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.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming, and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram. This episode is brought to you by route 11 Potato chips made with a secret recipe and superior ingredients. Their mission is to make an outstanding product in a safe and clean environment. To learn more, visit rt eleven.com. Meet and three is back we're kicking off our fourth season and celebrating Hrn 10th anniversary with a very special episode about our home. Brooklyn. Roberta's

was such an interesting place with such a strong gravitational pull and track that all these different groups

the neighborhood has changed a lot over the past decade from its culinary Renaissance to the complicated implications of gentrification. I would say the majority of the people who are members or Co Op definitely have a certain purchasing power are mostly white. And we are trying to change that we're taking you on a journey that spans the birthplace of food radio to buzzy neighborhood pollinators to the transformative health journey of our borough president

that was my moment of you know wow, someone has told me a life raft. And I'm going to take it

subscribe to meat and three that's mea t plus sign thr e available wherever you listen to podcasts

Hello, and welcome to coming to you ally on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from actually fairly close we were here fairly close.

I'm impressed I've also never had the door open while you did that before Wow, that's you generate some serious volume?

Oh yeah, that's the that's the whole thing. I told you. We tried to see whether we could go from mellow but you know just doesn't. You know people don't like it by the way. From Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick. Joined with we got Matt in the booth Anastasia Lopez is with me. She arrived with me on the subway train. But she is next door placing our order for lunch because as those of you may or may not know, our payment for Ah, really.

I think she's here.

Miss Darcy. This comes in and in the middle of a sentence just throws the mic out of the way.

Just project wait for the sentence to be over project.

Yeah, so she does this dossier. Yeah, it's dasya and my only payment for this. This is a pizza. sheer joy. sheer joy. And a pizza right Anastasia? Yes, yeah.

All right on the old tree.

Yeah. So for those of you that want us to host a 45 minute podcast, all it requires really is a pizza.

We're gonna podcast from a secret location in Los Angeles. Next We were going to be in Los Angeles next week.

And by secret she means we have no idea where it's going.

Why do you do that? Also, we rented a VW van 84 or 83 I can't remember

right but it doesn't look like the old it's like more of a modern it's not like an old school piece bus right? It's not like rounded. Yeah,

it's at its at four. But it has a full kitchen and we're gonna show up at one lucky radio, guests radio listeners house and spin some stuff. What Yeah, what? Yeah, well, that's Yep. What?

Wow, yeah, the Stasi This makes this stuff up. And I told him she was like, no,

no, no. Did Dave and you said okay, just tell me where to go. It's not

very rarely do I say that does not sound like me. And I will say also that Mr. dasya will find some way to bow out.

No way. I'm the driver. Here's the piece boss is coming. Yeah, with the full kitchen and the two beds.

Does it have an inverter in it? I said like, is it like a rolling? You know, so you can plug can we plug a centrifuge in on the side of the piece but take this thing

to Burning Man, they said every year geez,

Louise. I had never burned been to Burning Man. There's a whole group of people. We have a friend Jordanna Rothman Who is she doesn't go anywhere. She was big on it. Like it's now it's just not my thing. Why do you not want to go into SAS? Yeah.

I don't like the people. I don't think I'll like the people there preemptively. She

preemptively doesn't like the people. That sounds about right. What about you, man? You're burning man person?

Nah, I just don't care to go. I don't like drugs either. So I'm pro drugs. But I just want we have a caller on the air with a with a question about question.

All right, caller you're on the air.

Hey, y'all, this is Devin. I was hoping to slip into questions with a booth poll and hands before counted stupidly came back. But next time, I guess, alright. So I'm wondering, I see sometimes advertisements. I'm not a cook or anything, but for very high end stoves and ranges that are used by restaurants, right? I'm wondering outside of the ordinary fitness and the customization. Do they cook food any better? Are there any special features compared to your Vikings and kind of things with that?

So the main thing about you're paying for different things for me is on the right, right. So martini, I've never used multimeters home rate martinis, you're spending a lot of money on the name. And you're also spending the there's a lot of kind of enameling work. You know, I've never done a lot of cooking on on a martini, we almost got one for we almost got one for the lab at the French culinary years ago, that wasn't really a lab, you didn't even know me, they were going to build an entire lab on the fifth floor. And they ran out of money midway through building it. So the entire fifth floor was empty for like three years. And then when they built it, they built it as a student thing. And they didn't build the lab anymore. So thanks for you know, just chiming in. Ya know, but we they were going to build a lab. So the idea original idea was they were going to build a lab that chefs could come in and use all this new stuff, kind of like an incubator food incubator before its time, but then they just ran out of cash. And then they were like, You know what, we don't need to build this, you probably would

still be there. If they had built a lab, maybe? For the best,

I don't know. But back to this question. So a lot of this, you know, they're not building very many of them, they're custom. And they have a lot of enamel work. And they have a lot of fancy, you know, fancy stuff on it. And chefs who have their high end equipment, they end up falling in love with it, right? So why so the to two of the high end brands, you know, associated with like, with Francesca molteni, B'nai and you know, Wiley was about a guy, he loved his bone. It's a giant built in thing now. I've never I know that Multani I think did some home stuff. But I think with that, it's not that it's going to necessarily cook any better. No, they're burners are very nice. Like French tops are very nice, but they're not going to be not going to make your steak any better. The issue really, if you're just talking in general commercial versus not so sometimes you're paying for things like the name, you're paying for things like build quality, so you know, a martini, or even any of the higher end commercial stuff, it's just made with a much thicker gauge gauge of steel. And so it's just a lot tougher can take a lot more, you know, abuse then not that you would abuse it but it can take a lot more than an ordinary things but really, like a professional like a low to mid range professional thing. The difference between that and home is typically that there's just a much higher output on the professional one. The other thing that professional things tend to have is you have like a rail in front so when you're cooking professionally, you know at your range, you'll be you'll be using your burners and then you will have a rail in the back Note that you can either pull stuff up or you can put a six pan up front and move around. And so like that rail is very helpful. And I think most home stoves don't have that rail. Also, almost all professional stoves that I've used are designed to operate like a flat system. So the grates are such that pans can be slid off on around, like I said, up to the rail or off to the side, very easily. Not all home, things are like that. So what you're paying for can be a lot of stainless, as opposed to if you're buying a stainless unit, which you know, most home units aren't really good grates or spiders wherever you're going to call them, because they're going to take a lot of abuse, especially if you're paying extra to have steel, steel grates or steel spiders as opposed to cast because cast ones can break. And they often do break, especially in commercial applications, and then you're paying for the are you getting in a professional stove, the burner output. Now there's a lot of downsides to professional equipment as well, typically, they're standing pilot, so that they're always putting heat out. That's why you know, I have a don't tell anyone, but I have a professional one at home. And what I do is I turn off all the pilots, and then I light them with a torch light them when I'm going to use them. Just because I don't want to have those pilot lights running all the time. Commercial ovens also, you know, they have a running pilot in them and they gas ones anyway. And they tend to work they're much bigger, like you want to be able to fit a full sheet pan in. So a lot of home ovens can't fit a full sheet pan in. But they're also not insulated very well. So they take a lot more energy in and then they also shoot a lot more energy out into the kitchen, which is one of the reasons why commercial ovens really aren't SPECT for home in some places don't allow them anymore. They don't have as good of insulation, they get a lot hotter, both in the back and on the sides. So you know, you can scorch cabinetry that's next to it. If it's not, you know, put together right. Also, commercial ovens tend to be they don't have boilers in them. So most commercial ovens least the ones that I've used, the heating element is down underneath. But there's no top heating elements. So there's no boiler element. So again, like commercial ovens, and commercial ranges are fantastic for what you use them for. I actually absolutely hate home ranges because I just can't stand not having the power when I want it. But that said like modern induction, home ranges can do an excellent job. So you know, so it's not always that you're just paying for you know, stuff that you don't need but also sometimes having a home equipments not so bad, like a home oven, as long as my my stuff fits in it and it's got a convection function, I'm going to be fine with home range, I would take me a lot i at the place that I have in Connecticut, and although not much longer, the place I have in Connecticut, I have never wants to use the range just because it's it's worthless, it's weak. So I have induction hobs that I use and it's gas to it just terrible sucks. But I just don't use it.

Yeah, reason for the reduced insulation on the commercial units.

Oh, that's don't think they care. You know, they're building this stuff out of like higher gauge stuff, it's assumed that you're going to have the thing cranking. And anytime that you throw away energy, you're actually making things more stable. So like, for instance, old school espresso machines, Mrs. Theory, like I have never spoken to one of their designers about it, but an old school espresso machine, it's not insulated, at all very well or at all, because the way one of the ways that they get stability with relatively bad temperature control is just having so much heat leakage, that there's a relatively high constant heat input. And if you have a relatively high constant heat input, you tend not an in and out, you tend to even out the bumps in the road, and you get it to be kind of more stable at a higher temperature. Because if you have something it's very well insulated, you take it up to a temperature and the thing shuttle turns off, then when you open it, you're counting on you have a lower thermal, you have a little lower thermal mass and lower like constant heat input, so it can drop faster, right? Because they're putting more energy in and losing more energy out. But that's just a theory. And I just also think that, you know, the average designer doesn't care very much about professional cooks and whether or not they're sweating to death. And lastly, it's only been very fairly recently that, you know, places like Fisher nickel and all these other have rated the energy efficiency of commercial appliances. And I think most people would be shocked shocked at the amount of energy that's consumed by commercial appliances, commercial refrigeration, commercial gas ovens ranges, you know, I looked at a combi oven once that was being used in one of the Momofuku places years ago, and that single oven had twice as much power going into a single oven had twice as much power as my entire apartment. The entire apartment. So it's like, and that was a combi oven. So combi ovens also regulate themselves by hurling energy off into the ether. That's how they regulate their, you know that. How do you make it, you know this, you get the steam, but you want to regulate it, you just vent all the excess to the atmosphere. So there's just crazy waste of energy. And you know, hopefully in the future, you know, energy efficiency, water efficiency has hit a lot of people, but energy efficiency hasn't really hit. Its hit more in California, which is where Fisher nickel is from. And so there's a lot of people over the past 10 years. So my tenure problem that past 10 years who have been focused on energy efficiency, especially for things like steamers fryers, the ovens have not I don't think caught a pace to that. Anyway, good question. Colin. Next time with your second question. The Stasi is you know, doing her? I've been told that I should allow her to do her hammer thing and not feel nervous about it.

Yeah. That's great. Who told you that you? Other people too?

I don't know. So now anyway, okay. So, Colin Gonzalez wrote in Thanks for answering my my butter searing question a few weeks ago. I have a new request and a question. Dave, please talk about ranch dressing. I like ranch dressing. I think everyone was estranged from infesting the Stasi. What are your thoughts on me?

I like the package one with the you have to use in therapy more than the one that comes to the camp in the jar. premade.

But wait, but why are you advocating for pre made ranch at all?

Because most people bring the pre made to your house

now but why would you meet ranch dressing or ranch dressing analogues are incredibly easy to make. Why wouldn't you just make it with the package? No, no. Why do you require a package to make ranch dressing she's

saying other normal human beings who don't make all their food. Bring it to her.

I always use the package what how do you make make dressing on your own?

What is ranch dressing? I'm not really very so I'm not pro ranch. Really? What? I just I don't know. I'm not really addressing guy. Oh,

what about Cool Ranch Doritos.

Pro oppo all variations on Doritos?

Yeah, they make some Doritos that are terrible. They make a Dorito that I don't know DAX liked it but he opened it in the backseat of the car and we thought someone had vomited in the backseat of the car. There are certain flavors that if you're not eating them smell repulsive. You know, I'm talking about Anastasia anyways,

have they don't have to redo a flavor for every type of salad dressing. Their 1000 Island burrito.

You know what I would like? I would like the blue cheese burrito. There go blue cheese trip, by the way. I think you know, the Stasi you're also blue cheese dressing aficionado? No. Who was it then someone? Maybe it was Jen. Like my wife. Like we're talking about

on the show. She needs to come on the show. But like

she ever been on the show. No,

no,

no. It's like I think like half the people probably don't even believe that I have a wife I'm

yet yeah, myself included.

You've never met my wife.

I have heard a lot about her. I'm sure she existed don't worry about she does exist.

But the so ranch ranch my son DAX like Ranch is the is the kind of the one thing that he used to learn how to make. And then if we don't have the ingredients for his version of ranch, then he just says we don't have anything that can make any salad dressing. So there are many different varieties of ranch and I didn't actually look up the specifications before I came on. But the basis of it is very simple. It's a mixture of mayonnaise, and then sour cream and some people yogurt, right unflavored unsweetened yogurt right so they're I don't put yogurt in and I'm more of a sour cream mayonnaise kind of a fellow so like that's the base is that and then salt, pepper, some herbs. Like usually you have to put an ally a minute like chive and then I like in it deal but honestly if you want to go to a ranch or like a ranch or Lloyd a ranch similar thing, you can throw in any green or you can throw in possibly you could throw in cilantro, cilantro,

a pack packet,

why the hell would I do that salt. The key also everyone a lot of people are anti sugar. Now I don't like sugar. You know their sugar in the pack, add some sugar a little bit you don't want to make it sweet. You want to balance that balance that out a little bit. And some people like to add more acidity you can add more acidity in the form of lemon you can add more acidity in the form of vinegar. You don't have to add more acidity at all if you don't want and see I don't think there's garlic in a standard ranch but it doesn't hurt it. And I always to most of my dressings like to add a touch of mustard but again, is it 100% necessary? No. So anything in there and you know you blend it all in your food processor and you got wrench that say salt and pepper. Yeah. All right. There you go. So Oh, and because DAX likes it. He always squeezes little Sriracha, again, not supposed to be there but you can do anything as long as you start with that cooling base of mayonnaise and sour cream. With maybe yogurt, if that's what your thing is, then you could throw anything else that you want. You could add lemon juice if you want. You could add, you know, salt, pepper, an herb, usually chives, any Allium? Really and dill and then everything else is up to grabs. And I think Ranch is delicious. I think everyone should make their own ranch I don't even know why do they sell packets? Why would you sell a packet? What do you add the packet to? Just our criminal man is mistake. Straight sourcream mistake so good mistake for a dip maybe sour cream on it. But if you're What if you were making it for dressing?

I've never made it for adjusting.

Okay, and to I was recently watching Thomas Keller's masterclass. He thinks we should do one of these masterclass on cocktails. I know he has those Thomas Keller has those. Those what does he say on them? He says something incredibly weird on them. Right? Like, what does he say? Have you seen the commercial for necess? I gotta look it up anyway. And he used Oh, he used Tamizh to make a potato puree which he contrasted with regular mashed potatoes. He later makes it parsnip puree and instead of using the Tammy he simply Vitamix it he says if you tried to do the potato in the blender, all the starch would cause it to become gummy. What is it about high speed blending that would cause as well ruptures to starch granules, and then it pays out so Neil's, who used to work with the French Culinary Institute used to add extra water to certain potatoes. blend them into vitae prep to make them gummy on purpose. He would make an on purpose gummy potato puree, and it was quite good, by the way. Oh, and I've finished mashed potatoes with an immersion blender before is it likely that I was unknowingly eating gummy potatoes? Well look, a couple things on mashed taters. i So okay, so with a Tammy Tammy is a fantastic way to make mashed potatoes. If you have another person doing it right. So Thomas Keller is willing to do Tamizh mashed potatoes because he only has to do it once and then tell you that this is the way you should do it. But sitting there with a pastry scraper scraping potatoes through a Tammy over a bowl, then mixing this stuff into it and then cleaning out said Tammy is a friggin nightmare. I hate it. So I hate doing it that way. Do you like doing it that way? So necesito The good thing about it is is that it forces you to cook the potatoes enough. The classic mistake people make with mashed potatoes is to like I'm afraid I'm going to overcook the potatoes and so they undercooked mashed potatoes. You cannot make mashed potatoes with undercooked potatoes. The trick is to cook the beat cook the bejesus out of them. Now you can either bake them, right which I do, or you can boil them people don't like to boil them because the excess excess water in them, but if you dump them and then like keep them over a heat a heated area for a while open so they flash off. Most of the extra water is gonna go away and you're not actually gonna have soggy mashed potatoes. It's not really a problem. You can look at the potatoes and you can see them dry out on their own if you dump them in big enough chunks anyway, so make sure you cook it enough. And then the question is, you can Tammy it yay. If you blend it it will go gummy food Mills I hate I hate food mills. I really hate them. They're a bear to clean they suck they keep use your term gumming up right so you have to reverse and go forward reverse go forward. By the time you finish it your potatoes are cold because it's taking forever unless you have one of the big commercial ones. JJ basil, you know chef and here in New York. He went to his mom's house and I told the story on air went to his mom's house she hand him a food mill. Open the front door of their house and just through the food mill into the street and then close that close the door again I hate food Mills your immersion blender as long as you don't overdo it is not going to be bad also a paddle if you do a little pre mashing paddle in the KitchenAid is not going to kill you. The trick is if you just overdo it, it's going to go it's gonna go gummy on you but I think people are worried about overdoing it and tend to under do it so they're still chunks of unmatched potato What are your thoughts on Trump's mashed potatoes don't like don't don't like I bought an attachment for a dynamic hand blender and that attachment is an is a powered like rice or on the end of a stick and I have to say that thing is amazing it's it's crazy to me that no one in America makes these because it actually works quite well and I was getting ready to to hate on it. I bought it for testing thinking I was going to completely hate on it and I actually unfortunately ended up liking it anyway. And I guess he's saying that either he wants to parsnips to be gummy Thomas color or he just doesn't find that the parsnips go gummy. What do you think about parsnips? Will you ever choose a person? And then this question is for you. Natasha. Have you heard of modern adventure? Basically they get tastemakers to lead cool trips. I almost went to one one on one to Vietnam led by Alison Roman. Here's a link blah, blah blah to one of the Republic of Georgia led by Bonnie and Israel Morales. You should look into doing one.

I sent it to Rebecca and she thought that you wouldn't be organized enough or something

He's asking you,

I would love

to know this is for you know, it's for you know, it says to heir apparent that is you I know. So the thing is, is I would like to make it happen. But would you like what would you do on it on a trip this is you would have to plan the trip? Yeah. This is for us to take people on. Right. But so, you know, he's what do we do? Yeah, what what? How would how would you actually do in that environment? At first of all, have you ever been on a tour? No, I've never been on a tour either.

Like you would be leading the tour. But then

that would require me to go to a place that where I was like a local and that would be New York?

No. You would be discovering and stuff for the first time. But then

how do we know we're gonna discover good stuff? Yeah, man. It was so fun. Okay, so it's like, all right.

Don't you think it'd be fun? Where would you want to go?

I mean, there's so many places I haven't been.

Why don't what if we took everyone on a tour of the leather man's route? How boring.

The tour is. The third tour is 34 days long. You may not shower, you may not wear any machine made clothing. Your clothing must be made of leather boots, sewed by hand, and it must weigh 60 pounds,

and was living in caves?

Where what? What is the leather? Oh, gosh. There's a color was a question about?

Color on the question.

Hey, Dave Misasa. My name is Chris. I'm calling from Philly. I have a pasta question for you. So we've been making fresh pasta for a couple of years now with primarily freshly milled flour. It's not whole wheat, or sitting off the brand. But we're finding that after a couple of days in the fridge, the pasta starts surrounding and after doing some research online seems like enzymatic Browning is is to blame for that. And I only have access to so many articles online, I keep I keep landing on this one website ResearchGate that has a lot of articles that might be useful to me, but I can't really get to them. So I'm wondering if you have any suggestions on how we could combat that in our pasta and you know, we're trying to try to keep the German we're trying to, to to highlight the flavor of these, you know, this these local wheats and, and fresh grain.

So it's a Browning often with enzymatic Browning, there's going to also be kind of characteristic flavor changes is are you getting that as well? or No? Or is it taste? Okay? Just unassailable,

no to the taste as far as as far as we could tell, I mean, taste taste the same on day six, as it does on day one.

Right. But it's just the color is off, so you can't sell it anymore.

Well, we can sell it. But we're learning that our customers have a preference towards like lighter colored golden noodles. And you know, once they try our product today, they love it. But it's it's just funny whenever we put a pasta that's like a traditional golden color next to something that's a little bit more brown. You know, the one that's the traditional color, but always sold out first?

Yeah, no, aren't people the worst? In general? So so I don't have any specific answers for you have to research it. But the what do you know about the website? Sai hub? No, I don't. So we've mentioned this. Someone sent it to me a couple people sent to me, Sai hub SCI dash H UB and I think it's dot t w it changes around.sc You What you do is you do your primary research, right? Like you say you say like you haven't been able to get to the papers because you don't have access to them. The good news is is that all of the all of the big search engines for academic stuff like I'll say VA who by the way, I believe make most of their money in like, you know, gun running I just made I didn't make that up, but it's pretty close. Anyway, so they, their databases are available online. And then when you search for this stuff, they have what's called a DOI DOI number right? So then you copy that number, the DOI number and then you go to Sai hub and you enter it and then it gets you that paper for free. So you know, yeah, so you can get anything almost almost any offer. That's helpful. Yeah. Now what you it doesn't have like a lot of the books and so you know you're gonna want to, you know, get access to probably some of the, you know, pasta books. It's been a long time since I've read them. And most of those books are written from, you know, not from the standpoint of someone who, you know, someone who's doing it industrially. And so most of those people were like, well, what you do is, is you bleach and or age or flower? You know what I mean? And that's obviously something you can't do. I wonder whether you know, Joel Gargano hears this, you know, from grano, arso. I know, he makes all of this stuff, fresh, but he doesn't keep it. So I don't know whether he has any suggestions. You know, I would say that probably some form of antioxidant. But I don't know if you'd want to add an antioxidant to it. I don't know which one would be most effective and pasta, but you can even look up. I mean, like, I would guess the thing is you're not doing an egg based pasta, because if you did, you could just jack it with, although Vitamin E tocopheryl. I don't think that will help with this. It's not that kind of an antioxidant, I don't think but you wouldn't want it to go to. Yep, we are making

we are making some, some some filled pastas as well with egg. And it's the same, the same story with those. You know, if you're not, we typically vacuum sealed the dough right after we make it. And that keeps the color for for a while. But then, you know, even if it sits out outside of the vacuum bag for, you know, a few hours, you'll notice the colors start changing pretty quickly. So we've just been selling, freezing those pastas and selling them frozen, just to kind of combat that.

Right. Well, that's what I was saying. Like that was the stuff that's in a bag right that it took a funeral stuff, it's an egg, I don't think would prevent the Browning side of the oxidation that's going to help more with fat oxidation. I think it's been a long time since I've had to think about it. But I don't know that. Like, I don't know what kind of antioxidant you'd want to add to stop the brown and but it's probably only, like, if you use sai hub, it's probably only a little bit away and maybe even, you know a couple of papers away and and maybe someone on the you know, some mistakes. You never had to deal with that stuff, right? Because you were doing frozen they would cook it and freeze it. Obviously once you cook it, you're wiping out the enzymes and you're good. So you know, maybe someone in the chat group has had this problem, or our friend in New Jersey who's now making chickpea pasta. Anyways, so let's let me take a look at if you also want to email your question, and if I find anything in research, I'll I'll talk about it on the air next time.

Cool. And then just another quick, quick one. I have a friend who's not having it. Okay, cool. Sounds good. Thanks, guys.

I'll talk to you soon.

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I hope you're enjoying this podcast. And you know heritage Radio Network has 1000s more. Hi, my name is Linda Bellagio and I'm the host on a taste of the past here on Hrn. Join us on a weekly journey through culinary history, where we explore the when, where, what and why of food throughout history. You can find a taste of the past wherever you listen to podcasts and on heritage radio network.org

The Stasi do that noise again. No decline didn't come from. Wait. You tell me to redo stuff all the time. I know. Now you notice like yeah, this is this she is doing she's doing her to explain

the weatherman.

Okay, in a nutshell. We've already talked about it many times. Alright, so the weatherman was you know possibly a French guy. You can look at pictures of him on the internet's and he all he used to carry was he carry like a couple of personal items. I think like a book and like this like pot that he had. And people would throw away old boots he would cut them open and like, like sew them with thongs into his leather man outfit which weighed like 5060 pounds and he would wear this every day of the year because he only had the one weatherman outfit. He would wear it every day of the year and he would walk in a circle that was 34 days long. That went along the coast of Connecticut then up through Westchester which is you just north of New York City in New York, up like over across to the Connecticut River and back down again around boom, boom boom 34 It's just so happens most of my adult life has been spent directly on the leather man trail. My mom's house is right near the leather man trail. You know, you know, new haven where you know in college right next to the weatherman trail. My place in Connecticut is on the other end of the leather man trail. So like, my Anastasia Lopez is, you know where she is on the on the, you know, in Stanford fancy Stanford is on the leather man trail. It's on the Luma trail Stanford. He didn't give up before then.

I don't think he gave it up. Anyway. So we got there Mamaroneck.

We all live on the Leatherman trail. And he would never sleep inside, ever. In fact, they had to force him to go to the hospital when he was dying of mouth cancer. And he didn't really talk to people wouldn't respond. The famous pictures of him, he looked that there are on the web, he looks incredibly angry because he didn't like people taking pictures of him. This was like the 1880s. And so like people would give him food to eat and he would sit down and eat it. And so one the one of the most famous pictures he went to Stanford, yeah, you see him eating something. And what happened is, is they had a camera and they put a tarp over it. And they're like, Hey, let the man Have something to eat. And then they as he was eating, they pull the tarp off, and he's got this look on his face like what? And if you mess with him, he would never come back to you again. And it was seen as kind of, unlike most vagrants at that time, people were writing anti vagrancy laws. There was a lot of violence actually against vagrants at that time. But specifically in the anti vagrancy laws that were passed in several localities with a leather man went through, they would make specific what's it called allowances for the leather man because he was kind of a good luck charm. And I think the reason is, is because it was a extremely regular schedule at 34 days, I think so you would just go around, and there are no caves in Connecticut. So calling them caves is a misnomer. Like there are literally like zero caves. But what they we do have is piles of rocks. And some of the piles of rocks formed cave like structures where the letter man would live and scattered all around the leather man trail the route are these things called leather man caves where you can go hang out where the leather man used to. Used to be. And so the Stasi wants us to do a tour where we sew together leather, and then we beg for food. If he didn't have a family and by the way, he would do this. Like I say in the middle of the winter, he would be sleeping outside of the case.

300 miles now you want to get on board with us. Yeah, that's gonna be our tour.

Leather man trail. That demand trail. Oh, the life

Wow. Yeah. Do you think that do you think people will go for that?

Oh, I mean, my dad's retired and if I there's a good chance if I tell him about this, he's just gonna do it with or without you. But let me ask let

me ask you a question. So you're wearing a 60 pound or whatever it is leather outfits. Here's all the food that we eat. Yeah, for like five for like 5678 10 years for straight. Right. So like, at what point can you longer smell yourself?

Probably pretty quick. I was going to be my guess based on really New York City.

But in order to like like, you become accustomed to certain smells like when you're cooking you know how when you're cooking? Yeah, eat like you lose your sense. You have to go in go out like you. But it's gotta be it's gotta be horrendous. So we'll see when we do our tour. The whole point though is you can't be social and do it like you and I can't go leather. We can't leather man together. Like we have to be we have to separate ourselves by a day like everyone on the trail has to be separated by a day.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're doing it together.

Well, that's not It's not supposed to be social. He was a loner. I know. He was the leather man. Not the leather group of people. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. Okay, if we got a question in which I didn't even know this game, so I didn't. I'm reading it for the first time I didn't. Somehow it ended up on my iPad without me knowing the other one. What are we this one? Pretty much every oven I've ever owned, has a convection setting. But I don't ever recall encountering a recipe that says to use it. I've cussed around it occasionally and ready read up on a bit, but I don't really have a firm grasp on the point of it. Is it correct to think about it as the heat version of Windchill where increased air movement is essentially nullifying nullifying the temperature and moisture gradient that would otherwise exist between the thing being cooked and the oven environment. Should I be thinking about using it for things where I want to emphasize exterior cooking over cooking through eg roasting asparagus or something like that where you want to put some color on the exterior without mushing out the interior? Are there any specific use cases where you would recommend it? Thanks. From Patrick, I went if you have a convection setting, I use it almost all the time. So the reason that they don't talk about it a lot is because not everyone has it and so when you're writing recipes, they're typically not written for having convection setting the the Euro correct. It's the heating version of windshield The problem is the air inside of an oven is relatively static, right. So if you have I have, let's say you have a pan of water. So for some people, when you're cooking things, especially early on in the cook, you have a pan of water in the bottom. So you're creating steam, like let's say you're making bread, that steam and the bubbling and boiling creates enough motion in the ocean, let's say that you have, you have a pretty good mixing, right? In a convection in a non convection environment where you're not having a lot of boiling or a lot of movement on the inside of the oven, the air can get relatively stagnant. And especially if there's not an open flame, which there very rarely is right, you can get fairly static, and so you're stagnant. And so you can have a very large temperature gradient at the surface of the product you're cooking, where the moisture is evaporating off of it. Convection oven just mixes that so it gets rid of that one, too, by moving more hot air over the surface of your product, right, you're increasing the heat transfer rate quite a bit. Now, almost all of the time, you want that to happen. So it just makes things cook much more rapidly. The there are exceptions like I guess in a brace, you don't want it or if you're worried about something cooking too quickly, then you then you wouldn't do it. But what it's doing is just accelerating the rate at which you can put energy in the ultimate of this is called an impingement oven. So if you've heard of like, what is a turbo chef, things like this, it's like being like in the wake of a jet engine, there's throwing so much air hot air across it, that the air that the hot air is constantly fresh, and you're getting so much more heat input, that it can cook things radically faster. The only other downside to a convection oven that you get is that I mean, again, sometimes you don't want convection, you can dry out the surfaces and things quickly. But it can actually blow things around. So certain delicate pastries. If you have a high convection setting, you can like blast the top of it down. Or you know, certain light things can rattle around the oven. So when you're doing dehydration of light things, and you turn a convection setting on it can vent. That's why some things have low convection, high conviction, because things that are more delicate or things that are gonna get rattled about you want to put a kind of lighter convection on it. But in general, people that have convection, use the convection, the majority of the time, I would say. Okay, so what's the one that you wanted to meet? Oh, so Steve wrote in from Los Angeles, where we're going to be next week, Steve, you did not provide enough of a? Here's what, here's what you said. I had sushi from a chef who developed a technique for aging fish. I got to try some of this. And amberjack Kampachi. Well, okay, Steve, I'm happy that you got to try it. Maybe it was like a tone poem. Yeah, it's a poem. But I will say this. I had sushi from a chef who developed a technique for aging fish. I got to try some of this. An amberjack. Yeah, I think it is a poem. I think it is a poem and maybe doesn't require any further elaboration. Except to say this. I think there are many, many more people now who are hip to the fact that fresh fish isn't the best fish. So there are some cultures, there are some preparations where you want to eat the fish as soon as you kill it. In fact, obviously there are whole recipes and culture is built on live fish at at restaurants. But for the majority, especially for things like sushi, right, you want this stuff to go into rigor mortis back out and then go a little further to get kind of the optimum texture. And this is definitely true salmon. It's definitely true of tuna, true of most fish that it's not that there's an optimum day after after, first of all, an optimum day after death and an optimum day after rigor mortis. And then there's a very every species of fish and also depending on the season and how it was caught How was treated there's a very kind of narrow, perfect window and like great sushi chefs, you know, for years have known that it's not it's not the freshest fish. It's the fish that is at the exact right moment that it wants to be served but it's too complicated. Explain that to most people so they just stay fresh. And I remember I forget his name, but there is this there's a sky very famous. Chef in Kyoto I forget who it was because 10 years ago and his name is blanked out in my head. But he was telling us that he went in and he ages his fish as well. You know to get it exactly at the date he wants. He also used to do he would do like also pressed age sushi where even after you make it you like aged on kombu compressed for Zaba sushi you know mackerel sushi, rabid aged for A day to get that texture up. But he wasn't he was he hated commercial refrigeration because he thought it messed with his fish. So he would buy commercial, very modern commercial refrigerators and then turn them off and then just put blocks of ice in them. And that's how he did his fish. I was like a classic, classic. So anyway, Steve, thank you for your poem.