Hello and welcome to the Dave Ramsey show host of cooking he is coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan the Rockefeller Center newsstand studios joined as usual with John how you doing John tundra. Thanks. I'm all like you know if you're on patreon you can watch us right now but I'm all confused the cat because I'm turned around I'm not in my normal seat Joe's behind me which is making me a little nervous. How you doing Joe? Joe? Hey, doing great man. Yeah, see you Tuesday. Oh, yeah, yeah, every Tuesday happy always. We do not have Anastasia the hammer Lopez today but we do have Jackie molecules, right? Yes, we do. How are you doing? I'm good. Are you in California? You globetrotters.

I'm in California. I will be in DC all of May. So,

hmm. Is that before it turns into a hellhole?

Yes, you mean what in terms of humidity

in terms of just like listen, I like I like DC like I like the things you can do in DC. But dc in the summers? Like oh my goodness. Like why?

You know what I mean? Is a swamp.

Yeah, it's alternatively swampy and humid. It's the so you go to DC. Everyone hates I say as you go to DC you go to the mall, right? You know how like all those walkways are all like dust and rocks. How could it simultaneously be so humid and so dusty at the same time? How do you get both so that your legs are filthy? Like when you walk around? This is what I mean. I don't wear shorts period. But if I was going to wear shorts, I would never wear shorts in DC. No matter how hot it got. Because your legs are just freaking filthy if you go on that mall thing if you're doing the tourist action, you know, I mean? Yeah. Anyway, no offense DC. Man, great city. I

love DC. Yeah.

I mean, how many years you lived there. How many years you do the radio there.

The four years? Yeah, yeah.

And tacking in the upper upper left hand corner of cooking issues. Quinn, how're you doing on Vancouver Island?

Hey, I'm doing all right. Yeah. All right. Good.

And today's special guests which we will introduce before we shoot the breeze too much are Sarah and Caitlin lay on from the walks of life the the well known blog slash the cookbook is out slash all this stuff's coming to you since 2013. How're you guys doing?

Hey, Dave doing good. Yeah.

All right to be here. Well, we're happy to have you. So I think Quinn was especially excited that you guys were coming on today. So true Quinn super especially excited. Yeah. Not that we're all excited. But anyway, so this is a portion of the show where well before we do this, let's give out the number John right before we shoot the breeze let's give out the number of people who are listening live on Patreon can call in their questions 2917410 1507 That's 917-410-1507 And if they want to become a patreon member, so they can listen live, what should they do join

patreon.com/cooking issues as a bunch of tiered level memberships. You get awesome perks at every level, cooking issues Google Map access, everyone puts in their favorite restaurants around the world access to the video stream discounts to kitchen Arts and Letters, just a whole bunch of great things so check it out patreon.com/cooking issues

and I'm considering by the way doing a voiding the warranty with Dave Arnold kind of a situation where we put some of it out on the regular internet but some of it just for the Patreon I've got some very good warranty voiding coming up. I already voided the warranty on my well, on my what's it called my frozen drink machine. And I'm about I'm about to seriously void the warranty on my countertop fryer. countertop fryers are disappointing.

I feel like is that surprising though?

Well, also like I feel like like my home. My home range is ridiculous. So like I can actually do decent frying on my on my home range but like, everything depends what kind of frying you do. You know what I'm saying? So like, I do a lot of like, classic American frying where the products had been dusted. So it's like, it ends with a dry coat instead of ending with a wet coat. Yeah. And you know, anytime you end with a dry coat, stuff sinks to the bottom. Yeah, burns and

you end up with all that burnt like flour at the Yeah, yeah. And

then particles and then because you're not using enough oil, you're cycling those particles burn oil goes bad even within one frying session oil can go bad. So like, you know, even home fires like that aren't donut style. They're not the Friday kettle kind or the wide, you know, they they have a little bit of a cold zone so we can preserve you if you're doing that kind of in fact, we're going to talk later on talk to you about some of the recipes in the book about specifically the wing recipe. I know that's thinking is your dad credited that anyway, we'll talk, we'll talk about it, but the power is just too low. You know what I mean? So and even a home stove, the power, most people's home stove is only like 20,000 BTUs. If you know 25, maybe if they're in a semi pro, and it's just not enough. So to get a reasonable amount of power into a home fryer, a wall socket ain't doing it. Right doing it. Right. So, you know, I figured what a few. I'll give you the basic gist. What if you took two fryer elements, and you squished you bent the fryer elements so that both fryer elements could fit in the bottom of the fryer? And then you plug it into two sockets at once? And now you're at now your three points. Now, Ah, now I can. Yeah, you know, something about it. Join the Patreon. And you know, you get such things as a discounted the walks of life. Yeah, I mean, the book, kitchen arts and letters. So we get a discount to our Patreon posts for you know, buying the whatever the book of the person who's coming

very nice. And I know they have like they have a cache of signed copies right now.

So nice. Aren't they good people? Yeah, they're awesome. All right. So here's the part of the show where we talk about interesting things that have happened to us that are relatively food related over the past week or so. So you got it. You guys have anything.

So we were recently in Flushing over the weekend with family and we went to the new outpost of Wu's Bonton King, if you've ever been there in Manhattan, Chinatown, they have a new restaurant out in Flushing. And we had we splurge on a king crab, which I haven't had in a really long time. Because you know the it's a pretty decently expensive Yeah, but we were kind of celebrating because we hadn't seen some of these family members in a while and steamed king crab legs with just garlic. Like a soy sauce. Eat garlic. Yeah, but I was I was like, wow, did they do the live? Oh, yes. Live? Yeah. Oh, they

bring it out or dollars now.

Yeah, this one. So the the key move here is to do the set menu, which in this case, it was a table of 10 people. It was 600. It was about $600 for the crab plus eight other dishes.

I mean, it's not so bad.

I mean, at least you feel like you're like okay, the crab is like maybe like three quarters of that and

then show me the body says show me the body size of your hands. Well, that's the whole that's puzzle.

So the body somebody like this? Yeah, good. Yeah. Yeah. No, it

was seven pounds. Seven pounds.

Yeah. You know, it's gonna make you mad. I've only ever cooked live King Crab twice. And they only cost at the time I think like $150 I used to get him from the world. Yeah, we used to going for cool food. And maybe I cooked it three. We used to get it to at the I used to teach at the French Culinary Institute. And I used to do demonstrations. And we were let's say for demonstration we were price insensitive. I could get some messed up. Messed up ingredients. But yeah, so So how many dishes did they make with it?

So they made two they made the steamed the steamed crab with there's the legs right?

So all she said was on it. It was

mostly Garlic Garlic,

but like sorption sauce sweet with a touch of soy sauce. Yeah.

Just you could just taste the sweetness of the crap. The other way to get it normally is fried. But I think steamed is just

a little table side debate. I was like, I kind of wish it was friends. I was like no, no,

no. Do do all of your fancy skullduggery with the body. Right? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like all the flavors, all the textures like you know you're paying infinity for this for the meat.

Yeah. And then they did they did a fried rice with the body.

Yeah, that's delicious. It was stupid. Good. It was good.

It was good. We have we actually have a similar recipe in the book. We could call it our special golden fried rice and it was actually inspired by this restaurant mold egg. Yes. So there's like egg yolk fried so you get this like those little like strips of I don't know, like wispy

threads of threads.

Do I forget to do that one on the oil but

yeah, yeah, exactly.

And then golden raisins, which is like a bit of a weird flex. But really good. Really good.

Yeah. All right. No, no, no, I'm jealous. I got some got some FOMO it's been so many years since I've had the king crab. Do you think the price is gonna go down or anything? It's going to keep going up but we overfishing the hell out of that.

I think we are I think there was actually a king crab shortage recently like they were like, oh no King Crab, which is why I was surprised to see it at this restaurant. But yeah, I mean, we haven't had one in like many, many years either and definitely reserved for special occasions. Because it is so pricey and relatively scarce.

You know, the other thing about any kind of crustacean is you definitely want to buy it from a place that has like high throughput. Yeah, because like, you know, if, if you're going to, like, you know, everyone knows I'm talking about like, a pseudo fancy place where they have like the one and they keep it alive. It's like, the longer those things stay in the tanks. Yeah, like, they basically they, I'm told, I don't know that much about crabs, actually, to be honest, how they put like lobster tanks. Those things are basically eating themselves once they get put in a tank. So you know, you want them as soon as they come out of the water as possible. But you know, these places they like it's a business for them. So they're probably coming in styro right off of an airplane. Or their tank into your mouth. Yeah. Oh my goodness.

Everything in Flushing is just super fresh. Like the vegetables the seafood. Like we were walking after dinner. My dad was like a seafood just so much better here.

Yeah. Well, so when. So he so you're okay, well, we haven't. John, do you have any good? Any good food stories for the week? Anything? Oh,

nothing really? Unfortunately. Now.

I feel like I have another one. All right. Yeah. So we had it was actually before dinner. So we had a little bit of a munchies because we had a book event at the Queens Public Library. And then we were walking around flushing Main Street,

go QPR. My wife's designing a QPR right now. Are we are we doing a QBO?

So we were walking back to the like, parking lot. And there's a char man. So char is like a kebab. That's like the Chinese word for kebab. So it the characters the Chinese characters actually cool. Like, it looks like a little, like two cubes of meat on a stick. Yeah.

That must be an old school character.

Yes. Very old school.

Old school recipe. I mean, there has to give the character looks like the recipe is all right, right. Right. It's

been around for a while, one of the more intuitive Chase carriers out there. And I was I said to him, I was like, oh, let's definitely get some. And everybody was like, Yeah, everybody's on board, like super excited. And we ended up waiting in line for like, kind of a really long time. And I was like, standing there. And I was like, did the guys in front of us just order like 40 chars on me, I was like, what's going on. And then as I was standing there, I was looking and I was like, you know, this is a philosophical difference on like char grilling, because they had, you know, they had like, this special little narrow grill is all very, quote unquote, authentic or traditional, or what you would expect. But it was taking so long to just like cook a few to heart and I was like, I guess they're doing it like kind of like low and slow or like, it's like, perfectly golden. Whereas like, if I do try at home, which there's a recipe in the cookbook, actually. I do it over a natural like lump charcoal grill, Big Green Egg, little plug for Big Green Egg. And like the flames like high, you know, and I'm like, Oh, this is great. But the bamboo skewers get a little sharp, that's fine. That's part of the allure. You're not going to eat the bamboo. Exactly. And then you get little charred bits on the edges. But these guys were like so studious about they're just like perfect golden exterior. And I was like, I guess

not gonna lie. didn't hate it. No.

Delicious, but we waited for like Sarah bailed out and sat in the car. And then like 15 minutes later, we were like rolling up with the five char sticks that we like waited forever for my grandma was like, Oh,

now man, you know so but you're like, what I'm hearing from you is not not worth not worth notice. Not bad, but make it the fast way first of all, why not? Just go three times have it three quarters of the way done and then have a giant freaking pile of them. Right? Well then go shop shop shop shop, you know Hi. Hey, hi. Hey. Yeah,

and I was like wondering to myself, I was like, Are people complaining if there's a little charge to it? Like, is it just like philosophical difference on grilling meat? Maybe

and this is this is in a cart? In a cart? Yeah, in the street. CART is not a waiting switch.

That's what I was like, What is going because I was like, blaming it on the two guys in front of us. It's like two Cantonese guys are like, you know, shooting the breeze or waiting for their trials. Like did you people order like 40 of these things? Like why are you for so long? And they didn't even order that I saw them get their order. They had like five also and I was like okay, what's going on here?

Yeah, this is like the opposite of the two hot dogs for $1 folks. Were we used to punk them. Like how many can you do? 100 Nayla fine. Go are like the bun guy at sambar way back in the day Dave changed place tonight. idle. Yeah, you could just tell him anything fire and just make up a number. He's like, fine, and just go do it. That's the way to do it not like. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah. So I was a little disappointed and it kind of sent me on like a little Odyssey in my own head. I was like, huh, is it better to do low and slow? Not sure. Well, you

can do low and slow, but just do it before I show up. That's the other way. Right. So like, you know, in John's, you know, like, well, you're not from Iran. Do you have dual citizenship? Do you have? Yeah. Alright, so he's Belgian. Right. And so there, there's two kinds of places right, the place that makes so many waffles and they just have all of the irons rocking all the time and you get fresh and that's where you should go, right? But they just buy more equipment and more people. You know what I mean? And you're waiting a long line for it but it's a thing you know, you have to wait for or they sandbag them and reheat them which is not as good job or great. Anyway how about you clean? You got anything?

Actually yeah, we we actually fired up one of those little charcoal grills as well. Looking younger Tory style, but just lump charcoal. And then we did actually did just big ribeyes over that. And then we did like a classic sort of steakhouse style dinner for Easter. Yeah, me

state steak fried steak for Easter. Hmm, not a handout.

There was like no, we were like a late. Late my mama's birthday Easter dinner

you know I once took a whole bunch of cereals turn them like face up and did like infinity Aki Tori It was nuts. Oh my god, it's so hot. What about you Jack? Anything? Anything? Anything?

I've been in like total goblin mode because my girlfriend's out of town. So it's sort of like instant ramen ours over here. Which number one? I have to say? I think Bulldog the spicy chicken ramen has to be the best one on the market as your favorite. Go for. That's right. That's the one and I think I've perfected it to American cheese egg and kimchi supplementing it so let's see. Three spot

so like, like you are like he's how much younger? Are you kidding me? There's a divide. Like when I grew up. There weren't a lot of like, white folk ramen doctoring. I mean, like, whereas now I feel like everybody does ramen doctoring. Like, you know, yeah. Yeah, that wasn't something that you know. We did you know what I mean? Like, you know, we were doing it. Yeah, that's an exam. Yeah.

Well, there were only so many brands. And I have to say it did have a little bit of a reaction when you were like, oh, that's the best ramen because you have to distinguish the Korean brands, Top Dog versus Chinese brands. And then if you go really deep, there's like, oh, Asia is all this other stuff, but I can respect them. A slice?

Yeah. Hey, you know what's a fair is sending them

Yang is the one it's like the black container.

Yeah, you know, what's a premade sauce that is apparently very popular that I can't wrap my head around as like a northeastern white dude. Is Vermont curry, man. I don't like that.

Yeah, I have I think it's all right. It's a little sweet. It's on the sweet side. Yeah. Wait, yeah. What are the curry the curry roux that like Japanese?

Korean wrap my head around it. That's one of those things I can't I don't know why. I also don't like is weird because I love like, you know what we would call quote unquote, curry both in the sense of like, my dress style and in the sense of like, Thai style. Like I like curries. I don't really like curry versus either the German thing that's not my thing. Yeah. I don't understand why a whole country's like Yes. Oh, no. What about you, Johnny? Yeah, all right.

I would carry over monitoring stuff via Craigslist is I don't know. Odd, but it hits a spot. Okay,

we do have a from scratch. Japanese curry sauce on the blog that we use SMB oriental curry powder. Have you ever tried that? Wait, is that the was it yellow and red bread? Yeah, a little red. Yeah, like canister. Yeah, that one's really good. Maybe give that a try and see if you're just like anti curry or if you're anti not

Vermont curry it's the sweet it's the whole it's the Japanese sweet. Yeah, like nah Thank you. Are you Joe anything anything good? Nothing for me all right, I got two real quick one I did a a quickly posted that. What I'm just gonna call it don't even get offended I'm gonna call it Turkish coffee so that everyone knows what we're talking about. Right? Even though like if you're from a different country in that area. You don't like call it Turkish coffee? Because you might not get along with Turkish people in your like, we also make this coffee and have made this coffee forever. Nice. Anyway. Let's So, specialty Turkish coffee is a place it's a company. And they make the pots, the jazzy the little pots. And so I posted I was with a really crappy one I bought at you know, I've got it at Colombians, which is amazing store here. But like, you know, it's not like they're selling the highest quality, you know, Turkish coffee pots, right? And he sent me one, and it is the best. You ever buy something or Biden's case he sent to me we ever has on hand you something and you're like, Oh, crap, it feels so good. You don't I mean, like it was two and a half, or like one and a half times or twice over twice as heavy as the one that I had all copper, that tinning was perfect. Like everything was made by somebody that cared about it. Yeah. And you also need to have the right size. The reason I rebar is because if you if it's too big, it you're not going to get the foam for the one cup that you're making. And I'm the only one in the house is going to be drinking it. So he sent me this whole setup. And I was just like, Oh my God, because a lot of that coffee is very ritual based. You don't I mean, the ritual of making it. And yeah, so you sent that and I was like, Oh, crap, you know, and it is more money. Like it's a $60 thing instead of a $15 thing. All right, but it's definitely if it's going to be a part of your daily routine, like as an object every time I pick up my Oh. Like, yeah, it feels good. I mean, I don't know. Like, there's some things I care about, and usually hand tools and kitchen tools, if I'm going to use them a lot. And if they're something like that I like them to be good. Yeah, you know what I mean? Speaking of I noticed in that you guys use a occasionally one of the traditional round chopping block things you like that they're painting the plateau, right? Or do you just photograph on that on that stump? Sometimes

we usually photograph on that. It's just kind of like one of those scenes.

I'll keep it in water all the time and have it all that Oh, no,

we're not oiling it or anything.

I will say My grandma has one that is basically, I didn't realize you have to keep them wet, but it is perpetually wet. Because she just has it. You know, that's her only cutting word. It's like this big a kid, you

know. And it's just like, that's everything's done on that everything.

And like I was cooking in her kitchen like a few months ago. And I was like, it's so small, everything just started falling out. But there's something about it. It's very solid. It has a comforting quality.

So back back at Mofaz museum food and drink when we had the exhibit Chow up. The person who was running the kitchen, his name is John Hunt. And he was experimenting with remember all those experiments either which cutting blocks

took like three or four of them to get them right. But yeah, they were so heavy. They were huge. Who's

he was? I even brought him a stump from Connecticut. I'm like you want you want to you want to stop rip you off from cookies and you want to be like they're thicker than cookies. But anyway, yeah. Anyway, parents. But the other thing that happened to me, John, you might be interested is we're working on this, we make this thing spins all which is a centrifuge for bars. And we've been out of stock for four years, three years because the pandemic and the factory wouldn't remake them. And they finally if they were making you a product, we're making you the the pre prototype so they can, I can approve it. And then they can make the tooling, right. So that's a modification because the tooling already exists, right? There's modifying some of the tools. So when you make a prototype, you don't always make it out of what's called engineering plastic, right? You make it out of like a prototype and plastic that like looks good. And they made a couple of design decisions that, let's say I don't necessarily agree with. And when they shipped it, those design decisions, they put weights in it, right, and the weights came off you ever like when I was a kid, when you ordered something from the mail, right? It would say four to six weeks. So you would like you would get a catalog in the mail, you would order something you would literally put a check into the envelope with your address, you would on a piece of paper, you would write down the catalog number you wanted the size or whatever, and you would and then everyday be like, Mom has it been four to six weeks is in four to six weeks. That's kind of what you know. That's what life was like back then. But that's what it was like to wait for this freaking thing. It's been a long, long way long runway shows up the weights they had put in, they didn't bolt in in a way that made sense. So this is the opposite of the Turkish coffee pot. The weights. And here's an even funnier, right, it was at a giant box cost $460 to ship it to me from Hong Kong, right. So I pay for shipping from Shenzhen to our agent in Hong Kong. And then I pay $460 for Express FedEx to get this box from Hong Kong to me, right. And you I opened it up and I'm like, oh, because it's like a layer of a layer of Styrofoam, a layer of foam and then a layer of like the long bubble wrap that you use for like wine bottles. Right? So then I'm like I cut it open. I open it up and it's shards. Jar cards when I say shards, I mean it's like you took a vase and threw it across the room. And what happened was the head these, these one and a half pound weights that were like bolted inside the thing. And because they were bolted to not engineering plastic and they didn't have like a big washer, as soon as they hit like, you know, in the airplane or in the truck, they hit a bump, the weight snapped off and then just started going up but rattling around shattering everything. Basically, a pile of pile of like, like broken glass. I was like sat down made myself some Turkish coffee. But yeah, that was my semi food related nightmares. I don't know how many amazing food stores Although John, I did a reverse you were my parents asked me to bring an angel food cake to Easter so I made an angel cake and then yesterday use the Oaks for carbon. Oh, nice. John has this absurdly large number of egg yolk carbon our recipe

doesn't seem absurdly large when you're just doing one portion at a time. Yeah, many egg yolks, two egg yolks for 80 grams of pasta, dried pasta.

So a pound of pasta is 12 egg yolks.

Right when you say it the single version

I think

I cheated yesterday. I put some of that. That Spanish fish sauce to Gorham. Who was devilish is that stuff is so good, but it cost too much. It just cost too much. It's it's like between 20 and $30. So like they're doing like a fish sauce in the style of like Roman says Yeah, so the only other fish sauce that tastes similar to it to me is the Japanese one the sheary because it's made from like fish guts. Right? Right. So it's got a different flavor. It's more like canned meat. It's less like regular fish sauce and more like a mixture of fish sauce and canned. Like canned like dealt. What's that company with? Ma'am? You know the the one with the Satan on it. Satan. Let's say it's Satan. It's like wrapped in paper. It's a can of meat wrapped in paper with Satan. r&b. No, it's deviled ham and potted meat but it's all the same. It's Satan is on the can. Anyway. So it's like a mixture of that. We locate colloquially like kind of that dog food. wet dog food smelt which I love. I mean, I don't eat wet dogs.

But well, okay, yeah, plug for the like corned beef hash the canned one.

I do love that. Me too. Yeah. Hormel. Yeah,

that's really good. Yeah,

that's my favorite thing to order in a diner Yeah, we'll see how far we go I always order two eggs, Sunny Side Up runny and rightist.

Not runny, but I used to be runny and for sure right Oh

yeah, well choice what have you moved to still fried eggs? Or do you go scrambled or potions that

almost scrambled gal now see, I

need the I like the I just when you break the yolk and it goes into the hash.

But then I feel like it just disappears. And as I get older I want the like, I want the experience of having the perfect scrambled egg. Yeah, and then also you know, it's what's your perfect scrambled egg? I do I do it the Cantonese way with a little cornstarch to like keep it firm and then just like usually a little spinach because I'm trying to be healthy and then if I'm not doing like a if I'm doing like a Chinese breakfast thing or like a lunch or like really anytime thing I'll put in da Zhao, which is a salted chili, Hunan salted chili

Polish soy so like what level of wetness? Is the salty chili?

Oh pretty well it's pretty wet. So you you you like fry those in oil lightly to just get rid of some of the water and then you go in with the egg and then it all sort of just levels out you don't have to like crisp anything or you don't have to like really cook off all the liquid you actually want to keep that like briny flavor straight out of the jar. Very good.

I don't know what's called but I buy this years ago I did an event in Taiwan and they had these like preserve chili that everyone would buy and then I buy a similar thing but the one that I get from the mainland but I don't know what it's called. Hmm There might be it might be comes up in what looks like a little pickle barrel it's like half gallon it's like bright red the seeds and everything it's all hacked up it's got like a yellow tarp on it could be it's probably it's not that a lot of salt. You're very

frosty, I think

so it's

it's really a lot of that Yeah,

it's like that between between that stuff and the lava mile stuff like although Okay, so in your book, right like in your book. Now wait, is this a chilli oil? Is that a is that a Caitlyn thing or is Sarah that's the Caitlyn thing. All right. So like okay, so talk to me because like 20% of the recipes contain it as an ingredient now and I'm on board except what is the benefit of making it yourself as opposed to buying one of the commercial ones that's out there. Right?

So we just a few weeks ago or so put out a post on like, which store bought Chile oil is best because we get this question often and the reality is is that there are Chile oil equivalents in the market now because it's so popular right I think I think you'd be hard pressed to find that this was like three to five years ago. But now because it's so popular like all of the Chinese food importers are like hip to the groove and kind of have released like stamped like you know, a bog standard chili oil that's kind of like similar to what we have in our recipe. But they just don't taste the same like there's something about it that has that more like sitting around for a while flavor you can find ones that are pretty good and in the post we do we do dub a victor but honestly the homemade version

like how you like how you're like you gotta go read it to find out

why the brands are kind of convoluted so it's not like it's like a super instantly recognizable brand but yeah, I mean homemade, so much more fragrant. You do have to buy some fiddly things, but we kind of stack it such that like if you have like the bare minimum versus like the moderate versus like the super souped up version. But yeah, it just has more fragrance it has more flavor. You can you get that like Sisley effect and it doesn't like fade into like, the process of like making something like mass produce, you know what I mean? Like the flavors like is maintained. And yeah, I think also, there's been a lot of like line blurring between like chili oil and choose Chris.

Yeah, because I use a lot of crystals. I like high solids,

right. I love a high solid, but it's actually pretty polarizing. So I'm glad to hear you say that because I like high solid too. But a lot of people are like, No, we just want the oil. So if you if you only just want if you only want the oil, first of all, customize that at home. But yeah, chilly crisps are just saltier, they have different flavors going on. So it's people will say on the blog that they make, like mapo tofu with like a chili crisp. And I'm like, okay, more authority. But like, in my mind, that's too much salt. Because like there's a spicy bean paste that goes into the mapo tofu that's already really salty. So you're kind of pushing your luck if you start adding like, super salty, like Logan MA in there. Also, you know. So that's why we tend to prefer a homemade version because there's no salt. I mean, you can add salt if you want delicious, but there's no salt. It's more fragrant. It's pretty easy. And it's

also more designed for cooking. Right? I feel what we found in a lot of the chili oils that we tested was that the chili oil cook level like the flake was had gone too far. So like when you pull the flakes out of the oil, you're like, oh, that's like almost black, you know? And so if you're going to cook it again, adding it to another dish, it's gonna be like way beyond rock. So

again, another

always of course, Pete I don't think people appreciate like when chili peppers, like sometimes they're good. Kind of burnt in some recipes, but I don't like the bitterness.

Right. Exactly. philosophical difference because burnt

dried chili. Right, right. Right, right. Away chili blister the outside.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. But like, if you I did like an experiment like is my chili recipe has been so like through the gauntlet over the years of like people making it's like, gooey, or whatever. It's been refined. But yeah, like, I think a lot of people get like, hyped in this the sizzle moment, when you pour the oil over the chili flakes. And it's like, the bubbles rise up. And everybody's like, Oh my god, so good. And at the end, sometimes it is the case that they are blackened. And that can lead to bitterness. Some people like that, go gaga for that. I respect it. But I like more of like a bright red color. And that's what you get. Most of the time. That's what you get at home. It's what you can get some of the time from the store shelf. But is like hit or miss like a lot of like, you know artisanal chili oils that are like out now like they have that like black quality.

Oh, yeah, some of the ones I've tried some of them I'm not gonna call anybody out. But like, there's rancidity going on because the heat level has been to cardboard aromas, like cane aromas. Like right? I'm like, no, no, right.

Like we tried all of them on like the blank canvas of like a very basic storebought dumpling like very little oil. Yeah, extra flavors going on. And we just weren't impressed. Like for exactly the reason you said it was just like, tasted kind of old. Man. You know,

I had one that I tried that my wife was literally like, this tastes like poison and But interestingly, like I let it open in the poisonous snus kind of flashed off. Oh,

interesting. Yeah, I

don't know what it was. Well, yeah, she was like, that's not so poisonous anymore. I'm like, that's still not a ringing endorsement. Does anyone aerate in the 70s people used to when they said chilli oil at like, you know, Chinese restaurants It was literally just oil. Does anyone even use anymore setting a thing anymore? I

don't know that that's really a thing anymore. I feel like on on the table, it's usually a little plastic canister with flake at the bottom and you can kind of pick as you wish, like what how much solid you want. And then at the gym, some places to actually like, we used to only be able to get chili garlic sauce like sambal. And now they're serving chili oil, or it's not that hard. Like you don't necessarily have to ask for the chili oil to like put it out. And they're solid in there. So I feel like they're they're making it in house. I think it's more common and it's less so coming out of a like a an industrial. But

you still see those little bottles where it's just red oil. Yeah, sorry. I'm like, when

do we see that?

I mean, I ranch. So. Okay, and I glazed right over? Yeah, but they're there. And I'm like, How long have those been there? But

does your mind just erase it as you pass? You're like, there's a blank zone there. Yeah, just like I bet you some people cheat though. Like in other words, like, you know, Heinz ketchup. Yes, they have an advertisement where they admit that people feel Heinz bottles with fake ketchup. And it was kind of a weird advertisement. But I was like passing by. And they were like, even when it's not Heinz, it has to be Heinz, and they have a picture of a person squeezing bullcrap ketchup in its outstanding advertising,

really, is that they're marrying other ketchups into the Heinz ketchup bottle because everyone wants Heinz.

Yeah. So I bet you something's happening with I bet you because restaurants, a lot of them don't have probably time to make their own, especially with this if other people do a good job. But you're saying I'm going to make your recipe though. Because like, I mean, I spend a lot of money on Chris, I am a Christian. I'm a Christian guy. You know, I'll take it with it without the peanuts in it. But I am a crisp guy.

We're all crisp people I think we've seen over the past several years. But each one has its occasion.

Yeah. All right. So I'll be remiss, we should talk about what the blog is. And kind of the I mean, it's kind of a unique proposition. Right? Like, so. The walks of life, you started 2013. Yep. Right in 2013. Right. And then, you know, I'm sure everyone asks you like, the origin story a million times, so I'm not going to force you to that people, you know, but it is incredibly rare, as you know, for a whole family to do a project like this, you know, there's been like, you know, one parent, one kid, or, you know, but to have kind of a collaborative for person, for people to generation, you know, two siblings, two parents, like, culinary Odyssey that, you know, 10 year culinary Odyssey is kind of unheard of. And I'm sure that's a huge part of, you know, a huge part of the appeal for you guys. Right. And I know, it's a huge part of appeal for your readers. But the other part about this, I think, really interesting, you know, for those who don't know, go to the walks of life and check it out, but it's is that it's got it because you're all different people and one person had, you know, worked in restaurants for a long time. One person, you know, group one person, you know, more from Cantonese side, one person is more from Shanghai side. You know, there's the American Born Chinese experience in it and like so basically, anything and nothing can or could be, quote unquote, authentic. I hate the term authenticity as it's applied to American Chinese food could talk about this later, or any food in general, not just Chinese, all food, authenticity. People talk about it, because what the hell does that mean? people ate food, if it's theirs, it's authentic, whatever we'll get into people have asked questions. So just I don't know, it's not a question, but why don't you like to talk about this weird amalgam? And kind of how you, you have the ability to, you know, you say that you don't like that you can mess up any recipe and then on the other hand, is it talking to to Kaitlyn but then you have on the other hand, you know, the dad who was a restaurant chef, and you know, the mom has been so it's kind of it's amazing. amalgam you want to say anything to that or Yeah, realize are

there. Yeah, I think, well, the blog started as a family project out of necessity, because it kind of it was the case that we started it because Caitlin and I, like wanted to learn the food that my parents prepared for us growing up and we realized that even though we love to cook we had no idea I had to put dishes on the table that were Chinese. Because they weren't written down, right. And we didn't like to learn by watching, like, it didn't feel as intuitive. And also, like, our parents would be like, Oh, go do your homework and, you know, get out of the kitchen. So we started the blog together for that reason, because essentially, like, we knew nothing, and my parents knew everything, that's how it kind of started. Over the years. You know, Caitlin and I have become a lot more knowledgeable and proficient in this. And so that has been kind of the coolest aspect of it is just see like it going from this like knowledge passing project, to more of just like all of us on equal footing, developing our own recipes. And, and then, like really seeing the sort of, like differences, as you mentioned, kind of coming out from that, right. So like my dad did grow up cooking in restaurants. With his father, his stepfather, and his grandfather, as well was a chef. And my mom grew up in China. And her food experience was extremely different. Not just culturally, but also, you know, from a content from like, a political context like she was growing up during the Cultural Revolution. And then yeah, and then my sister and I, basically just translating my parents cooking, and then also sort of just exploring the dishes that we grew up eating that weren't that weren't even necessarily part of like a Shanghainese or Cantonese tradition. So maybe part like it was partially like going out to restaurants like trying Sichuan food for the first time, like traveling in China. So yeah, we tried to kind of put all of those things in the blog and the book, and hopefully, at the same time, expand people's view of what Chinese food is, because I think that here in the US, it's very sort of, at least, up until recently, when we've seen a lot more sort of regional Chinese cooking coming into the US. It's been very Cantonese focus, because most of Chinese immigrants to the US throughout history have been from southern China have brought that cuisine here, and it's sort of also evolved into its own branch of Chinese American cuisine. But yeah, we just hope to sort of like bring these regional dishes also to people's attention, and really expand people's view of of Chinese food and how varied it is.