[0:00] Today's program was brought to you by the Brooklyn Kitchen, a mom and pop operation since 2006. They provide the tools that shape our food culture. Visit them at 100 Frost Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or visit the Brooklynkitchen.com. I'm Linda Pelagio, host of A Taste of the Past. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:31] Hello and welcome to Cooking Agents. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from an empties Roberta Pizzeria. What the heck happened here, Stas? Jack. It was their holiday party. So I came in here this morning and I saw these guys have been cleaning everything up. Nothing but Papa John's and Domino's boxes. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's right. Papa John's and dominoes. I hate that kind of irony. So so you think it's like irony? You think they're just drinking PBRs? They make great pizza. I also said bottles of champagne, does, so... What, you hear, Stas? No. No? God, no, man. coming here. You know I love I love Roberta's, but I don't I don't do their holiday parties. It's just... Are you guys invited? Yeah. Just a danger zone. Yeah, I bet. Now I have slip into the danger zone in my head. It smells like a nasty bar though. everywhere out there. What do you mean? smells like old keg beer? Yeah. Yeah. Like we walk through. It's like they drank everywhere. Stas Hesser, I hated college face on. Yes, aside from biscuits and any other thing, Stas, is the, like, only person I know who didn't enjoy college. Yeah. Uh, no offense to, uh, you know, Leland Stanford's Junior University. junior, right? Or or Fence. Let him take it. Yeah. So anyway, join as usual with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez, and Jack, Jackie molecules over there, fresh back from New Orleans. How was New Orleans? Oh, so good. Did you have anything good to eat? I did. I had a lot of good things to eat. Fried alligator for the 1st time at Cochon? Oh, yeah. Kushan sure does it well. doesn't just taste like fry because she's a good restaurant. like that place. Yeah, a lot of Boudin. everywhere. You know, and then some like classic New Orleans places. I did the turtle soup at a place called Upper Line, you know, says they do it

[2:24] like it would have been done 100 years ago. Yeah, and did you feel that way? It was Clovy. You know, it was really clothing. Didn't have the sherry at the end? Yeah, in the sherry, yeah, it did. It's all about the sherry at the end, Jack. No share at the end, no love. No, was good. Yeah. You ever read the old documents on turtle soup and the different kinds of fat and the

[2:41] calap, what is it, calapash and calapes? Someone out there will be a turtle soup expert. I think most people now just like, you know, I mean,

[2:51] are they kill they kill turtles in the back or do they buy the canned turtle meat or what? I'm guessing it's canned turtle meat. Yeah? I'm guessing. don't know. Well, if you look up, what's the name of that book? What's it called? It's out of my head. Herder's is the place in Minnesota, and the guy, it's called, I think, the bull. Oh, yeah, the bull. It's not Bull Moose. It's like, but the Bulls, something, cookbook. He has a bunch of them, and he's just this crazy, like,

[3:17] like a lot of weird sexism in it, a lot of weird stuff, a lot of like historical fallacies, but one of my favorite parts is where he tells you how to chop the head off of a turtle, Jack,

[3:26] there are 2 different ways. Would you like to know the 2 different ways to chop the head off of a turtle? Yes, please. Well, the 1st way, because remember, like a lot of times he's dealing with like a snapping turtle, right? So, uh, you stick a stick out and they bite on the stick and as soon as they bite on the stick, que bang, right? Chop the head off. That makes sense, right? So what do you think the 2nd way is? Oh man, I don't know. Guess? I can't. guess. I'm not pull it out? Yeah, yeah, that's what I was going to say. No? No, no. Stick its finger in the tailhole. up near the butt area and then the head pops out because it's like, oh, hey, oh, oh. And then bang, you chop the head off. Wow. Tough way to go. Yeah, it's a real tough way to go. Someone get someone gooses you. Your head pops out of your shell and gets chopped off. You don't even have time to think about it, you know? No, it's not right. It's not right. You know, it's like, the thing is, is like the stick thing, right? It's kind of like why fishing is so, so, well, old school fishing on a line is so interesting because you only get to kill the thing if it tries to kill something else.

[4:30] You know what I mean? Like only through the fish's own aggression does it become caught and eaten. right? Which is why it seems kind of fitting, you know? And same with the turtle going after the stick. Turtle's like, hey, crap on you, stick. And then you have a cleaver and you're like, no, crap on you, Mr. Turtle. You know what I mean? Like that's how, that just seems, you know, poking your finger up its butt. I guess it totally ends up dead either way. Uh, but, uh, so sad news that happened, uh, was it last week? It was one week ago, one week? Yes. About a week ago, we were, um, no one hurt as far as I know, which is good, but, uh, Sam Sam Edwards, as well as Edwards, uh, and son, we were trying to get them on the phone, actually, to answer someone's ham

[5:13] curing uh, question and didn't know at the time that they were like at that moment having a large fire. Have you heard anything about that, Jack? Yeah, I mean, it's very sad. There, you know, they're not going to be up and running for quite some time. Really? Like, did they lose all their stock? basically, yeah. It's terrible. Yeah. So anyway, so, um, really good people too. Good people, best wishes out to Sam Edwards, S. Wells, Edwards, fantastic, you know, ham curing, you know, family. They've been doing it for generations and generations in Surrey, Virginia. Um, they actually were one of the 1st people uh, in the US. It started buying a lot of kind of what I like to call better pork, like especially even like the heritage pork and burks and stuff that heritage meat sells. And when you lose your stock like that, it puts you out like a

[6:11] year, you know what I mean? Like they have stuff that's over a year old. So it's not like, uh, you know, you can just crank up and produce all the stuff that you had. You know what I mean? Not only that, but was it, like, I'm not sure which parts got burnt, but aging rooms take years. You know, these big aging rooms take years to kind of get exactly where you want them. And I remember once San Edwards told me that, you know, you could take him blindfolded into anyone at the time, I think he had 3 different big curing rooms, and he said that they all had their own kind of, uh, uh, feeling to him in terms of the, uh,

[6:46] microflora and fauna that live there that give the hams their, um, particular characteristics. And he said that blindfolded. He could tell you which one he was in every time, just because they had all developed their own character. And so... Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, those rooms are no longer now. Yeah, it's like, and if you talk to, you remember, you know, the Salamaria Bulacy guys here in New York, but now and also New Jersey. Like I talked to them years ago too. And like, you know, uh, one of the, you know, things that you build up over, uh, you know, a long period of time is a stable, uh, curing

[7:20] and, um, an aging room because like I say, like each one is unique and needs to be kind of built up over

[7:27] time. And so it's just a really sad to even after like a year. It's not going to be, you know, the same. I'm sure they'll get back on their feet and, you know, because they've been doing it, like I say, for a long, long, long time. And, you know, they're really good at it. But our best wishes go out to them. And, um, you know, I don't know if we, is there radio, uh, we doing anything or, or is there any sort

[7:50] of, uh... Yeah, we're gonna continue to kind of talk about it. It's very fresh, so we're just giving them a little bit of time, but, you know, we work closely with them. It's one of Heritage's main accounts. I mean, like, uh, they were buying their hogs from from heritage. Um, so definitely affected all of us. And we'll definitely be reporting on it more. I'm sure we'll follow up with Sam soon. Um, yeah. anyway, so I guess I'll take a crack at the at the ham question. Do you want to take a caller first? Yeah, sure. Call her. on the air. Hey, it's Harry from Chicago. Hey, how you doing? Cell phone reception. Yeah, I was like, you're cutting in and out a bit, homosex. See if you can move a couple of feet and then start start again. Is better? Yep. Uh, doing pastry, but I'm calling for Bart, who is trying to make

[8:43] a non-alcoholic Negroni? Hmm. He was saying between juniper and coriander and pine.

[8:54] He was pretty happy with like a gin component. But was wondering if you had any advice on recreating kind of like a

[9:01] mock, sweet vermouth or campari. Yeah, well, I've done, uh, in fact, Jack, I don't know if we can search it, but

[9:10] we we actually gave a recipe for, uh, a Campari soda out. It was a couple of years ago. Um, but yeah, we did like, uh, a Campari variant. So you can do, um, like a water-based, um, you know, just got to go to, you know, whatever, I don't know in Chicago where you get

[9:30] the stuff, but like, you know, here we have a couple of stores where that sell all of the various, uh, kind of barks and

[9:36] routes and stuff. So, you know, Kalustians here is one and dual specialty shop is another, a couple others, but I'm sure you have some sort of local joint you can go. Um, I forget everything that is, is, uh, in the Campari, because it's been a while. I think it's like Gentian, right? Try episode 165. It's coming up that you talked about Campari there. Right. To the listener. Go back and listen. Bar soda, yeah. So I get I give a recipe there. The vermouth, I've never tried to, uh, I've never tried to tackle a vermouth, right? So if you're going to do a vermouth, there's a couple of things, especially if you're going to do a vermouth for

[10:14] Negroni, there's going to be a couple of things that you're going to need to hit. One, remember, vermouth is wine-based. Okay? So in order to get it right, you're going to need some acid in it. Um, preferably similar acid balance that you'd get um, in uh, a wine. So, uh, you know, some, some, um, tartaric, depending perhaps some

[10:38] lactic, and perhaps some malic, depending on the, on the ratio that you're going to get out there. Um, you could conceivably use uh, grape juice because you're going to have to add sugar anyway because the vermouth is also sweet. In addition to that, you're going to have to figure out whatever herb base you're going to want to kind of mimic the vermouth. So you're going to need those 3 components. You're going to need the Herby component. You're going to need the an acid component, and you're going to need some sugar because it's not, you know, in a Negroni, it's not, you know, typically a dry, um, a driver move. It's also typically a, you know, a darker, uh, a darker removed. And so you might want to get some kind of brown or materized characteristics in there as well. Um, now, something you might want to consider when you're doing it, because you're doing an actual Negroni, like it's a stirred cocktail, right? In a non-alcoholic form, unless you add some superbodying agents to

[11:40] it. I just don't think you're going to get the kind of viscosity out of it, that's going to make it drink, even forget the fact that there's no alcohol in it, but that it's going to make it drink like it's

[11:49] a Negroni. Um, it's going to have more of like a,

[11:54] uh, it's going to have more of like a, like a juicy kind of, um, body to it than a Negroni

[12:01] one. What I would suggest is going like a little bit lighter on all the flavors and doing it in the style of a carbonated

[12:08] Negroni because the flavors of a Negroni carbonate very well. And once you carbonate something like that, especially something with bitters in it, people, 1st of all, are used to, um, like, uh, you know, the sand bitter sodas, which are very similar to a compari or

[12:22] comparian soda, and the addition of the gin components, and uh, the removed

[12:26] components, they carbonate quite well. And I think you might have better luck with making something that has the feel of a

[12:34] carbonate Negroni than the feel of a stirred Negroni, but that's just my feeling. What do you think, Stas? You any feelings on that? That's good. Jack? Cool. All right. All right, well, good luck with it. Let us know what happens. Shoot us a tweet at cooking issues and let us know what happens. So go on the on the board that they have here at Heritage Radio. All right, we'll do have a good day. Now you too. Remember those commercials like, can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can't believe that we still deal with the shitty cell phone reception like that. Well, you know, it's like, you know, we can't get anything right. Sorry. You know what I mean? Like, we can't get, we can't get, like, you know, the simplest things can't get right. I'll give you an example. Today, I'm trying to, you know, get here and the streets of New York, we did an admirable job, like getting the city kind of cleaned up from the snowmageddon that we had here. It was like, what, 26 inches or some nonsense like this. But I saw this idiot. Not even a private idiot, like a city paid idiot, like paid by the 3 of us. Like we're paying this idiot, right? And I don't know whether this has any meaning to you, but he's plowing the street, right? And he's got the plow adjusted wrong. First of all, he's plowing in a rear-wheel drive pickup truck that doesn't have limited slip differential. Okay, without weighing his bed down at all. So he's got this like hyperlight bed that he's trying to drive a snowplow with and and his back wheels, he doesn't have a limited slip differential on it. Then he adjusts his freaking plow so that it's too high up and he lets too much snow

[14:05] underneath so that he's running over like, you know, like 3 quarters of an inch of slushed out snow. And his rear tires are just spinning and burning rubber and he's going down the highway down the street with his tires

[14:19] going, like, and the truck is only going like, you know, half a mile an hour or 2 miles an hour because it's the equivalent of just like, you know, crawling along because he's burning his back wheels up because he's a freaking moron.

[14:33] Did you help him? I was late to come to the show. But what am I going to do? knock on his window. Hey, hey, jerk. learn how cars work. You know what I mean? Like, is that what I'm supposed to do? First of all, if you own a pickup truck. I don't know, is this being like stereotyping people, but if you own a pickup truck, you're supposed to know roughly how vehicles work, no? I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know. And then, and then, just to show, like, how crazy New York can get sometimes, a guy was, was, you know, that you, you know the term

[15:07] busker does, busker. Oh, man. But I'm sure, I'm sure Jack, as a musician, you hate yourself some buskers. Oh my goodness. I hate buskers like Stas hates biscuits. Oh, yeah. Boom I hate buskers like Styles hates biscuits. Anyways, so 1st of all, 1st of all, 1st of all, extremely one of these dudes with the extremely loud,

[15:30] like tremulous, like, you know, trying to do the crooning loud voice thing. and you ready for it? Rick Astley, never going to give you up. I swear. I swear to God. I got Rick rolled in the freaking subway and the dude. He was he was only off key every once in a while. So actually I was like, you know what? If you're going to be a jerk, whatever. But like, it's the guy was louder than a set of freaking bagpipes. I could hear him, 2 platforms away on a different freaking level.

[16:01] And like, like, we're sitting there, everyone's standing on the platform looking at each other being like, freaking Rick Astley? What? You know what I mean? It's like, like I didn't have to just step through like a bunch of Meyer and Slush to get here. Now I got to get Rick rolled. Man. Anyways. There's no offense to Rick Astley, you know. The guy, I didn't want to look over to see if he was wearing that long tweed coat that

[16:26] Astley, isn't it tweed, or is he wearing camel hair? Remember, he's wearing like a long coat in that video. I can imagine. Just rick roll yourself and you can find out. I don't feel like I should be the only guy that has to freak in. you know, deal with that. Anyway. Hey, quick, quick, quick, shout out to Pedro, who was introduced to sous vide in the cooking issue show, and he did veal cheeks, 8 hours, 82 degrees,

[16:48] and man, it was so good. He got a small tear in his eye. So he's very proud. I like that. I like a small tear in the eye. You know, the, I'm not going to answer any free questions, am I? Like, like, certain things when you get them. Mostly for me, it's things that bring up like childhood memories, they can bring like a tier to my, like in a restaurant or something, where Stas is the exact opposite. Anything that reminds her of her childhood. She's like, I hate this. What about lemongrass? Yeah, I don't like it. didn't eat it growing up. You just smelled it in the garden and then you had a universal hatred for it? Did you get bit by something in the garden? What? I used to chew on it like, I don't know, just don't like it. crazy. Anyways. So like, I remember a baby lamb I had like that at a very fine restaurant. I was like, or when I went to Danielle and they did the Gary Dong,

[17:35] they, you know, the table side service, but they did it so old school, but I was like, oh, so old school. you, occasionally you want the hyper old school. Yeah. Something else I'm going to mention real quick before I actually answer this question. Um, So, you know, I told you I bought this wet grinder, right? You know, but stars, you remember the wet grinder, that we made the, used to make the chocolate and the, uh, and the, and all the nut butters in and stuff like this. Anyway, the one that I had broke. So, and I'd never, ever used it to make real, uh, real, you know, food with it that

[18:06] it's intended to do, namely things like doses and idlies and other. And so, you know, for those of you that don't know, like the dosa is like the, the, the, so yeah, you take uh, Ura doll, which is like this like split, you know, um, you know, black gram, that what, but it's, you know,

[18:20] de hauled, so it's white, and you soak it, and you grind it, and that becomes like a mucilaginous paste, and you mix that in

[18:26] with um, idly rice, which is parboiled. So the starch is already somewhat, um, uh, pregelatinized, right? So it's almost like using a pre-cooked starch. Well, it is like using a pre-cooked starch. And then, but it's dry, so you soak that and you grind it, you mix those 2 together. I did about 3 parts rice to one part of the doll. Uh, and you let it ferment for a long time and it actually makes, you can make these, you can make these crepes, which are, and you put

[18:49] fenna Greek seed in too. You can make these crepes, which are like doses and they're crispy, or you can make these things that look like little frisbee pies. What are those things called stuff? It's a little like they're, they look like they're puffy. They're puffy, but they're like disks. You know what I'm talking about? Anyways. Uh, like an like an incrustible. Remember those wretched things made by smuckers or whatever? Oh my goodness. Yeah, they're kind of like that. But anyway, but they're steamed. and they're delicious. Those are idlys, right? So I've been practicing with this, but I've started, I just, I've decided I freaking love this wet grinder because it's just such a pleasure to use it. It's so quiet compared to like the Vida Prep. You know what I mean? It's just like, grinding the stuff. Anyway, so, uh, Dax and Booker did not like uh, playing uh, Italy's. They didn't like them, right? So I took, uh, we did the potato bar again over the weekend, as I suggested someone else, they do. So I took some of the veg chili because for some reason Dax wants veget chili on his potatoes. And so I put the veg chili inside the Italy and steamed it so that the inside of the Italy was filled with chili. So right there you have chili idleys, chili idleys. Then Stas, here what we're going to do. I put this on the Twitter, but since you don't read Twitter, I can, I can tell you this. are you doing this? We got we got to rent something. We shouldn't actually just, we really should. We should rent at San Gennaro's. We should rent one of the booze and make little Italy, Italy's. And if you could say it 5 times fast, I won't make you do it. Little Italy, chili, Italy. Have you ever done anything like that? What? Like a street pop-up? Have you? Yes. Well, no, that's in your truck. That's a truck. No, we did both. You did a street? I have actually served things at street things, but not for a long period of time. Well, then you have to be able to say effect. Can you save it once? Can you say it even once? No, I can't. Jack, can you say that tongue twister? I had a look at it. Little Italy, Chili, Italy. Little, Italy, Chili, Italy. Ah, yeah, you're a better, you're a, you're a better man than Stas is a woman. Okay. She's just weak. She was sitting there like futzing around on her on her phone, not even trying to say it. screwed for the car on Thursday. What car on Thursday? She's talking about her travel plans for Thursday with radio people who don't care. But we, Stas, you have the entire rest of the day to discuss your Thursday travel plans with me the entire rest of the

[21:09] day. In fact, look, we're not even going to have lunch here because there is no lunch here today. We're going to be discussing that at any point in time. We're going to be hanging out at Booker and Dax. We have a bar meeting people. I don't know if you're interested in that. After this, we're going to go to a fantastic bar meeting where we have plenty of time to discuss. They always ask for more personal. But like, but they don't care that you can't find a car on Thursday because they're not like hanging out with you on

[21:29] Thursday. They might still have some Papa John's for lunch here, by the way. Thank you. A true mom and pop operation since 2006. The Brooklyn kitchen provides the tools that shape our food culture. They stock a curated variety of pots, pans, knives, small appliances, and other kitchen essentials. Their grocery department works closely with local farms and food artisans to bring you the tastiest fresh produce, dairy, and pantry items. Their teaching kitchens allowed them to offer a wide breath of cooking classes, from knife skills to pick butchering, from cooking for couples to pickling and canning, from

[22:01] home brewing to pie making. Something new is always happening at the Brooklyn Kitchen. Visit them at 100 Frost Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or visit the

[22:10] Brooklyn kitchen.com. I have a question that I think we missed in the fold here through email. You mind if I jump in with it? Okay, cool. This is from Javier Gutierrez. I can't say it. I'm another one of the crazy guys working my way through the archives. I can only thank you for sharing so much knowledge in the many hours of entertainment. My question is related to making pizza at home. I want to create a Napoli style pizza. Okay. But haven't been able to make a dough that when baked is thin and light. I've used many recipes from Reinhardt, Hestin, and others, but none have worked for me so far. Do I need to lower the yeast content or increase the hydration or am I failing to make the pies thin enough to achieve the desired result?

[22:49] As far as the sauce for the pizza? What are important things to consider? I know in previous shows, you've mentioned adding anchovies. But what are other good ingredients to make a killer sauce, would appreciate any tips, techniques, or a recipe that works for you. And for background, he makes them using a technique from Heston Blumenthal's show in search of

[23:05] perfection where you crank the oven as high as it goes, heat a large cast iron pan on a stove, move it to the oven to use as a base to create a good and fast crust. All right. Get all that? Yes. So, you know, okay, a couple of points here. I think, uh, you know, what Jeffrey Steingarten always used to say, uh, is that the only important thing in a pizza really is the dough.

[23:29] Like, and everything else is just, you know, window dressing for the dough.

[23:35] And if you don't focus on the dough, then your host, right? And most of the people I know that make really good dough, and this is the way I do it too. Um, the trick to it is extremely long fermentation times, right?

[23:54] So, you know, a very small amount of yeast, fairly high, you know, not super

[23:58] high, but fairly high hydration and just very, very long rise times. So you can do that a number of ways, right? So you can start with a, you can start with a, like a more normal, like the easiest way to do it.

[24:11] Uh, and then, uh, you know, Matthew, uh, uh,

[24:15] from um, Motorino, he, like, he, he actually called me out because what I had done for many years was you'd make a dough that was relatively high in hydration. I forget what I owe not super high. Like, I was doing like, I think, somewhere in the mid 60s, up to, I think, mid 60s to 70s, somewhere in there. And then, um, you, you know, I would under yeast it, I would let it start rising, and then I would throw it in the fridge to retard it for like 24

[24:44] hours or like, you know, 18 hours. I'd pull it out like 4 hours before I wanted to make pizza. I would make all the dough individually. So like the night before, I would, I would break all the doughs individually into uh, core containers, I would spray, Pam, into the core containers, throw in the dough, cap them, and then throw them all in the

[25:02] fridge, stacked, so that I could pull them all out, and then doe for dough, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, just go,

[25:07] right? That's how I would do it. But then, you know, Matthew was like, you know, that's great, I guess, if you're going to be a jackass. He's like, why don't you like, why, like, just use less yeast? And then you won't have to do the fridge retarding step. You can just let it go. So, you know, I've tried scaling further and further back. on the yeast and just letting the rise time be longer and longer. Also, I wouldn't hold back on the salt. Salt is going to decrease the yeast activity, but it will leaven over time. And I think most of the people who are doing, I don't know how they do it here, actually, but I think most of the people that, um, you know, I've spoken to, uh, you know, who really like

[25:51] the the job they're doing, it's just a matter of either using a, uh, a retarding step in the fridge or uh, just having a really

[25:58] long, uh, gradual rise time. Uh, and I think most people use a fairly like on the wetter side of uh, uh, a dough. I know that Steingarten, when he was doing his stuff in the

[26:11] oven, in his home oven testing, was using a very high hydration dough, like one that he could barely handle.

[26:18] I don't do that, but, um, that maybe that's, you know, something you need to do if you're dealing with a more normal oven. I don't have a normal oven. Like, I've jacked my oven so that I can get up to 850 degrees. Uh, so, you know, I can treat it like it's a real, you know, pizza oven. Um, The pan might work. He said, Jackie said he had the pan upside down, right? I believe so. Have to. Otherwise, what are you gonna do? I mean what's the choice? You could get one of Chris Young's approved baking

[26:47] steals. I mean, a chef steps, they have that, I tend to still use stone because my oven can heat up a lot of

[26:54] stone really freaking hot. But anyway, yeah, I use that. As for the sauces, I think usually minimal is better. I like thick sauces rather than thin sauces, but a lot of people hate. What kind of sauce do you like sauce? You like thin? I like a thick, like not thickly. In other words, when I say thick, I mean the sauce itself has more of a pasty consistency, but you know, it's thinly applied, but Stas prefers a thinner sauce, but then you really need a good oven because you're adding a lot more moisture to the

[27:21] top and the pizza won't last as long when it comes out. you have to apply less. The trick to that kind of a thing is just application of less crap. Like the less garbage you put on pizza, usually, uh, the better in terms of the texture of the dough. At least that's my experience used does. And the other answer, by the way, 2 things that are that belong on most pizzas, fried egg, just put on the top after the thing comes out. I love a fried egg on any pizza. I like thinly shaved, uh, very thinly shaved, uh, potato, to like thinly shaved a potato, toss it in uh, oil, salt, and pepper, and then just like throw it on, and I like that a lot.

[27:59] You ever had that, Stas? Sullivan's used to do that. They used to make it really good. I've had really good potato pizza in outside of Rome, like really good. But I like it, just like thin, kind of shaped. And but that what Stas and I like the most is greens on our pizza. would have been our day, though, to bring the greens, huh? I know, like jerks. So here are Burta's, right? Every day, we're like every day. Every Tuesday we're like, can we get some greens on our freaking pizza and they're like, we don't have greens. We're like, how about this kale salad that you have? Can we just, and like, and they're like, no, they don't want to do it for us. They specifically hate us. So here's what we're going to do. Next week, we're going to bring our own greens. It's BYOG. We're going to bring the greens. We'll toss them with a little like vinaigrette or something or something simple. And then we'll just put them on top. I like I like uncooked greens on the top of my pizza,

[28:48] right? I like that. I like to smash it in, fold it in half and have the pizza be like a freaking, like, salad pizza. See, I like that, but more if it's like a white pie, you know? I like it always. And I'll tell you what, I like I like strong flavored greens. I like arugula that way. You can tell your girlfriend it's good on the 2 boots, Cleopatra pizza. Nice. Well, so FYI, it's, you know, Jack, you want to give him the FYI on the 2 boots? What, the cornmeal? No, not the cornmeal? The connection. Oh, FYI. I thought we talked about it on the show. My girlfriend is in the 2 Boots family. Yeah. Well, so what the hell? don't need suggestions in New Orleans. all about that. They're a New Orleans family. Yeah. Well, they're from New York, like New Yorkers, but, you know, strong tide in New Orleans. Yeah. And by the way, in the chat room, Stas, we do care. Check out Costco travel for cheap rentals. you. Oh, now Dave's just a bad guy. Dave, show us a real meaning. You are like, let's change the format and be more interesting and include more people. I don't want to change the format. I want to get some, like, so Jack. Yeah, I don't want to change the format. What I want is to get maybe some like other style of guests in occasionally. Like who? I don't know. Like, I got to get someone to agree first. I don't know, like, who do you think would be interesting? Um, maybe, I don't know. Like when we get guests, there... Hey, listeners, who do you want to hear on the show? Right. usually a very specific kind of guests, right? So we'll get, like, you know, Mirvold or Chris Young or Henry McGee or Jeffrey

[30:22] Steingarten or Dave Wonder. very like, you know, they're in the nerd realm, let's say. Man friendly. Whoa, man friendly. didn't hear any females in that. That's true. Well, cup for cup. She that she came on once. She said she hated Floridians. She did. Yes which was awesome. Did Jordan come on the show once? Yes, yeah she did. She did? She did? And Jordana Rothman, if you want to, if you want personal information. Jordan Rothman, who is a good friend of ours, used to be the, uh, she wrote, uh, the most recent thing that she did that you should go by is Alex Dupak's uh, taco book, right? Yep. Yeah. And, um, uh, anyway, so she's been texting

[31:04] me pictures of Nastasia Lopez with like laser beams coming out of her eyes, like exploding Mark Ladner's

[31:12] head or like, yeah, Anastasia Lopez carrying already, by the way, a very scary butcher's knife, but also with like blood dripping fangs.

[31:21] Very interesting. Wow. Very interesting photos. I'm getting from Jordana. We got some other requests for guests here in the chat room. What do you got? We got Christina Tosi. Okay, yeah, she... Who's that? Who's that? I said, very doable. Yeah, yeah, Donald Trump not doable. David Chang, Alex Stupak, and Dave's wife. Yeah, well, we'll get her. We'll get her. Okay. So another thing is that Jack and I are talking about bringing the blog back semi-live,

[31:49] semi-live, semi-live. In other words, like heritage, we haven't talked about it fully, but the heritage radio would keep it from being like overrun by Cialis merchants,

[32:00] right? Um, which is for a long time. It was like Cialis merchants, I think. And then, uh, and then we might occasionally start putting new live content on it just because I'm sick of not having that outlet, but they won't be 4000 word, like, you know, posts on niximalization

[32:17] anymore unless I find myself like, like, no, unless I, unless I feel compelled to do it. But, um, Right? And then we go live, maybe we'll do the starch program on that, the starch, you know, the year of starch. I've already started. St is like, you love starch. You're the freaking pasta queen. How could you... What the hell is it boring? Everything you like is starch. Hey, can we play that? It's a starch. It's a starch. She likes a starch. make it, make it, make it. my favorite. We got to watch that movie. I love that movie. Big night. Oh, so awesome. I gotta call her on the line. Call her, you're on the air. Hey, Dave and everyone. I'm the ham question. Oh, here we go. Patrick. Yeah. How you doing? Good, good. I started to Pester. I was just planning on hanging them this weekend, so I want to make sure I wasn't having any mission critical errors. All right. Do you want me to read your questions so people know what we're talking about? I have a question about hanging hams for equalization. So equalization, folks, is after you do your initial salting phase, the salt is not equally permeated the

[33:20] ham. So you hang it for a little while and let the salt, as they say, equalize before you have the real,

[33:26] um, you have the real, uh, what's it called? aging process go on. Uh, I have some hams that are currently curing a temperature controlled 35 degree chest freezer, uh, and I'm planning to remove them for equalization and hang them in unfinished basement that is constantly roughly 50 to 55 degrees.

[33:41] Are there any pest countermeasures you recommend now? I was planning to put hams in stocking nets and hang them from the rafters as the ceilings are low, they will probably end up only 3 to feet off 3 feet off the ground at

[33:51] most 3 to 4 feet. I'm not sure how impervious the basement is to rodents. I'm guessing it's not, although the house hasn't had any food products in it for several years. I imagine bugs are less of a concern until warmer weather, but I don't really, but don't, I don't really know. In spring, I was going to move into a warmer zone for aging and coat in a fat rice flour

[34:07] mixture, per Paul Bertoli's recommendations in the fantastic book, cooking by hand, which is a great book, by the way. People don't read that anymore. Do you know that, Patrick? I don't think people read that book anymore. Good book, right? Yeah, I don't think so. Great book. Love that book. Uh, but it sounded uh, like uh, coding in the equalization stage isn't a good idea. Because you want the moisture loss to continue now. They will not be smoked. Okay, this is all excellent questions. So on the issue of rodents. So I forget which one of the burgers, I think it was Morris Burger from Burger Smokehouse once told me that, you know, when he was a kid, what they would do is they would hang the hams from very thin wires,

[34:50] right? Because rodents can't chew through wire and they can't climb on the wire. And so they would hang the hams on these like super thin wires from the rafters instead of from

[35:01] strings or ropes because the rodents could climb on those, but couldn't climb on just a piece of wire. He also said that when they used to cut slices out of the center of the, you know,

[35:13] the, the, the frying slices for it, they would rub lard on the uh, faces as they as they cut it, mainly to stop the drying out to keep the stuff preserved on that side. And he said that they used to keep the hands like that for a good long time. Now, they might have been, um, I'm pretty sure that they occasionally would smoke those things out, um, so that to prevent kind of, you know,

[35:35] pests, uh, from, um, going in there. Now, there's a couple of different kind of pests you need to worry about, right? So early on, if you have parts of it that are still, um, and I

[35:47] think I wrote down, let me see if I actually did, I'm pretty stupid. I probably didn't. It's not here. shoot. Uh, if you go online, uh, the University of Kentucky and the University of Virginia have very good cooperative extension websites on uh,

[36:03] Curingham at at home. The guy who did Virginia Techs won, I think it was Virginia Tech, I don't think it was, I think it was Virginia Tech. His name was Norman is Norman Marriott, and he has a lot of good information. And then Kentucky folks have a lot of stuff on pest controls. But, uh, earlier on, you're going to have problems with, um, uh, you could have problems with uh, flies, right? like skippers and stuff like this. And so for that, the stocking net's going to help. But some people recommend actually, once once it's, you know, done, equalize it. You can't do it during equalization, because it's equalizing and getting its, you know, initial kind of some of the moisture update. Some people wrap it full in paper, which is still kind of like moisture permeable, but not insect permeable. And so that's how they'll kind of do things. But once you get enough liquid out of it so that the flies themselves aren't a

[36:53] problem. Like the main problems that I've had personally is with various different kinds of

[36:57] Beetle and with mites, right? And so once you get mites in your space, right, they're like there. You can't, like, you're not going to, you're not going to get rid of them. You know what I mean? They used to use a, um, and the name just went out of my head and like I said, I thought I wrote it down in the thing, but the name went out of my head.

[37:18] you know, as you age. these things go out of your head, but there's something that they used to fumigate the actual hams width that is meant to be like a food

[37:26] grade fumigant. And, uh, but it's been, it's being outlawed not for a food safety reason, but because I think it's

[37:35] like uh, detrimental to the ozone layer. So they can't do that anymore. So there's nothing, I think, that you can spray kind of directly on the, the, you know, meat, except for they always say, like, rub a layer, like, if you have an effective area, cut it out, rub a layer of oil over it, uh, and some people put, like, like, hard

[37:54] alcohol and then oil over it, uh, to try and kill uh, the things um, around there. Also, like, if you get a mite infestation or before you hang up, some people, uh, before you hang the meat, some people now will take like pyrethrin, like this, like, which is like, I guess, from chrysanthemums or something, but it's like, uh, you know, non-toxic, um, pesticide, and they'll like spray soak the, uh, the wood in the area with it to wipe

[38:19] out uh, mites and stuff like that. And then they'll, and I get, I think it does mites. And then they'll hang it and they go, but like I've had mites develop and you can see mites because they make this powdery nonsense. Uh, you know, where they're, where they're, like, it's actually, I think, their bodies that, you know, as they're dying, they make this powdery stuff. It's not going to hurt much. The thing that really is grosser, the Beatles, right? And there's different kinds of beetles that eat different kinds of things, but the ones that I used to get would bore into the fat area, um,

[38:47] uh, you know, right where the fat meets the kind of uh, meat and skin area and you'd see the bore holes and they'd go in there and I had a real tough time eradicating

[38:54] them. So I think your stocking net is good. If you... Do you think I should put the paper? I could do the paper in the soconet too? just or is that? Yeah, that's that's what that's what I've seen people who do that. I think that's the way Finchville sells their hams. They're paper and stock in that. And if you actually, if you look up, there's a whole curing technique called bag curing that Norman Marriott from Virginia, um, kind of proposes where you put a fixed amount, instead of, instead of taking your hams and kind of like laying them, uh, you know, down flatwise and then turning them over occasionally and then just having the salt kind of distribute over like a big case of hams, like

[39:32] an alternative method is to add just the amount for that individual ham inside of the paper bat and cure it like individually like that, which

[39:39] is. Yeah, that's sort of what we've tried so far with the cure. It's sort of a hybrid of the Bertoli percentages, but with using the bag. Right. So I'm going to see how that turns out. I'm just curious too of, of, of, of, uh, I think I have 8 of them with 2 different, uh, 2 different thick

[40:00] grades, just, but I was just, when, when should I start pulling them? Because I'm thinking of just, I want to see how long they can, they can

[40:07] go? You know, with, you know, they're going to dry out a little more, but maybe, you know, keep some moisture in them, because I'm just curious at the longer

[40:14] end, what, how the flavor is going to develop. But if you have 4 of them, when would you recommend polling them, you know,

[40:22] in sequence, just a taste, as long as they're good. Yeah, I mean, well, you can get, you know, like an ice pick, right? And you can kind of judge during the curing time based on kind of aroma, uh, on the ice pick, like kind of where you think, um, where you think the

[40:40] flavor is going. And I would also highly recommend weighing them. Uh, so you can kind of gauge how much moisture you're losing

[40:49] um, over time. Um, but I've never, you know, I've never made my own from, um,

[40:57] from scratch, but, you know, like all of the anecdotal evidence. So if you try to mimic the, like the actual kind of, uh, you know, heat regimen you're going to get in, um, in kind of like the classic ham production areas. You know, I wouldn't cut into one earlier than 9 months. You know what I mean? And I would I would try to, you know, wait a year if you could. Uh, you know, I've taken 9 month old hams and aged them an additional year and they're

[41:28] hard, but they're good. You know, I think that a lot of for you, if you want to age them for a long time, is going to be that fat coding, especially, um, especially on the face where the meat's

[41:39] exposed because that's where you're going to lose a lot of moisture. And so if you, if you imagine in your head slicing a country ham, the, the meat that's close there to the, where it was attached to the pig's body, where there's no kind of a fat covering, where it's a lot harder and drier there

[41:52] uh, than it is uh, in, in the rest. And so that's what you're going to want to. And also, remember, if you're using Bertoli's salt quantities, there are lower, there are lower salt content. So you could probably survive a higher degree of dehydration without having it taste consequently that much more

[42:11] salty, so long as it doesn't. So long as you have enough in there that during the initial curing phase, it doesn't spoil. But that's where the ice pick's gonna help you. You're going to jab the ice pick in and you're going to see what's going on. And of course, you know, you don't need to worry about, I mean, if you do get some taint or spoil in the ham, when you bone it out, you can just cut that part out. I mean, I can't tell you. I've had, you know, so many hams that had portions of them that were not properly

[42:35] cured and that part was bad, but the rest of the ham was still good. So, you know, it's never a total loss. Yeah, so, I mean, I think so, the plan is to, where they're going to equalize is sort of this constant temperature, but the plan is after

[42:49] that, to, uh, hang them in a place upstate where there's about a 30 to 35 degree temperature, difference between day and nighttime, most of the

[42:58] year. So, you know, when it's the summer, it goes up to 85 and I'm dropping to 50. So I'm guessing, you know, by everything I've read, which you've said too, is that that's going to be fairly beneficial to developing interesting characteristics.

[43:10] Yep, yep, up and down. So like, uh... Oh, yeah. So like that's the that's the reason the Travel Uni, uh, I think it's the name of the the drying machines they have in Parma are so awesome because they they imitate that kind

[43:23] of, um, that kind of cycle, that day night cycle of, um, temperature, uh, humidity. Yeah, so like that's that's what you want. I mean, that's definitely what you want. Uh, and so, uh, but you should keep, keep us, uh, keep us posted either

[43:37] on, uh, on the chat room or to my Twitter at cooking issues and let us know how everything's going because I love, I love hearing

[43:43] the the progress of how these things go. Well, I think I think the 1st tasting won't be till the fall, so it might be, it might be 7 or 8 months from now. Yeah, but like if you have a problem with insects or something, like let us know. It's, you know, it's interesting, and that kind of stuff's interesting to me, especially if you're not going to be there all the time. You know what I mean? It's, you don't want to. Yeah, that's just sort of, it's, it's not a hands on operation at all. It's sort of a, let the thing sit there. Come back every few weeks operation. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well let's know what happens. Cool. All right. Thanks for all your help. All right, cool. So I didn't get to any of this week's questions, but next week we're going to talk about preserving basil. We have a question from Thailand. We're going to talk about these new, this new

[44:22] weird, freeze, this new instant coffee that supposedly is really good, but I haven't had it. So, like, if any actually, if anyone out there for next week can tell me something about sudden coffee and whether anyone's had it or tasted it,

[44:35] it like sells out instantly, but so it's hard for me to talk about, but we could talk about it next week on the show. Anyway, also I had a question on tandors, which would take a long time for me to get to, so we'll get that next time. And also a question on drying things out with sodium sulfate, which I'm not even sure how I should respond to, but we'll talk about it next time on cooking

[44:51] issues. Thanks for listening to this program on HeritageRadioNetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. HeritageRadio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.