[0:23] And we're about to start.

[0:52] This Heritage Radio Network program is sponsored by Open Table. For more information, visit opentable.com. This is Chef Emily Peterson, host of Sharp and Hot. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadioNetwork.org for 1000s more.

[1:17] Hello, and welcome to Computers. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick,

[1:26] Brooklyn, every Tuesday, you know, like 12-ish, 1245, 1250. It depends on whether we have a show coming after kicking us out or, you know, something else to do. You know how it is. Call in your questions 2718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Joined in the studio as usual, Witness Dasia. Oh, the hammer, Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Good. Yeah? Doing all right. Yeah, we got Jackie molecules. Jack in the engineering booth. How you doing, Jack? I'm good. What up with the eye patch man? All right. All right. We'll talk about the eye patch in a minute. I'm doing Pirate Dave right now. And we're joined by we'll use like political terminology. Engineer Joe. We got Engineer Joe in the in the booth today. How you doing, Joe? afternoon. So if you should, and by the way, when I say engineer, I don't mean like rocket engineer or automobile engineer, like a kitchen equipment engineer. So if you guys have any questions about, for instance, why does my X, Y,

[2:22] Z do X, Y, and Z? You can call and ask Joe and maybe he can tell you why X, Y, and Z does X, Y, and Z, right? hope so. Yeah. All right. I should provide an interesting perspective here on the program. So, why am I wearing an eye patch? This is an excellent question. So, it turns out that, uh, so I am the, uh, I do not have a detached retina. That is not what happened. Let's just let's start with that. Let's start with that. do not have a detached retina. However, uh, a, you know, mid 40s, you know, uh, white dude who uh, was born like very nearsighted, like I was, you know,

[3:00] I had the laser surgery so I can see, well, could see normally, right? Like, we are prime candidates, like white, male, like, mid-age, uh, near-sighted folk, prime suspects for retinal detachment. So on Sunday, I start getting like a floater, right? You know, like, you know what I'm saying, like, a floater in your eye, like, uh, but usually floaters, they look kind of like gray. You know what I mean? So I didn't, uh, I didn't think much of it. It was bigger than normal. I was like, this sucks. You know what I mean? And then I did, you know, my my daily, I hate to even say these words, workout routine, right? Yeah, I know it's terrible. It awful. I don't even want to think about it, right? I do test, I detest it. Anyways. So I did that. And then, like, all of a sudden, my, it looked like the beginning of a James Bond, like, movie situation, like, you know, some golden eye crap, like just like swirls of like black,

[3:58] like galaxies and stars of dust and like blackness and like big inky swirls. You know how like when someone gets shot in the James Bond thing and all the blood pours out of them like ink and shadow effect? Like this is what my vision was like in my eye. So I'm like, meh, meh. And so I go online and they're like, yeah, yeah, floaters. I'm like, it seems worse than a float. like, if it's flashing, if you have flashing lights. This is when you know you're getting a detached ratina. Or if like a portion of your vision just literally goes blank, like blank. Not like looking through a James Bond film, but like blank, detachment. I'm like, nah, not a big deal. So at dinner, because I cooked dinner that night. By the way, we could talk about dinner. I have my new favorite go-to quick meal. We can talk about that, man. Anyways. So I could tell the people at dinner. Yeah, I tell the people at dinner, I'm like, hey, uh, so, um, I can't really read and it's hard for me to concentrate when I'm slicing

[4:48] and, uh, I'm sorry if I seem a little distracted, but like, you know, I have a James Bond movie going in my right eye. And they're like, what the what's wrong with you? And so then like I called my mom and mom's like, what's wrong with you? You could be having a cat retina. I was like, the internet tells me no, ma. She's like, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot. So I had to go to see a doctor. Luckily, all I did was my eye sack ripped away from the edge, tore open a blood vessel and sprayed blood all over the inside of my eye, which you can see.

[5:13] But, um, Anyways, so apparently I am at an increased risk for rental detachment over the next 2 weeks. So please, nobody who sees me on the street. Please don't punch me in the right side of the head. You know what I mean? Like, if you see me on the street, try to avoid your your primary urge, which will be to punch me in the right side of the head. tough, man. I know. Like, go for a kidney blow, something that's not going to send too much shock to the head, you know what I mean? Like, you know, maybe if you hit me in the kidney, maybe I could get some match bleeding, bleeding down low, bleeding up high. Could be good, you know what I mean? So anyways, so yeah, so it's taking me out of strenuous activity for the next couple of weeks. But, oh, and I have to wear, I don't have to wear an eye patch. In fact, my doctor says that I should wear the eye patch as little as possible

[5:57] because he wants me to be looking through the eye in case something terrible happens so I can rush to the hospital and they can like glue all the stuff back together, should start coming

[6:04] apart like a poorly glued model airplane. Uh, but the, uh, but it's impossible for me to read. So there's no way I can do, there's no way I can do the radio show without the eye patch. I didn't bring the cowboy hat. Yesterday I had the cowboy hat and the eye patch, and I have to say, I have never in my life gotten such looks of respect on the street as I did when I was walking around with like a vest, like, you know, like a puffy vest, like my, you know, my brown cowboy hat and an eye patch.

[6:31] People were like, I don't know, but I don't want to not gonna... I don't know, but I'm just not gonna, I'm not gonna mess with this one. This one. No, no. You know what I mean? You know what I mean, Jack? Yeah, it's a great look. Yeah, you like the eye patch? What's the go-to quick meal, though? Oh, yeah, go too quick meal. I do have a collar. we'll stay I told them to stay patient. Well, when we do the collar. We'll be able to collar's problem and then we'll talk about some go-to quick meal. All right, call her. on the air. Hey, guys, this is Coleman from Brooklyn. How it going? all right. How you doing? Not bad, thanks. Um, 2 questions. First of all, I'm going to Vancouver this coming weekend. I want to see if you have any restaurant recommendations up there. You know what? You know what that's for? That's for the chat room. I haven't been to Vancouver in, I think, like 4 years, and I went with, you know, the food writer out there, Fong. It was good, but I can't remember. I went to like whatever the top rated sushi restaurant was in Vancouver and it was quite good, but I don't remember the name of it. You know what I mean? And so much has happened in Vancouver over the past, uh, over the past couple of years, I would hesitate even to, have you been there recently? Did you go to their styles when you went to Seattle and Portland? No. No? Joe, you've been to Vancouver recently? In the mid 90s. That's even earlier. I was there too, in the mid 90s. It was crazy time. That's when all of Hong Kong was buying up Vancouver when that, yeah. Yeah, interesting time. Yes. But no, Jack, you gonna put that out to the chat room? Yeah I will. All right, put, uh, so I'm sorry, I don't have anything specific, but we'll get the chat room working on it and you can, uh, you know, get the cooking issues crew winging on that. Do you have any other questions that maybe I know the answer. one other one I have a friend whose birthday is coming up who just turned vegetarian. And I, you know, I don't approve of that, but it's a friend. Uh, and I want to see if you had any good vegetarian cookbook that you actually like and thought would be worth uh, getting as a present. Yeah, sure. You need to get a Michael Napkins herbivoracious. Boom. Which one again? Michael Natkins, herbivoracious. Okay. Herbivoracious. Michael Natkin does work with Chef Steps. and even Nastasia, hater of vegans everywhere. Thinks it's a good book, right? You just heard Nastasio. Say it again. See, you heard Nastasio Lopez actually praising something on air, if you can believe that. Nastasio, I'm proud to have caused that. Yeah, yeah. Nastasio Lopez has actually cooked recipes out of this

[8:45] book, right? That's true. That, like, yeah, that's crazy endorsement. Now, if I might go forward. Uh, and Snazi Nastasia is going to disagree with me here. I would go purchase any one of the number of excellent Indian vegetarian cookbooks out there. The one that I happen to own is extremely old and so it doesn't, uh, I mean, I don't even know whether it's current. It's not really current anymore, but I have the old Yamuna Devi one, but, you know, anyone who's become

[9:14] vegetarian, better get themselves very, very acquainted with Indian food, lickety. my go-to. My girlfriend's vegetarians, so I cook a lot of Indian at home. Yeah. And let me say this. I wouldn't worry so much about, well, you know, you're not the vegetarian. you don't care. But like the point is, is that is that like a lot of times I think when someone, I mean, the great thing about Indian, uh, cooking, vegetarian cooking is that they have so many centuries of practice at doing this properly in a very kind of uh, integrated in a holistic

[9:43] way. So it's not just trying to glue the vegetarian precepts onto like some other form of eating. So it's really a good place to start. But I find that a lot of people, uh, when they start out, get rather daunted because of the spice mixtures

[9:58] and, uh, you know, all of the, all of these other things. And I think that, you know, I don't know how kind of creative your friend is, but a lot of the techniques that are used in Indian cooking or the basic flavor combinations, even without the huge mix of spices in the masalas and

[10:17] whatnot, are extremely useful. So, you know, like, you know, if you're making like a, like, you know, mint

[10:23] coconut chutney, it can be really, really complicated, or it can literally be, I'm going to throw a coconut with some mint and coriander and ginger and some spice,

[10:33] you know, and a couple nuts in a blender and go with some water and oil and bang.

[10:37] you know what I mean? Like super fresh. So I think, like, some willingness to not necessarily adhere to the letter of what's going on in those cookbooks is very

[10:45] helpful, because you're not shooting for authentic. You're shooting for delicious, right? And things can be authentic and delicious or they can be, uh, your own creation and delicious, you know? You got that, Red. So that's those are my suggestions. Cool. All right. Hey, thanks so much. Hey, no problem. Hey, Jack, do we get anyone weighing in Vancouver yet? No, but I just texted you and Stas. We have a 1st time chatter here. Jay Heaton just made a enemies of quality t-shirt design. Wow. You got to look at it. I just texted it to you in Stas. Do you see it? I'm looking through my one, as Bob Dylan would say, my one dying eye. For those of you that listen to the hurricane, do people still talk about that, about the hurricane? About Bob Dylan. No, about the song. Wow, tomatoes in the fridge. We got to send this to Daniel Gritzer and see what Dan Daniel Gritzer famously said that I was the enemy of truth by saying that putting tomatoes in the

[11:36] fridge. You can go back. we can reference whatever episode that was where Daniel is actually on. But he said, you know, I famously, not famously, for me, often say, rather, that putting tomatoes in the fridge makes you the enemy

[11:49] equality because, as we all know, tomatoes turn mealy when they're stored in the fridge for a long time, it's more severe of a problem in tomatoes that have large amounts of flesh,

[12:00] right? When I say flesh, I mean the actual, like, granular part of the flesh, as opposed to just seeds and water, like a cherry tomato has. Did I ever tell you guys how bitter cherry tomato skins are? Well, we're getting on them at. Anyway, so I said it was like a super enemy of quality situation. Um, because it's true. And so I tend to leave my tomatoes on the counter, and this is especially true when I shop for very high-end tomatoes in August at the farmer's market. And Daniel said to me, look it, when you take especially not such a great tomato or a tomato that's ripe, and you leave it on the counter, it loses, it loses a lot of its qualities and becomes not good compared to one that's stored in a fridge for a day or 2 and then removed and allowed to come up to temperature.

[12:46] And he had a lot of things. And I think that's maybe correct, except for when I buy when I buy garbage tomatoes, I don't really care because they're garbage. You know what I mean? When I buy like a really good tomato, I always buy

[12:59] them. I buy ones I'm going to eat today and they're ready. I buy ones I'm going to eat tomorrow and they have like a day left and I turn them upside down. In other words, the stem side down because the stem side is the

[13:12] firmest side of the tomatoes. Tomatoes ripen from the part that's furthest away from the plant towards the stem. So the stem is the stem end is the most is the strongest part of the tomato. So it's not going to break when you store it that way. It usually has a natural resting point, and you won't burst the skin, and I let them sit out, you know, on a cool counter. Or if I'm in a snooty mood, my wine storage container. That Styles made fun of me because just because I was having to give in as a gift, like one of those little wine holding refrigerators. Anastasia thinks that I walk around with a monocle. I don't. I walk around with an eye patch. Duh. And boom stars. So there goes you in your hopes of seeing me as the planter's peanut man. Um, one of those wine cool. like such a classic example of a gift somebody would give. Right? Yeah. Right? And then you're like, I guess I'll use it. Yeah, but you know what it's really good for, Jack? Tomatoes. clearly. You know what else? Wine. know what else? Chocolate. Oh yeah. Chocolate. Good for chocolate. Yeah. And so you know what it's holding now? box after box of box wine because everyone knows that's how I rock it now. box lines in the box. Have you been converted the box wines yet, does? No? Anyway. So Daniel is basically saying that if I say that you're an enemy equality for putting a tomato in the fridge, I'm being too simplistic and not taking into account the way that the majority of people consume tomatoes here in the good old US of A, and you know

[14:31] what? He's probably right. So what's your go-to quick meal? Go to quick meal. So I forget, I forget how the situation started. I think it was because Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink said something about Trinidad

[14:45] Food, and I somehow went into some rabbit hole on Trinidad or something, and I saw this dish for, um,

[14:52] now you know yams aren't yams. You know, in America, when we say yam, We really mean sweet potato. Did you know that, Jack? I suspected as much. Yeah. So the sweet potato is not a yam. It is an entirely different species. Like what we call yam. I forget the name of the actual thing, but it's like, it's like a something

[15:13] ipani- it's like a batata ipani moment, something. I ran into this problem when a recipe called for sweet potatoes and yams, and I was like, wait, what? Yeah, but most like 99.9% of Americans, when they say yam, what they mean is a different color of sweet potato.

[15:27] Right? So they're still talking about 2 different varieties of the same exact plant. Neither of which is a yam, right? Yam is an entirely different tuber, that is neither a potato nor a sweet potato, and there's a variety of

[15:41] them, yams. Anyway, the particular one I was using is called name. Anyway. So it was a mixture of, are you familiar with the French dish Brandad? Have I talked about this dish on the? So you know Bron Dodd? Neobrandad? anyone, Brondad? anyone, Brondad? So it's like mashed potatoes and like shredded salt cod. Yes. And like with like butter, like butter and cream. finished typically with walnut oil. Uh, you know, I think it's Basque or some crap, you know, right on the border. I think it's right on the border. So anyway, so I saw this like smashed yam and saltfish recipe with like peppers and onions. I was like, bang. So I don't make I don't do it traditional. I do like a huge bunch of sautéed tomatoes, a huge bunch of sautéed red and green because sorry, I can't help myself. I cant just type many peppers. you know, whatever. Uh, and the oh, it's super simple. You just do that. Oh, and the trick with this. You know how any of you guys do Catholic, any of you guys do Catholic Christmas Eve? The hell? anyone? Catholic Christmas Eve? I mean, I have. Good. So what do you so what do you eat on a classic, Italian classic, Catholic? Fish. Right. So you're eating fish. So one of the great fishes you eat, of course, is bakala, right? So bakala is the is the salt cod. It's reconstituted now when you're eating Italian Christmas Eve dinner. The problem with the bakala in this situation is you have to buy the nice big pieces and you have to reconstitute them over over a couple of days to get the right texture and the right taste. And good dried cod is quite expensive. However, for this recipe, or if you're making cod fritters, do you like bacalagitos? You like those stars? Yeah, they're delicious. You like those Joe, Jack, you ever have these? Yeah, they're delicious, right? The advantage of these things is you can use the crappier, thin pieces of cod that aren't fit for serving on Christmas Eve, but still have a lot of that flavor. So all you do is you throw, you throw all the cod into, into a big pot of water like you would for pasta with no salt. Duh. You take it from cold. You bring it up just below to a simmer. You let it ride for a couple minutes, dump it, do it once more, and the cod's ready to use within like 10 minutes. You pull it out, you hack it up with a knife. You throw it into the saute after you're done. You just, you know, peel your yam, which gets really, really slippery and

[17:52] gross, uh, chop it, boil it, smash it up. I add a boatload of butter and oil to it, and I serve it with limes and avocados, tomatoes, and that's

[18:01] it. Lettuce. Boom. Don, boom, Don. Fast. Delicious. You could put any sort of topping you could put on. It's not traditional, maybe, Trinidad, but like, you must have avocados, and you must have line. If you don't have those 2 things, you don't deserve to have, you know, the meal. Anyway, that's my go to now because I can I can get it on the table in under an hour and, you know, it's unusual for people that haven't had it yet. So it's cheap, super cheap. anyway. Nice, can we take a really quick break so we can get that out of the way? Sure. Yep, let's do it. Coming back with cooking issues.

[18:37] Breaks.

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[19:29] And welcome back to cooking issues. All right. So, on from that. Did you think I sounded like a good dish there, Jack? Yeah I'm into it. Joe? Yes, sounded great. Yeah, very fast, very cheap. Okay. I'm a cheap man. you know that? What? I'm super cheap. I'm like, I like being generous with food quantities, but if I can, I have

[19:55] no, I feel no compunction, except when buying steak and cheese, to buy like super expensive stuff.

[20:02] You know what I'm saying? Wait, wait, just steak and cheese. Well, I'm just thinking 2 things off the top of my head. I don't buy cheap steak. I don't buy cheap cheese. I mean, I don't buy expensive cheese explicitly, but most of the cheeses that I like end up costing a good deal of money. You know what I mean? So what I tend to do is I try to find the highest quality supplier of the cheese at a reasonable price, which means I end up eating a lot of Italian cheese here in New York because I go to

[20:27] DiPolo's because DiPolo's is like the greatest Italian cheese shop. By the way, this is super depressing. I was in Milan last week, which is why we didn't do the show. And did I tell you this, Stas, like, what I found depressing was I went to like some of the high-end markets in, uh, in, you know, in

[20:44] Milan, and there was nothing that I saw that I was like, I need to bring this home because I can't get this here in New

[20:52] York, and I was really depressed by that. Like, that, you know, there was stuff I couldn't bring home because it's illegal, like meats and stuff like this.

[21:01] But, you know, most of the cheeses and I tried them. Like, the quality difference wasn't that great. It wasn't like I was getting a lot of loss bringing it over. And maybe it's because Milan, you know, Milan isn't the heart of the super

[21:12] microartiginale, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, you know, farmer with his cap and all this other stuff.

[21:19] Had some delicious liquors over there. But yeah, isn't that depressing? I couldn't find anything that I was like, oh, yeah. And it's not like I went to like, I did also go to supermarkets while I was there because I always, when I travel, go to supermarkets to see what people's supermarkets are

[21:33] like. And I recommend anyone do this. Like take a good 20 minutes out, everyone passes a supermarket when they're in a foreign country, go into the supermarket and see how they see how people shop. Do you like doing that or do you not like it? Yeah. And weird stuff there anyway. But Pomboy is, I was just super depressed by that because almost always I can find some crap that, you know, I'm like,

[21:52] oh, man, that's awesome. I don't know Depressing. But I did have a lot of good risotto since, you know, Milan, good risotto, and I did have the big Milanese breaded cutlet. You know what I'm talking about? You know, they call it the elephant because they leave the bone on it. So do you like cutlets? Do you like do you like those things, Joe? Yes, I do. They're delicious. I had an interesting risotto at a restaurant called Daniel, no relation to

[22:15] R. Daniel here. He's an Italian, Daniel. Get this. Licorice and lemon. do you think? don't know. I mean, would you be willing to try it? Licorice and lemon. Licorice and lemon. risotto? Risotto. Delicious. Really delicious. And Nastasia, you would have liked it perfectly cooked. The best cooked. So I had a couple of, of, you know, well-reviewed restaurants in Milan I went to that had the risotto that was like a little bit starched out and gloopy on the

[22:44] outside. You hate that, right? with the core that's cooked all the way through all the way through. You hate, hate, right? Hate, hate. And where the grains come up in big clumps of stuff. hate, right? This thing, like, all the grains were still themselves, but they had a nice, like, you know, awesome, like, texture on the outside, still

[23:06] not perfectly cooked. Best. Anyway. Also, I went to this crazy restaurant whose name escapes me where check this out, Stas. I think it's called, like, Bocon Davino or something like this. You go in, they tell you about this one, you go in and they just, Joe and Jack, you'll like this. You order nothing, which already I like. I hate making choices. I hate choices. Choices are the worst. Like every day, your life, you have to make choices all the time. Where am I going to go? What am I going to do? Who am I going to hang out with? What bearing am I going to use in the centrifuge? Blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? Like choices, all freaking day. And then all of a sudden, you go to a place and they're like, you know what? crap on you. And here's what they do. They just bring, like, plate after plate after plate of salumi, and they're just chopping it off, like all different, like, you know, like these weird ones from like

[23:56] Nortia, they're sliced thick, you know, hams, all good stuff. But they just open a bottle of wine, bring it to you open because I think they cheat. I think they reuse the bottle and refill them. But that's not important. It's very host-friendly. They bring the bottle of wine. They pour you the 2 glasses because there's only 2 of us eating, and then they just put the bottle of wine on the table with the 1st course. No choice. You don't get to choose a bottle of wine because that's not your job. That's the Somoye's job. That's freaking chest, right? And it's his restaurant. There's a picture of him with his kid in the backpack in the mountains, you know, because it's very close to the Alps. Anyway. So I'm like, oh, this is kind of nice. It kind of refreshing and you can pour yourself more. Then they come with the next plate of salumi, chaka, chaka, chaka, chaka,

[24:32] chaka, and the next open bottle of wine, and they pour in 2 new glasses, and they put that freaking bottle on the table, and they don't take away the other bottle. Then comes, then comes the freaking pasta, and the pastas in, you know, they serve it like, like old school, like, what I assume is an old school, like, 70s, like, kind of like, this is the kind of cheese, not cheese, literally, but, you know, cheesy thing that

[24:55] I cut, kitchy thing that I love. They had the half Parmesan bowl that they tossed, like the, uh, Taiatalia, and then

[25:02] they, and they serve it out of that with another freaking bottle of wine. Then comes the cheese course with another freaking bottle of wine. Then comes the dessert. They brought a dessert with, like, some sort of local, like, Vincento style thing that wasn't Vincento. was from near Milan. Then the Garapa in an open freaking bottle. So our table, with no choice. A table is just like littered with glasses and obviously I didn't ate all the salumis. there wasn't any of that. But it was a good experience. And you know what? Some idiot walks in. I'm talking, I don't speak Italian. So the other guy's saying, so maybe it walks in and says, it says, everything on Trip Advisor, it's rated on Trip Advisor. Every single thing is like, you do not choose. You do not choose. There is no choice. And by the way, there's no choice. Some guy comes in, he's like, um, There's no choices here. I kind of thought, you know, we could choose what we wanted. And the guy was like, yeah, hey, leave. You know, you know what I mean? It's like, it's like, yeah, people. What makes people think they'll make the right choice? There's A no reason why anyone should make the right choice. And if you have, like, if you are picky, you should not go to a restaurant, whose whole shtick

[26:07] is you have no choice. You know what I'm saying? I mean, eh, whatever. Wish there were more of those here. I love the no choice. Yeah, me too. Well, that's like, you know, even places here that are no choice. It really is like marginal choice. You can walk into like a place that, you know, has like a prefix only, like, you know, 3

[26:27] course and you can say, oh, yes, but this and but that. But this guy doesn't even tell you. There's no menu. There's no, there's no, here's what you might have kind of situation. Just shows up. There's no opportunity to be like, I don't like that. anyway. And we went to the place in Greece that was like that, Stas. No choice. As Jeffrey Steingarden's wife, Karen says, no choice, no problem. By the way, I'm going to talk about this on the air while we're here. Nastasio Lopez is the queen of not putting up with crap that she hates. Okay? It is a well-known fact here at Roberta's Pizzeria. And I love Roberta. You know that, Jack, right? Yes. Right. It's a well-known fact that they have greens in this restaurant. How do I know this? Because they always have specials. With greens, right? For the past year, Nastasi and I, every single time we sit down, every Tuesday, we're like, can we get greens on our

[27:25] pizza and stars, what's the answer? Yeah, no greens on the pizza. So, they're like, we, like, how about you just take greens and throw them on a pizza? Like, and what do they say? Right. So, Nastasia, for the past couple of weeks, has turned Roberta's pizzeria into a BYOG restaurant. She literally goes to the store on the way to the radio program. She has to leave 5 minutes earlier, picks up the, what's your favorite green on pizza stars? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, baby Arugula. Oh, yeah. With some oil. brings it, and then we put it on our own pizza. But how crazy is that? And they never say anything about it. They're never giving us crap about it. Yeah, but then what if like, what if another table's like, I want one of those. They should start stalking the freaking greens. For the pizza. Hey, you know what? You know what? I should have I should have the head of the pizza kitchen come in. We should we should talk about this on there. Here's the thing. They could say, hey, I'm going to charge you 6 bucks. And I'd be like, okay. Anyway, whatever. So it's a BYOG restaurant. It's the only outside food we can bring into Roberta says greens for our pizza. whatever. Okay, some questions. Um, 2 quick questions for the year of starch research. Uh, I've been making the flour tortilla recipe in the new Stupak taco cookbook written with Alex Dupak and Jordana Rothman. Do have a copy of that? No. Me neither. Show us what kind of friends we are. We don't even rate a copy of the Facebook. Thanks. Of course, I'm sure we would have gotten a copy had we gone to the book launch party, but we were

[29:01] doing we were doing other stuff. James Beard Award nominee. Really? For the book? Well, I hope they win. Yeah, me too. Not that I've read it yet, but I mean, like quick aside, we

[29:11] had, we did panels at South by, and Alex Tupac was on the panel and he is awesome. Yeah, really good on panels. That guy tells you like it is. Yeah, he's also really, really good at demos. You ever seen him do a cooking demo? Really good. Like, hardcore, like everything, like, easy anti-me when it comes to demos, like, literally the polar opposite. Like in this, he does a lot of stuff. So in that way, it's like similar, but like every single thing he does is perfectly tightened down and like neat and clean and comes off like a

[29:44] machine, right? Whereas you... It's like, imagine a machine that, like, where parts are flying off of it at all points and, like,

[29:53] just like oil and grease and gas are spraying everywhere. That's more like how I operate, right? Yeah. Stas is like, I know that too well. Anyway. Um, Lately, I've been making flour tortillas from the Stupac Taco Cookbook, and I've noticed some variation across other recipes I've seen.

[30:11] Some say to use cold water, others say to use very hot water. Some say to need the dough well and rest it a while to develop gluten, although probably mean they mean relaxed. But anyway, well, right, resting a short while is going to relax it, resting a long time will let the gluten hydrate and develop, whatever. Well, others recommend a very short need and a short rest to keep the dough from getting tough. What's actually going on here. I know nothing will be as good as fresh masa tacos. Now, listen. I too, and apparently, so Alex, because I read it, you know, we originally were saying that the only good tortilla is a corn

[30:46] tortilla. I have recanted this because the issue isn't that flour tortillas can't be delicious. They can be. Obviously they are. The issue is that corn tortilla, which is like, to me, the base of the

[30:59] cuisine, was so completely disrespected and debased here in the United

[31:05] States, that, and even apparently in Mexico in a lot of places, that you almost needed to make a statement. And so you needed to go all in for corn tortillas, right? And let's be honest, corn tortillas are a lot harder to freaking make than a flower tortilla if you're going to start with raw corn. Just a lot harder. You know what I mean? Oh, really a lot harder. Uh, so therein, the fact that there's, uh, you know, a lot more of an art, uh, and a lot more going into making a corn tortilla, and also such a huge quality difference between the craft that you buy

[31:42] and the, um, and, you know, what, you know, what you can make. I think that is what led people like me, people like Alex, many people to

[31:50] say that the flower tortilla is garbage and that, like, you should only focus on the corn tortilla. Not true. Flour tortilla delicious, right? Uh, So, you know, I wouldn't, I'm going to, I'm going to dial back a lot that I've said and I've never, I've never, frankly, made a lot of flour tortillas. I'm not an expert in them because I have spent all my time on corn, but I'm here to tell you that I am now a believer that the

[32:15] flour tortilla is just as honorable to make as a corn tortilla, just not as difficult. Now, so what's going on in a flour tortilla, flour tortilla is a mixture of basically lard, flour, water salt, right? And most of the recipes, and I took a glance, not in his book because, of course, we don't have a copy because, of course, we didn't go to the

[32:35] party, like I already told you. And like, you know, Stas and I aren't in the business of like shelling out. Actually, you know, that's an actually, we buy, we buy books. We should just buy their freaking book and support Alex and Jordana, whatever. You know, you put the lard, which is, you know, has a, um, uh, is, what's the word I'm looking for? It has a lower melt pointer,

[32:54] it's an oilier, has a more less solid than butter, right? Into the flour. And then stupak adds hot, hot, or very warm water to it. Not hot enough to affect the actual flour. My guess is, is that, unlike a biscuit, where you're looking to keep your, uh, lard particles, or your butter particles, or your shortening

[33:15] particles, separate so that you create flake layers in between, um, uh, the pieces of flour. So if you're making like, because a biscuit dough, depending on the style that you make, but if you're doing a flaky style biscuit

[33:27] dough as opposed to the ones that are done with scoops, you know, like the, if you're doing an old school flaky thing, you really want the butter things to say separate.

[33:36] So you you put it into the flour, you work it into your hands, until it resembles like a cornmeal with some larger pieces of butter, you do the minimum amount

[33:44] of, um, of work on the, on the dough because you don't want it to get tough in any way, right?

[33:50] And then you bake them. The butter then melts, the water that's in the butter, expands, you get pockets, you get flaky things in between the thing. Everybody's happy. everyone likes your biscuits. Go. By the way, Stas, I can't talk to her about it because she doesn't like biscuits. I need that sign again because I can't believe there's someone next to me who doesn't like biscuits. Joe, you like biscuits, right? Are you a fluffy or a flaky? Flaky. Flaky, Jack, fluffy or flaky? Sorry about that. I'm flaky. Flaky. Really? I used to be exclusively flaky and I, that's how I make them. I have, in the past couple of years, come to respect the fluffy biscuit. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're different. They're different in the way that, like, northern cornbread and southern cornbread are different. Anyway. All right, everybody's finished. Let me finish this tortilla. Let me say you. Okay. So, anyhow, I think what the hot water is for there is to literally like help melt the lard out because here what the lard is doing isn't forming little pockets to

[34:49] leaven to make something flaky because that's not what it's all about. And there's going to be enough water on the inside and it's going to be thin enough that you're going to get puffing just from the hot kamal where you're cooking the tortilla. Here, what the hot water is doing is causing the lard to run out and mix with the

[35:04] flower particles and prevent. This is my guess. I don't know, prevent the gluten from forming. And so the hot water is actually, in this case, going to prevent excess gluten development by causing the lard to be more evenly distributed in the

[35:18] dough. This is a 100% guess and not based in any sort of actual knowledge. This is just me thinking off the top of my head. And with that collar, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, it's Alex from Brooklyn. First, I wanted to give you a quick update. I had called in about doing an outdoor deep fryer and you would recommend it a walk instead. I ended up buying a propane wok burner, and it is awesome. It's so, it's so perfect. So thank you for your help. And now my quandary is I do an annual pig roast in Prospect Park. And I was wondering about doing a whole £75 pig low temp. Is that a good strategy or do you have something else you recommend? Let me think here. So I'm trying to look in my head. I can picture a £200 pig and I can picture a £20 pig. A £75 pig is what, like 3 feet long? Yeah, give or take. It fits in one of those big, uh, like hunting coolers pretty nicely with a lot of ice. Got it. Oh, so you're gonna do the cooler method, huh? Here's the issue with low temping a whole pig. The loin is always gonna be stringy. I mean, it's always gonna have that, like, cook too long taste. You know what I mean? So you can you can do it. It won't be bad, but it's going to be best on, um, on the legs, obviously, are going to come out, uh, better. The majority of the belly will be good, except for like there's one or 2 muscles that don't have a lot of kind of fat or connective tissue in there and that they're going to end up being dry. You know what might be an interesting technique that I've never tried? What if you, and I was talking off the top of my head here. What if you were to, um, in place in the pig, rub curing salt into the loin

[37:06] section, so that you almost got some cure in the loin section, and then, see, I've always wanted to do is like, almost like take the, take the major muscles, like almost disassemble the pig, cook it all perfectly, reassemble it, and then do the roast off to get the skin kind of crackly and awesome, but I've never done

[37:25] it. You know what I, my real dream is, is to do the, uh, Colombian style where you take the whole skin off, like the

[37:34] letchona, where you take the whole skin off, turn it into a cape, then cook all the different pieces kind of separately, reassemble with meat glue, and then roast and crisp off the whole thing, and then

[37:45] meanwhile retherming the stuff on the inside. Like, that would be the ultimate. That kind of hard. that's kind of hardcore. It's a dream. very hardcore. It's a dream and someday I will do it. Look, it's going to work. It's just, like, there are always muscles in a pig that I don't think want to be cooked that long. That's all. You know what I mean? It's the same reason why I have my issues with a whole pig barbecue that I think that there are some cuts that are, you know, better done, um, other ways. It'll still be good. It's gonna be good. I just, it's hard to get a whole animal cooked right all at the same time.

[38:19] But you know what? What I would do is test it a little bit. I would get like the relevant pieces in small bags before you do the cook and then and that's what I did when I was working on the turkey recipe when I was working on the on the bionic turkey. I don't know if you have, you know, where I ripped all the bones out of the turkey and then reassembled the skeleton and did all that stuff. The way that we did the tests on that was, 1st thing we did is I went and bought turkey breasts and turkey legs and just ran a bunch of side by size and said, okay, this level of

[38:49] salt, cooked for this many hours. How does it taste? And then at this temperature, and then choosing things that were within a degree or 2 of each other so I could get them to come together at the same time.

[38:59] And that's the way I developed the recipe. So if I was going to do a whole pig, I would do the same thing. I would choose some of the larger muscles, I would get like a little piece of the belly, a little piece of the, oh, you're not going to have that much of it. A little piece of the loin, a little piece of the, of like parts of the leg, and I would just run some

[39:14] time Thames to see kind of where it was harmonious, and then see whether I could do something like add more or less salt to

[39:21] the, uh, to the parts that like might get stringy or maybe cure them so that they stay um, kind of better over a long cook period. Because if they're cured, they'll hold up to that long ride better than

[39:33] not. So, I mean, that's what I would do. And then figure out how much of a crazy person you want to be in terms of disassembling and reassembling this pig before you do the final roast. Gotcha, that makes a lot of sense. Oh, and uh, an easy way, um, you're going to do, how are you going to roast it? You going to get like a cajachina afterwards to do the finish, but those are too slow. Are you going to do like a big spit? What are you going to do to do the finish the finish on it? So I've done the cagaccina the last three, 4 years and I've just been really disappointed in the results and I'm ready to up my game. So that's why I was thinking low temp. But I may have to just go spit for the whole thing. Remember, if you do low temp. It gives you the ability to go higher temp on the spit so that you can, or you could do, here's another thing. You could do low temp for insurance, and if you get, if you circulate, if you have something whose flavor is amazing, right, then you can circulate it in that almost as though you're kind of poaching it.

[40:30] I'd run some tests 1st and then pull it out, dry it out, and then just spit it at a higher temperature because it's already been cooked. And then you can focus just on the skin. that might be a good way around it The other way is the low temp it, pull it out when it's hot, let the skin get really, really, really, really

[40:44] dry off of the low temp, really dry, and then just do the ladle fry over the whole thing.

[40:50] And so for that, you know, you need a big, super dangerous, but, you know, you hold it above the oil, and then you just have ladles and hot fat,

[40:57] just go, go, go, go, go. This is a huge, terrible ignition. You're putting yourself in danger of igniting it. However, it is delicious. to do things this way. And what about bags for low temping of big pig? So they make vacuum bags that are meant for putting comforters

[41:17] in, and they're not technically food grade, but I'm not going to say to use them. I've used them. You know what I mean? You have to, you know, be a little bit, a little bit careful. But that's why if you had a liquid, you could just use oil, but it's a lot, it's a lot of freaking oil, and oil takes longer to cook. So you have to be, if you can't do a test for time, where

[41:40] you wear your time test is in water, and then assume that your time to cook is going to be the same when you're using oil. It's not. And you are going to need multiple circulators and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, uh, you know, it's a lot of freaking oil. Or, like I say, you could use one of these bags, but the issue with a pig is that the internal cavity of the pig is going to be, um, is going to be hollow and filled with

[42:03] air, and it's really going to ruin your, um, your cook times.

[42:07] So, like, the best way to do it is to literally, like, you could almost, but then if it's flat, it'll be hard to reassemble it. That's why like when I do the turkey, I literally pipe hot fat inside the animal so that we're cooking in both directions at once.

[42:20] And you got to remember that a £75 pig isn't that thick on the inside.

[42:26] And so, you know, you can cook it a lot faster if you're piping the hot liquid into the cavity of the animal using

[42:33] 2 circulators, which is what I typically do when I'm working on larger, larger creatures. And wouldn't a nova work or do am I going to need to get one of the poly-science ones? Um, I forget which one of the circulators I have has a problem pumping fat because of the

[42:50] viscosity. It auto shuts down, but I don't remember which one it is. The new poly-science ones, I don't think Philip wants you to put oil through them. This is again, like everything is about the testing. So, like, you don't want to show up with a pig in a circulator and then all of a sudden realize your technique's not going to work, but it's like super easy to just throw a circulator

[43:12] into, like, you know, a small container of oil, fire it

[43:16] up. You're not going to ruin the circulator, right? At least I have not yet ruined a circulator. Let's rephrase that. And, you know, just see whether it runs. And one of them, and I forget which one it is, cuts out when you try to circulate oil with it. It doesn't kill it, put it back in water and it comes back to life, but, yeah. Gotcha. Well, this is very helpful. certainly keep you updated. Yeah let us know how it works out. All right. Thanks, Dave. Very cool. Okay. So, uh, we got a 2nd question on starch. Secondly, I've read Harold McGee and Kenji's takes on how hot and how much water is sufficient to cook pasta. But is there a theoretical temperature and potentially time for fresh or dry pasta? If it exists? Couldn't we achieve that in a circulator? Many thanks. Brooke? Um, I don't uh, look. I don't think that there's like going to be an advantage to circulating pasta, right? Here's why. In order for the pasta to cook properly. The water's going to have to be fairly close. to boiling, right? In order to swell the starch and to get it to all work. So you're talking about a couple of degrees difference. So it's not like making Dashi with kombu or something like this where, you know, you're talking about, oh, I'm going to cook it at like 60, 70 degrees Celsius.

[44:38] You're talking like, you're going to be above 80 and change anyway. So I don't think the difference between 80 and change and 100 is really going to be, um, like that much of a life changer in terms of the texture of the pasta. So I don't think you're going to really win. I think the only time that's really critical to get the water levels 100% right is if you're

[44:58] going to can pasta and make soup. And we had a question on that someone asked, but I've never really, never really gotten to it. That said, you know, I would go back and read Harold's article from a 1000000 years ago in the New York Times on pasta and different water

[45:13] levels. I just don't freaking worry about it. Do you worry about it much, does? I just don't worry about it. When you use larger quantities of water. I have, look, this is terrible, but like, remember, I use a lot of water. I have incredibly powerful gas burners and I don't pay for gas. My co-op pays for gas. And so this is a terrible statement to make, but I use excess gas. I'm not, I don't conserve probably as much as I should the natural gas that I have. Um, I tend to use a lot of water, and the reason I tend to use a lot of water is I don't measure the salt levels that go into the water, and larger amount of water in the pot is much more stable with a finished salt level in the given amount of pasta

[46:01] than, um, than a smaller amount of water because it's, it just is. you know because you have more water to work with. It's not for any temperature reasons and it's not for rolling boil, it's not for, uh, it's not for the pasta sticking together. It's because I want the salt levels to come out relatively similar. Um, I know plenty of people like uh, um, Alex Nakke had ideas in food. They did the thing where they cold soaked pasta for a long time before they cooked it,

[46:29] right? Their theory being it takes less time to cook, takes less energy to cook if you soak it beforehand. I don't know if that's true or not, but they say that, and they say that it comes out more even because it takes less time because water has intruded into the

[46:43] pasta. It takes less time for the pasta to cook through, and hence, it less degradation to the outside of the pasta before the inside is done. Is it true? Is it not? Don't know. I have other, I had an Italian guy tell me that I should throw it in at the boil, bring it up to the boil, close it after you stir it to have it not

[47:02] stick and turn the water off. Why? He didn't want the pasta to roll around and get beaten up on certain

[47:07] pastas because he's saying that that's what causes a starch on the outside to get beaten up in the outside of the pasta to get mangled. Is it true? I don't know. What I'm saying is, is that I think there are about 8000 different ways to get pasta cooked nicely. And I think it's more about pulling it at the right time than anything else. What do you think, Stas? Yeah. That's about it here, Dave. Oh, man, all right. We have some more questions. We'll get to him next time on the cooking 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. Heritage Radio Network as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.