don't know. Yeah, it's coming in the mail later, but it's burned out. And I guess my question is, you know, do you have any servings? I mean, I would just put it on the plate and eat it correctly. Yeah. Pairing suggestions, or, I mean, I was thinking about doing the sort of espresso powder, red eye gravy and air quotes that like the the Momofuku group

you guys did to me, that is the best thing

they ever came out of there. They're pairing pipes and delicious product. Yeah, I

love that product. And so like, I'm gonna go ahead and say that, you know, of all the things that that crew ever came up with that red eye gravy mayonnaise is maybe the best one. I love that stuff. I think it's somewhat polarizing. Some people don't like it right? Bad people.

I've never met anyone that doesn't like it. Right? If you didn't know

it was gonna happen beforehand. First of all, like red eye gravy. I mean, I grew up with it, because my grandma used to make actual red eye gravy with coffee and you know, and the drippings and stuff but so I have a particular soft spot for it in general, that stuff is delicious, but I will tell you what you can do. You know, the old joke is, you know, a couple of Virginia Ham has a definition of forever because it lasts forever. You don't cook it whatever you do. Don't Don't cook it right. I mean, obviously, you know, yeah, you can, but you should you should not. So what I like to do is when when God invented the American country ham, he really wanted you to eat it with eggs. You know what I'm saying? So like, like Ross like Like so like, let's say you're gonna make a pizza, you fire up a pizza. And then you do like a fried egg on top. And then after it comes out of the oven, you put some thin slices of this over top of that, that is delicious. Or even, like, you take scrambled eggs and you cut some up thin and put it over the scrambled eggs after it cooks. That's, that's delicious. I just eat it straight and sandwiches, it's good and cheese plates. It's good. I mean, anything that it would be good. Anything that you would use a, you know, a pursuit dough style thing for you could use it here, but I particularly love it with eggs. And so because I like eggs more than the average person when I cook for myself when I'm alone, which doesn't happen hardly ever anymore when I'm alone. All I consume is eggs. And so like you know poached eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs on toast and if I have country handlers, country ham all all over, up and down that

and I think you'll find that if you're a person like myself and Dave, if you have a ham in your home, it's not gonna last that long, not just gonna be slicing rice, like you're bored, you slice some ham, you're hungry, you slice some ham, you're tired, a little bit of ham

a bit of hand a little bit every situation here I'm gonna go a little bit against what I normally say and I'm going to tell you some of my own personal things that I don't like with that style of hand now because American hams have that kind of funk and a little bit of that kind of I guess it's lipid oxide lipid oxidation so I don't know what it is but there's a little bit of thing I don't think It pairs well with carbonated beverages. I can agree with that. Yeah, so like I wouldn't do like I'm not big on like a champagne and country ham tasting not I mean

if it's like super oxidative champagne like into the the nutty side of things then it could be nice but the bubble just drink Sherry get some share get some really good Sherry and eat a ton of ham. Yeah,

but but be aware that you will have a horrible headache the next day, you will have just a rotten now There's been recent evidence that that hangovers merely mimic the symptoms of dehydration but let me tell you, you will have the actual symptoms of dehydration if what you're doing is pounding nuts, cheese, ham, and cherry even though that is delicious. Yeah, you will have a severe headache. I'm going to tell you this. It is worth it. Absolutely I would I would I would take that headache any day but just remember when you're pounding a lot of ham hydrate in the in professionally by the way, when you're tasting should you ever become a country ham tasting professional. Like Dr. Norman Marriott was who used to be the food safety guy at Virginia Tech and who wrote some of the books on how to make country ham once told me apple cider so like not carbonated not alcoholic, although I like them both carbonated and alcoholic. But apple cider is the palate cleanser of choice when doing country hands and so also any form of thing like that as a natural pairing with a country ham so like your apple butters, your apple sauces. Your your that cooked, that cooked Apple note that you get out of? You know what I mean?

Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So I mean, the situation that I have is I'm gonna basically be using it as like a appetizers sort of situation on Thanksgiving. For my like, family, so think apples would be kind of like a festive like seasonal accompaniment.

Yeah, Apple, you know, you might want to look into that's fun, is I like to do if you can get any cooking pears or pears that don't get too messed up when you when you cook them. What used to be known as wardens like I like I love like a mixed apple pear sauce. Like if you look at the old medieval recipes like chard Ward, and it's like these old pear sauces back when people used to do cooking pears a lot. I mean, it's not it's kind of gone by the wayside. But I love and I love it like a cooked down like little bit sweet apple pear mix. And that kind of a compote would be delicious with with a ham but like, honestly, like I would just sit there chewing on that I would just be sitting there slicing a piece of ham for myself, what form of slicing Are you going to do?

So my plan right now is I have a you Nagisa, like 300 millimeter sushi slicer right? That's got the chisel grind only on one edge. So I'm going to try to use that it's a little sick. So I don't know if that's going to work, but I have other slicers to try out as well. But it'll be done by hand. And I don't, you know, just kind of slip. So have you ever been to Zingerman's and Ann Arbor, Michigan? I have not. I've never been I've never been to an arbor Taylor deli there and they have bunch of hams behind the counter that you know, they slice off the ham on the rack by hand. And so if you want like three ounces of ham, it'll take them 20 minutes.

Yeah, They were the first big chain. I know this because I spoke to someone there back in like, oh 405 When I was doing a lot of my right after I had done my initial country ham research, and they were the first big place to start serving American hams this way. And you know, and like literally I would go in whenever I went into a store, I would go into Dean and DeLuca. And I would say, you ham selection is garbage. Why is your ham selection? So garbage? And they would they were like, Who are you get out of here. You know what I mean? And, to my knowledge, even though I never got to visit them Zingerman's was the first and for a long time, the only establishment that gave a crap about it. So yeah, I'd love to go there.

It's a beautiful place. Anyway, well, thanks for your recommendations.

Before you go, Listen, here's the question I have. Because when I say quarter hand that the real question is which part of the hammer you're going to get that like, because I don't know whether I'm assuming he's not breaking the cushion off. And then I'm assuming they're boning it out. And then they're going to cross cut it. So you're getting some section of a cross cut of a ham. And the I think that's what I think that's what it's going to be based on the picture right? And so American style ham serving as a cross cut kind of a phenomenon, but as you're I'm sure you're aware, the Spanish and as Treasury Casella will tell you whose ham is delicious, by the way,

I need to try to raise him. Yeah. Yeah, he, you know, he

uses the old style hand cutting an old style hand cutting is not a cross cutting technology, if they're cutting long ways, and they're doing that, you know, what you would think of as the hand cut that they would do in Spain. And so they're, it's just a jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, jiggle with the slicer and making those like kind of long waves. And I used to not like I've come around to liking them both for different things. So just be aware that the easiest way to get crosscut style things with the unagi if you have an entire piece of hand is to remove the harder smaller part of the muscle that's underneath the bone, you'll see it's very much darker, and then that is hard to put that down and you can I would not shave that one with the unagi I would use something a little bit, a little bit with a firmer of a back and just shave that as you would something harder because it's usually harder. Then take the cushion section that you have lay that down flat on the board and that you can get long nice dry slices with your Nagi if you trim the you just trim only trim the skin back on the area that you're about to cut that will preserve the kind of the rest of it. So trim back just the area on that and obviously not with your unagi else. Put that down and then those you can get nice draw slices off but I would not attempt to slice the entire thing as a piece. And if you have a quarter cut thing I would not attempt to do the long Spanish style cuts because you just don't have that that the length of ham to do it on. Alright. Alright.