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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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues on your host of cooking issues coming to you on heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 on hair. Anyway Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick Brooklyn joined as usual, it was a fast cut off in the clap there.

Yeah, well, they're very disciplined.

Wow. Wow. Do you first Dave Dave in the booth with the with the fast clap. What up? How you doing? Good. How are you? I'm doing all right. Last week I was in Denver. Right? I want to talk about that.

Is it a dispensary?

I did not in fact delivers. Sorry, visit a dispensary. As you may or may not know, I am not a user of marijuana. I have no problem with it. It's just it's never been my thing. I'm more of a liquor guy. Now. I know people who are very, very fond of it. And it is a fantastic place to go. Are you a dispensary person? No, really? Because like when it becomes legal here, will you use it?

Maybe I don't know. I gotta find the right kind, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. And got Anastasia hammer. Lopez. How're you doing? Good. Yeah, good. So we have some interesting things to talk about. First of all today, today, the well Bob's Red Mill just signed on to do more. What's it called? sponsorship of the of the radio program. Right? Well, those guys love the Bob's Red Mill. As we've said many times, it is not Bob's mill that is red. It is Bob's Red Mill there as a there's no green. There's no Green Mill. There's no purple mill. It's not like the dude's got like 15 mills and Red Mill is one of them. It's just Bob's Red Mill. And as part of a signing on, you know to be a sponsor of the show, he sent us a Bob's bobblehead. So what do you think of it starts right here on the table. It is a hefty bobblehead and you notice dasya I will say it this way. It's bobbleheads are the exact opposite of like the camera. You know how they say the camera like puts on 10 pounds, the bobble head like takes off 1015 pounds, you know what I mean? That's it to the head. Right takes it out of the body and as your forehead. Another interesting thing, I don't know if you guys know this, but bobbleheads like a high quality bobblehead which Bob's Red Mill bobbleheads. Very high quality. They ship with a neck brace on them so that they don't bobble in transit. Did you know that? Yeah, the heads totally locked in transit and then only Bibles when it's removed from its Bible brace.

Anyone any unauthorized bubbling? No,

no, yeah. First of all, the one thing is, is that you don't want someone it's like, why would you? Here's my least favorite fleet phrase people use about you. Why would you? If you get the milk for free? Why buy the cow? You know what I mean? I hate that phrase.

either. You're gonna say it is what it is. You hate that phrase. It's

the worst. What do you mean? Because it just like because it's endless.

It's circular logic. Well, but

it is what it is, is what you it's supposed to be meaningless because it's like, I have nothing to add here. I'm just going to string some words together so that there's not a pause in the conversation. Nothing. No one likes it when you just say nothing. If you just say nothing. That's like super awkward. Like, right, stop. If you're like, if you're like, I can't believe this broke. This sucks. Oh my god, what are we gonna do? Like?

It is what it is, is like that one phrase, you always say? No choice? No problem.

No, no, no choice. No problem is I say that, when you know, someone's like, getting all bent out of shape, and there's nothing they're going to freakin do about it. Right? It is what it is. You don't even usually when you say it is what it is. You could just say nothing if it weren't awkward. Am I right, Dave? Yeah. But like, for instance, on a radio program, you can't just have awkward silence. That doesn't work.

That's about as long as I can. Hear it is what it is.

Also, let me just let me just throw in one more that I that I really hate, which is let's agree to disagree.

Yeah, because that's not an agreement. And first of all, that's such like, it's such an aggressive thing to say, You know what? Let's agree to disagree. Now,

it's saying like, I do not accept your logic, I am just going to turn inward and double down on my incorrect thinking, well, but it

also assumes that you're correct to right. I mean, like, when you say, Let's disagree. It's like Natalie. It's like I'm still right, and you're not worth discussing is true. I mean,

that's, that's presupposing that one person is right, in this equation. But that's not always true.

No, but I think anyone that says that just believes they are right. And also doesn't believe you're worth trying to turn to the correct side. Yeah, I mean, it's like, I don't know. It's, let's agree to disagree. On the meaning of that. So also, see recently what I do, I went to Denver visited a candy factory, which I am allowed to talk to, I can't talk about why I was there. We could talk about visiting.

saw you on a show.

Oh, yeah, I am on an episode of Man. on Netflix, Nicole Byer and Jacques Torres. I haven't seen it. I won't see it. I won't watch it. Yeah, they

really did you see oh, no, I'm not watching anything. I'm in never, like you do ever watch you on a show? No, of

course not. You can't, you can barely watch me in the real life. And you know, like, in the real life, at least you can make fun of me. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like on a show? Yeah, you can't even make fun of me and have me know about it. Because, you know, for those of you that know, Anastasia is a cruel hearted person. That's true. But she doesn't enjoy, right? But she doesn't enjoy making fun of you unless you get to get her back. And she doesn't like, like one sided making felt like she does why she doesn't make fun of dead people. Because what's the point? They can't come back at her? You know what I mean? Like, so for all of her like inherent cruelty she she likes to she likes to code. Yeah, she likes to you know, she doesn't mind like taking it as well as, as you know, is giving it out. And so and that's the reason why I can get along with her if she if she was just a you know, one way or the other. I couldn't couldn't handle it. That's why the Stasi and I, which is we shouldn't talk about bad to say but like, you know, we can be kind of punishing on people. But we know whether they're going to survive working with us or not. If they give it back to us. You know what I mean?

When Booker was at work, Mark was like, instance, he's a mean person, isn't she? And Booker was like, No, never. I've known her for 10 years. Yeah, well, that was like That is so sweet.

Yeah, because okay, we stasis also preferentially, certain people. Yeah, so Booker of Booker and DAX. My children Booker now is an employee of pasta, flyer. Nepotism. Yeah, sounds like hashtag never because we want like, like, how was supposed to get your first job. So and I was super proud. He worked a fry station, which is like super. I mean, like, what could be better? I mean, that's all

he didn't say multiple times to the other staff members on TradeStation. I'm very sensitive to heat.

Yeah, you know, it's funny, he got he got home and burned himself at home. Oh, wow. I was like, you know, what, if you're gonna work in the foodservice industry and you're worried about getting burnt, like, I mean, your career is not very long here. You know what I mean? Do you know John Oliver? Yes. He did a string together of Rachael Ray saying Net her fingers don't have any feeling anymore. Oh my God is so hilarious. So it's Rachael Ray, but he cut it so that she just looks really kind of like depressed and beaten down. She looks like she doesn't have feelings of any kind anymore, right? But she's basically just like trying to say that she's cooked for a long time and so she can't feel her fingertips anymore because they've been burned so often. But if you see it all strung together, she's like, No. He's funny. He's funny guy anyway. So also with pasta flour. Not only is Booker working there, but Anastasia now has found a new skill. What is it miss dasya?

Oh, I am. I am a connoisseur of black people. Made of tread carefully here. Yeah. freehand construction paper portraiture.

Yeah, why is portraiture? Yeah, so this Stasi calls me and says this to me. I'm like this Asya first of all, what? I'm like, What? What first of all, like, yeah, as Dave said, you're treading on some super thin ice here. I don't know where you're going with this. Right. Dave? Do you even still know where she's going with this?

I hesitate to ask. Alright, just

ask me. Where are you going with this we

so we try to get a lot of famous people to to eat our food. And I'm and I've, we've catered for Saturday Night Live and then twice, twice, and the routes. And we have these boxes that we give out. And I try to put something funny about the person on each box, the celebrity on each box. And so like it's like Leslie Jones didn't trust you. If you deleted that out and said I don't trust this box. I'm suspicious

but when you did the routes what happened first of all to say what you did for the routes which was good

each of their faces on the box construction paper so that you can freely know like template

a day. Did you know this was a genre freehand construction, paper portraiture, and there's the me. Yeah, well, there you go. The Stasha with the freehand construction, paper portraiture, and then what happened

and then one of the routes, the keyboardist posted his portrait on his Instagram. And he got a lot of comments from other famous people like DJ Jazzy Jeff, and the guy that wrote the Chappelle Show, which I was really proud of. And they were all making fun of drawing freehand because I was able portraiture that I did, which I like, because I can take it

because you could take it as a skill. What's the one you couldn't take? It was it was

Ashley Jones. Why put it like that? She was suspicious of it.

Like it's like she knows my heart. What do you mean? She shouldn't be suspicious? Alright, calling your questions to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 All right. So should we do some actual questions on a question based program?

Start with the shape of water.

I don't know what's in the cocktail. So you know Quinn Quinn, who? I'll read that it's because it's somewhere you put this somewhere in the document right? Notch. Okay, this is from Quinn, who called and he was the one who wanted to know about, I guess, working in the business, right how to get started in this business of kind of tech related stuff. He's on Vancouver Island, and he can't really travel. Anyway, not sure if you or Dave or big movie people, but I thought you might find this cool. I developed a carbonated cocktail based on the shape of water. And one of the actors from the movie made it which actor from the movie made it?

I'm I've never seen the movie. Oh, it's

a good movie. I liked it. I watched it. Anyway. Go check him out. Check out the Quinn's YouTube which is what's his YouTube thing it's called Cooking by q or something like this. Cooking with Q check it out. I like carbonated I believe it was a mixture of blue curacao of which by the way, everyone here knows I'm not a fan of the blue curse out. Hear me tell you why. Let me tell you why I don't like blue collar. So even though so I had a rule at Booker and DAX have no blue curacao in the house. Like we wouldn't stock it. We wouldn't use it. If you want a blue cocktail. Just use fmdc Blue, right, because I want to use a high quality orange product. I'll use quatro, I'll use grande learn yay. I'll use Columbia I'll use a good tasting orange product. And then I will just make the crap blue with artificial food color. Because you know how they make blue curacao, they take crappy orange liqueur, and then add fmdc blue food coloring to it. So you might as well just skip the middle person and get a good tasting product and add fake color to what do you think Dave? Yeah, yeah, but then I'm like hey, guess what? Let's not add fake coloring to our stuff because I don't like that. Now this this is me. So then the first thing Nick Bennett does Nick Bennett. You know former Head bartender poker DAX before Jack SRAM goes to start his own program at porchlight very first signature drink on the menu is full of blue carousels like Nick man, Nick, but it's he still makes it's like one of his better known better known drinks. Look, I appreciate what you hate it. Why do I hate it? Yeah, it doesn't fit my style. I hate it for me. I don't actually mind the taste but my thing is, is that I would I would prefer using Hang a better liqour with blue food coloring. So I literally would just add blue food coloring if you want the blue. Do you know what I mean? Like, first of all, like, why should? Why should blue drinks just be limited to ones that you want orange flavor in? Right? I mean, if you're thinking of like a flavor that would be orange, would it be I mean sorry, blue would it be orange would be blue raspberry, which also doesn't exist. That's like the interesting like how to like, like, there's been a couple of case studies and how the idea of blue raspberry came to be a thing because there aren't any blue raspberries. There aren't even blue blueberries, you think it would be blueberry, right? The promise real blueberry has a very heavy purple tangent, so you can never get it to be blue. In order to get an actual blue color. In a stirred style drink. Or even like a tiki style drink. You need to start with a clear base, right? And so like a lot of these triple sec, Quadra things are clear, which makes them ideal for food coloring addition, whereas things that have like raspberry, like real raspberry or any blueberry in them are so darkly pigmented already, that you can't ride over them with that kind of neon blue. But the shape of water cocktail, he also added some green Chartreuse to it. Which by the way, always a good thing. I'm very huge fan of chartreuse and carbonated cocktails. Very huge fan love. A little bit goes a long way a little bit. Although you remember that one drink you didn't like it, but it's called chartreuse. It was just water, Green Chartreuse, and and clarified lines. It's

on fire, though.

No, just called sharp truth was shut down. You're talking about the hot chocolate. So there's a classic hot chocolate and chartreuse thing. No, but this is just chartreuse, water and, and clarified line carbonated. And it's real good. But you have to really real good but you have to like you have to like green Chartreuse. lochia

Yeah, like drinking it just just straight. Yeah,

yeah. Made by those crazy monks. All right. To Okay, now, back to a question here.

Tell the story of Daniel Day Lewis is role

that's your story. No, it's not. Where do you what do you mean? What do you mean?

Water? I know it's not in that he's in what is he and David phantom

he retired and and he's gonna bake pastries now.

No. So for the Phantom, it's the red

PT Anderson movie that got like no publicity.

Yeah, he made his wife a full on Couture dress.

Of course. Yeah. Something like

this. Your thing is

cooking. It's like, oh, it's like, well, we'll get into it later. Let's see. Yeah. Do

you make mistakes to dress?

No, no. It's like basically no,

actually, it was Jen Dave's wife who was like you imagine living with him. When he's doing these roles like Lincoln when he was like Lincoln when he came home to his wife

or like build a butcher pool. Imagine, like, you know, this method after you come home at night and you're like living with Bill the butcher freaking pool and he's not showered for like a month. And he's like, throwing cleavers into the table and wearing that damn top hat. But you never know who's gonna come home at night. So we were joking. You know, Daniel Day Lewis, his toughest role ever loving father of two in Hoboken? You want to come home and act normal. You know what? But anyway, all right.

New Lifetime movie starring Daniel Day Lewis.

Like, like, confidence roll today? It kind of wouldn't be right but yeah, yeah. Anyway, so Kevin writes in Long story short, of course, I'm not going to make it short. Right, cuz I'm gonna go into 510 tangents. Long story short, I want to open a cafe slash fast casual lunch spot in San Francisco, and had a couple of questions for Dave and his dasya Anastasia, don't do it

get out.

Well, fast, casual. So what's the difference? Cystoscopy? What's the difference between quick service like a quick service which is what everyone's shooting for and fast casual? It's like just once a subset of the other

fast casual is more expensive. Like 11 to $12 and services would sit down and get your food taken table service

Yeah, imagine quick service you don't sit right service. You don't sit or there's like, more like fast food.

So fast. Casual is like that. You're Applebee's?

Yeah, tgi Yeah. That's still sit down. So fast. Casual. Casual is candy sit down. Can be Oh, man. I don't know. Anyway. All right.

Now that now that you are the expert on opening these, these situations? All right. I had a couple of questions for Dave and Anastasia. Hey, would you ever move back to the Bay Area?

No, never. No. Not ever. Why? Why don't I didn't really like it. You don't like the place

or the people? Both? Wow.

You got that East Coast. Yeah, attitude.

You don't like it? You know how like shark skin, like Anastasia will always rub against shark skin the wrong way. You know, I'm saying it's like saying someone from someone from San Francisco will rub their hand along shark skin in the way that won't cut them. I don't like Anastasia will always go the abrasive direction.

I don't like the rich people who dress like crap. You know, like all this Silicon Valley people and all that stuff. If you're gonna like, I would rather be a rich wasp.

Okay, so Anastasia used to be a fan of Bjork until what? She got her eyes. She saw Bjork at a party and her sneakers were dirty. And like she's like, That lady is too rich to be wearing filthy sneakers. I'm done with her. That's later yeah, where was she? She was at a Questlove salon anyway.

So the whole guiding philosophy is act your income bracket. Yeah, no, it's

just, it's just talking my if I were super rich, I would go live on Central Park, south or west and not go to like deep Brooklyn and

new pair of sneakers every day, every day, a new pair of sneakers. Wow.

Zappos would love that.

Right? Anyway. Okay, a little more background, I run a non currently run a nonprofit that trains folks transitioning out of homelessness, training them in the kitchen. My style of cooking is plant based. So I guess that means vegetarian, right? Possibly vegan. What do you think Dave? is plant based mean? vegan or vegetarian? Unclear? Unclear. I guess eggs not a plant. So plant based, though, can have other stuff. I can have a plant based cooking that has bacon as an accent. No, it can't, can't I? It's based in plants.

It's all very vague.

It's not based in me. It's based in plenty. Yeah, it's unclear if you mean vegetarian, Kevin, let me know. Plant based Mexican inspired cuisine. We've been doing dinner pop ups for about a year now, but want to have more regularity. And so more food by having our own space question when opening a new food business. Here's where you come into status. Yeah, what's your process like for recipe testing and deciding on your core product slash the thing that people will know and seek you out for? This will be our first brick and mortar food business. Any general advice you'd give me or similar people for starting their? First we'd love to hear about both of your experiences. It does go.

I would stick with the popups and not open your own place.

Come on. You hated doing the pop up. That sucks, too.

But yeah,

well, let's see. Okay, so the main difference between the powers where

the restaurant is in place.

Like you know what I like everything about the food business, except the people that make the food and the people that eat the food. Right now,

if you leave the theater fine. Yeah, but Okay, so

here's what I'm going to say as long as they're paying you difference between a pop up and a, like a full on brick and mortar space is that you have more, I would say more control over the consumer in a pop up scenario than you have in a in a brick and mortar. For this reason, in a pop up, everyone knows it's kind of a limited time, only people a lot of times are seeking out a pop up. So they already kind of know what your stick is. And so you have a little more leeway, I would say in a pop up to go outside of someone's normal envelope or comfort zone, then you would having a brick and mortar space. And unless you have such a well known stick that people are going are being driven to your brick and mortar space by your stick right when you say that's true. And so it's the same way that like when you're doing cooking demonstrations, or live events where you get to control the customer experience more than you would in a normal dining scenario, you get to go a little further outside of someone's normal zone because you have the ability to kind of steer their mind in the direction you want it to go. Whereas in a sit down environment or if they're if they're just coming in off the street for foot traffic, it's not necessarily the same. I think the same goes with press press have a different expectation of an establishment when it is a permanent establishment than when it's a pop up. When you say yeah, yeah. And so you have to like they're worried a lot more about and you have to worry a lot more about are you cultivating regulars I'd much rather have. I'd much rather have like a base of regulars because they're like steady and you get them going in. So you have to design also around, you know, you design different kinds of meals, different kinds of things, if you expect someone to eat it, you know, once a week, as opposed to is this a once a month or once a year or once in your life kind of a situation when you say that? Yeah, yeah. And the other thing is, is that I would do I as Anastasia says, I would do a lot of pop ups beforehand, because what you like or even what's successful in one or two pop ups isn't necessarily going to be the the hit later on down the road. And there's not only what is a hit? Well, here's the the flip side of that something when you're developing something, Anastasia, you can know about this more than anyone like you want that sucker especially it's fast, casual bulletproof, right? I'm assuming if it's fast casual, that means that eventually you don't want to have to be there every day. And if you don't want to be there every day A either you're going to commissary that stuff out or you're going to cook it in the back and relatively large batches it needs to be, you need form. And you're going to need to make sure that whoever's executing on the end isn't going to hose your hose your product and kind of kind of ruin it. So the hardest part is, is developing your recipes such that they can be bullet proofed. Right. Well,

you know, Mark hasn't not been at the restaurant since reopened. Because nothing is bulletproof. Yeah, but that's what he's working employees with, you know, all of your good intentions of helping people. They just care about their paycheck.

Wow. Wow, good luck. Well, that's the thing like don't expect, like, if you're in a fine dining establishment, right, or if you're doing something, you know, nonprofit, you can get true believers and true believers will work because they're true believers, right? Once you're in a, it's just a paycheck environment, then you have to worry that they no longer care. And if they no longer care, then the product has to be truly bullets. Right? That means

that's why McDonald's, you know, that's why all those places are, there's no cooking

day because nobody cares. Right? Right, grab, no, but the hard part there is is that is that if your supply chain doesn't make make sure this stuff's a real Cook, right? Is on the fly, changing what they're doing constantly based on the input they get. So if the produce comes in, and it's different today than it was yesterday, or the week before you adjust on the fly, that's actually the hard part about doing the kind of bar that like I'm doing most bartenders aren't used to having to do lots of on the fly adjustment for ingredients, because most bartending work is done with ingredients that you can just buy in their standard, you know, or they're in a relatively narrow, you know, range of stuff, once you start dealing with produce that can be vastly different from day to day becomes very hard to bulletproof your recipes. And so I think that's, that's what you need to kind of focus on, don't focus on what you can make, you know, yourself or when you're leading the crew, what can you pull off, it's more like, what is the highest quality slam dunking is best thing that I can make that's resilient. So that's why and resilient doesn't necessarily mean in cooking. And in bar resilient doesn't necessarily mean identical. Obviously, you're focusing on consistency, right? That's the main thing consistency from day to day, from cook to cook from, you know, week to week, but you have to accept the fact that there is going to be variance. And so certain recipes are what I like to call stable. In other words, a change in a particular ingredient, one way or the other, is not going to drastically change the flavor of the dish. And some recipes are very unstable. And so I would steer away from recipes where slight changes in the seasoning, slight changes in the cooking time, slight changes in the whole time on the line change to radically change the change the outcome of the dish, what do you think so,

ya know, how are you finding your employees? And did you ever worry at Booker and DAX, that people were not representing the drink the way that you imagined it to be?

Well, no, but I like the thing about Booker and DAX was is that I loved our team. I loved our crew, you know what I mean? And I thought, you know, the vast, vast majority of the people that I worked with at Booker and DAX wanted to be in the bar as professionals, and they were devoted to doing a good job, you know, what I mean? And that's, you know, that's the benefit in a way, you know, in a way people outside people don't understand how hard it is to try to design a program around people that don't necessarily care about the product you know what I mean? Like it's I would say it's probably harder we look at Mark Right So Mark now is running pasta flyer and before was running Del Posto everyone in Del Posto you know fanciest Italian restaurant there is here right everyone there was a believer you know what I mean? Like they're all you know mean everyone on the team especially the higher ups on the team they're all like aiming every day to try to produce the best product they can What does he thinks harder working Del Posto are working pasta flour and pasta plan right and people don't the like regular outside person doesn't understand and you're doing what

like 200 like 500 covers a night it though posters sometimes in three different dining rooms and cute and all and like a lot more going on than a 2000 square foot fast food place.

Right but you can trust it everyone on your team, like their primary goal. Now people are incompetent as Anastasia knows people make mistakes, but everyone on the team is focused on the quality not on money because they can make more money doing something else most of these people, right? And I felt the same at Booker and DAX I think it's inherently harder to try to make a top quality product. When we think of the work involved in having to take yourself out of the equation, people don't respect the amount of work it takes to make a good product that is invariant over the over the cook over the right.

I would apply this dynamic to heritage radio, in fact, yeah, so I don't really want to get into it. But yeah, the analogy is definitely hitting home for me.

Yeah. And you know, the other thing is the Stasi so Mark Ladner, by the way, who used to do yoga? I don't know. I don't even know him. I need to do what I mean is he's he's like, in general, like calm and forgive. Yeah. Right. The opposite of you. Like you're basically opposite. Well,

I'll tell you after the show, it happened. All right.

So anyway, so like, Mark, always, he kind of makes fun of both, you know, Anastasia and of me, because he's like, You guys think everyone's incompetent. You think that you're, you know, better than an assassin? You're like, no, no, what we have is we know we suck. That's like all we have, like,

I always tell him and our staff, like, no one is harder on me than me. So like, I am the toughest critic of myself. And

something so like, yeah, see, she thinks she's good at darts. And she's garbage. He's garbage and darts,

anyway. Yeah. The other thing that he hates about us is that we just get it done and don't really think about, like, consequence. So anyone

that knows, like, for instance, I'll give you an example. So we're working on the new bar, right, which I haven't announced yet. So whatever, it doesn't exist, whatever. But anyway, so I'm working on the new bar yesterday. And we didn't want to have to do it, because we're trying to use as much of the stuff as we had in this space as possible. More on that later. So we have to move the bar. And so our contractor basically said, I can't Oh, the I get the bar, the physical bar. So the contractor said, I can't move the bar, we're going to have to build a new bar. So I'm like, Well, if we're gonna build a new bar, I want it to be something nice. Not something garbage, right? And so then, and then it's like, we're sitting everyone's, oh, this, oh, this or this? Or this? What if this? What if this, and I can't say this because the family show I'll say crap instead of great. So my stepfather's favorite phrase, one of his favorite phrases is, you know, choose your favorite like, it could be if it could be but it could be, you know, so if we use it, right, if we did this, if we did that, if crapped himself meaning, like, you sit around you say if if if, if if you never get anything done, you never make it to the bathroom, you poop your pants if crap himself now you've replaced that with sugar honey iced tea, and you have an actual an actual Gerard at an easy to phrase. And by the way, there is no one better at the curse phrase than my stepfather Gerard. I mean, he is like, he is like from from birth, gifted with a series of salty, salty phrases. But you know, if crap themselves, you know what? There's not salty at all. And only very few people understand this. People who deal with smart people, kids especially, here's what you say. How smart that's how stupid is that? I'm saying associa you're like you're so smart. How can you do such dumb things and so the phrase you use is how smart that's how stupid and so he used to use that on the all the time he would just look at me and say that I'm like oh crap. Anyway, so yesterday we're like arguing about the bar so Jack and Bobby from the bar and I just go to rows and twigs and pick out literally one ton 2000 pounds of lumber and so again I'm not announcing anything about the bar this doesn't exist whatever but like yeah, solid two and a half inch thick mahogany wow oh, I'm just sick of crap I'm sick of garbage you know what I mean? Like I have a feeling and of course the people that rose and sweets believe this because they you know sell wood for a living but I think that you know the difference between like a thin layer of plywood or like mahogany boards, like laminated together like over plywood people are gonna be able to tell the difference between that and two and a half inch thick freaking mahogany right so the boards are like 10 and a half inches why two and a half inches thick so it's just three boards they're 15 feet long so two of them make up the you know two of those sections and that has yet to be determined it turns out my track saw is not quite had doesn't quite have an enough penetration to go all the way through this stuff. So either I have to buy the fest tool which is very nice track saw else let the contractor do it.

Nice so he just got it done.

Just got it done. That's the story. Just get to get it done

is given chatroom wood and they seem pretty excited about this. Yeah.

So here's what we're going to do with the mahogany two right? So first of all the reason you know mahogany you have to make Shouldn't mahogany you get is there are unsustainable ways that you they the people that Rosa sweets told us that this is you know, managed. So it's not we're not cutting down the last tree in the neighborhood where it came from.

Where'd it come from?

I don't remember whether this one's African or South American anyway. It's called Savannah smelly is the variety because it's cheaper than the than the other mahogany. And still, mahogany is beautiful one, water resistant is the other and has a nice hand meaning it feels good once it's finished. So what we plan on doing the nice thing about the solid material is that when you're when you're running a bar, what you want at the back of the bar on the bartender side is a nice drain rail. So the way that a lot of people accomplish the drain rail is you build your bar and then you put a stainless steel drip pan like a slacker between six and eight eighths better drain rail pan on the back. And you put like a perforated stainless over that. And so that's when you're pouring. When it spills, it just spills down, you can clean it at the end of the night. So it's a lot better than rubber match. Because rubber mats when you pick them up, they spill also the rubber mats aren't level with your mixing with your bar. So you can't just slide your glasses off the rubber mat. So rubber mats are great for home at home, you should get a rubber mat but at a bar, it's not ideal. But what we're doing is like so much nicer because we're just going to mill we're going to route the tray into the solid mahogany Super Waterproof and then just put dry decking down on the on where it goes. So there's just going to be the drip thing is going to be just part of our freaking solid mahogany farms. I'm super jazzed about it. Like I hope it comes out well because lifting that much wood because when you buy that kind of lumber,

did you did you put it no you didn't. We're on the silver. How did you

we hired a guy named Reggie. And so I sat around making Indiana Jones jokes the entire time. That's just my pet snake Reggie. Remember that guy from the beginning of Indiana Jones. Anyway, so what you do is this lumber doesn't come because literally they're just like, they saw it into whatever with it happens to be they take the tree, they saw it, they saw the bark off. And so it's random lengths, random widths, and so you have to sit there and just sift through all these piles of lumber trying to get with it matches color wise and trying to so we and then the yard dogs as Bobby was calling them are like super, they're like, keep the piles neat. Keep the piles neat. Keep the piles meats in the Bronx. And then that pile is not neat enough more like hey Jerko we just bought half of your freaking mahogany. How the hell am I supposed to make the pile look like it looked before when it's half as full as it used to be by the way, if you're in the market for one and a half inch thick, like finished this appellee boards for tables or two and a half inch sticks appellee now is not the time to go to Rosen's weeks because we bought those suckers out. We bought like all the good ones and stuff that's left mines will be a corkscrew, so give him a couple of weeks. Give him give him a couple of weeks to get back to. Alright, so anyway, so hopefully Kevin, we answered some of your questions about developing I don't think we did. But we'll take a break, take a break come back more with cooking issues.

This episode of Cooking issues is brought to you by Bob's Red Mill and employee owned company that has been offering organic stone ground products for decades.

Our question this week comes from Lucy she says I'm working on a homemade gluten free bread for my son who has celiac. Are there any tricks for adding more structure and rise when using a gluten free flour?

Yeah, so there's a lot of tricks. Everything with gluten free baking is about the specific application. So it's hard to say what'd she say she's making she's bread, gluten free bread, red. I mean, depending on whether it's like a quick bread or whether you're actually trying to mimic a bread bread, the thing main thing that gluten is doing is providing a structure. So this allows you to form things properly. It's also what kind of holds it together and allows it to expand and have the air pockets in it like a normal bread. So it's providing that structure during the rise and bake time. And then afterwards, it's also providing some of the texture from the from the protein afterwards. But the starch then is setting it after. So what you need is something in there to hold the structure while it's rising and baking, then there's various ways you could do it. I mean, if it's supposed to be a tender ag kind of bread, then just add more kind of egg replacer or something that goes in there. And in fact, when people like the good folks at Bob's Red Mill are designing gluten free flour places they're designing it specifically to try to have those properties when you're baking, but you need to buy the product that is specific to the application you're looking for. So if you're trying to do bread, not a quick bread, but bread or isn't bread, you need to buy a replacer that is specifically intended for something like that. And that kind of frankly, a standard bread is the hardest of the things to do. Another trick that I haven't played with too much but pre cooked arches are a good way to add some texture and snap to a product. You know, a partially pre cooked starch base is a good way to add some texture. And that's how the way like a lot of like noodle bases and whatnot are done in Asian cultures. If you have more questions about Bob's Red Mill products, tweet them on into heritage underscore radio. If you want to

go the gluten free or paleo route, when baking, Bob's Red Mill has tons of options, go to Bob's Red mill.com and use the code cooking issues. That's one word all caps cooking issues for 25% off your order.

And remember, remember when you're subbing out a product for a traditional product, there is no one substitute meets all. So you know, the great thing about Bob's Red Mill is they have a very wide range of products and just look into their whole range. I'm sure they have a product to fit your specific application