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[1:11] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick,

[1:22] Brooklyn, every Tuesday from roughly 12, roughly 1245, one o'clock, little late is normal, you know. You know how we do. Join as usual in the studio with Nastasia, the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Good. We got Dave in the booth. What up? And today, special guest from Del Posto, the only Italian Restaurant Rated 4 Stars by the New York Times, Chef Mark

[1:46] Ledner to talk about his new book, the Del Poster Cookbook, along with the co-author, Michael. Michael, what's your last name? Wilson. Wilson. No relation to, like, the musical Wilsons now. Unfortunately. So you don't have that kind of familial mess up to like, because that would be a good story. If you had like, you know, weird Wilson stories. I'm sure there's tons of weird Wilson stories because there's a lot of us, but I don't have any good ones. Not related to the tennis ball people. Nope. Any like any weird Wilsons in your back? Probably, but I don't know any of the stories. sort of boring, sorry. All right. You know what I found out my last name means yesterday? Strangely. Eagle power. Like Arnold is like some German version of eagle power. Anyway, call me your questions for Mark Ladner, too. 718-497-2128. 7184972128. How you doing, Mark? I'm doing great, Dave. Thanks for having us, and thank you, the hammer for inviting us out here on the show to talk about our book. We're excited to be here. excited to see you as always. Yeah, yeah. why don't you give us a, why don't you give us a, give us a lowdown on your book. I can't touch it yet because I'm soaking wet. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's really crummy outside. Yeah, and you know what? You know what? New York is like a choose your own crappy adventure when it rains. It's like, you know, especially you being tall. You're gonna get poked in the eye by some idiot's umbrella. That's true. Chinatown is a dangerous place. Oh, my God. Oh my god. And then like, you know, there's construction everywhere in New York City all the time, but they put these like theoretically helpful things to stop like bricks from falling on your head, but they funnel you through these undrained

[3:18] things. So you're going a whole block under this thing with, like, a bunch of people with umbrellas, like, get your blood

[3:23] out of my way, get your umbrella out of my way. Get your blood out of my way. And then at the last minute, like there's a giant puddle that can't be jumped or forded or anything. And of course, I'm not wearing waterproof shoes, right? Of course not. And so, but the lady in front of you just stops. Like, like, there's an alternative. Lady, turn back or go. Turn back or go. You know what I'm saying? And then when you get to the platform, after you wait for LA to go, of course, you see the... You see that subway pulling away because of that extra 5 seconds that that lady stood there like a cow looking at

[3:52] the... people in New York. People in New York are like cattle. Like, men and women walking around, cow, like, staring off into space, moving slowly, right? Nostalgia, you hate that, right? I hate it. I hate it. Hate, hate, hate. Nothing. So what'd you do with the poem? Straight through? Like, what's the choice? I mean, what I did was I like, one of my feet, I'm going to get wet, right? So I jump in and like the 1st foot hits, I'm like, that's done, because I'm wearing sneaks. You know what I mean? like, totally porous. They're meant to breathe. They're not meant, you know. And what's the, what's more fun? Mark, you'll know about this. What's more fun than walking around all day with a wet foot that never drives because

[4:31] it's, you know, raining out and human? What's the what's the best part? Yeah, the fact that your foot will potentially never recover, because I'm still separating from the same athlete's foot I had probably 30 years ago, my 1st

[4:43] episode. Wow, I didn't think about the permanent. I was thinking more of the sweet, sweet stench. In the evening, when you take off your, you know, like, you know, 8 hours, 9 hours, 10 hours later, when you finally get home, you peel that wet shoe off your foot.

[4:58] This is why I tell my son, Booker, sucks. Wear socks. New York is not a town for the sock list unless you're one of these hipsters in those sandal things. But if you wear sneakers, if you wear a fully encased foot. Put socks on that thing. What do you think? Can I always go with the crocs? The porous confidence clock. Listen, Mario Town coming in and talking to us about the crocs. Are you allowed any color of crock or do you have to go orange when you're over there at Del Posto? No, he is reserved the orange for himself. So what's the Del Posta color, like a nice Nate blue? Like black or blue, yeah. What do you what do you rock? Blue or the black? I wear the Brigarde slipper clog. Ooh, is that the black leather one? With the black or they come in black or white? With the nails in the side. That's pretty strong. They're not they're not wood, though. like slippers. So it's like you're cooking in your jammies. Exactly. Should I buy you a silk chef's outfit? That would be sick. That would be awesome. Like Sakai. Oh my god, that'd be amazing. So I was talking to Jen, my wife about this. was like, you know, look, I was like, Dax. I was like, Dax, you know, like my skin right now is fundamentally it's sandpaper. If I touched a silk garment with my fingers, it would like be instantly shredded. You know what I mean? Like, all like the crusty, like, callous and everything. If it touched my face, it would just rip off and there'd be like, you know, silk mess all over my face. And any second... The very 1st Iron Chef I ever did with Mario back many years ago, we did a collaboration with Sakai, the Japanese French chef, and he had like silk pajamas

[6:31] on and these like slipper clogs. The guy was like floating around kitchen stadium like he was Hugh Hefner or something. It's unbelievable. So we have to shave yourself if you're going to do that, right? And like sandpaper your hands. He really, he really showed us how it's done. Yeah, Jen told Dax he wasn't allowed to wear silky. She's like, you can't do it. I was like, what about silk jammies? I'm thinking of getting a pair of silk jammies. I mean, anything feel better than the silk jammy. I couldn't afford it when I was a kid. I was like, my mom's like, you can have that like weird satin stuff. What was that stuff made of? like spun plastic. Silket. Yeah, you know, real flammable back in the 70s, you know. Like in the 70s, I used to make kids' pajamas, especially to catch on fire. You know what I mean? that's what way to do rid of them. Anyway, okay, so back to the book. Talk to me. Yeah, so it's, you know, it's a restaurant cookbook. Del Posto being a restaurant that's going just entered its 12th year. So we have quite a bit of material that we wanted to cover. Michael and I have been spending the better part of, God, I think the 1st conversation might have been as long as 5 years ago. Not with me, not with you. But it's been, uh... I came on in probably last week, like last week. And, uh, yeah. So you know, we chose some dishes that we felt strongly about. And the interesting thing is that Michael really encouraged us to create a book that was approachable to the home cook, meaning

[7:54] getting rid of some of that professional restaurant speak. And so we actually did it in a very unorthodox way. We chose the dishes and photographed them 1st and then spent close to 2 years going back and deconstructing and re-engineering all the recipes so that they contained, you know, sort of lay home kitchen language, which I guess the only negative part of that is that it creates very, very long recipes because to

[8:26] Long wording or like wording. Yeah, exactly. And they take a long time too. you know, let's not, these aren't going to, these are like quick night recipes, but they do work. They're broken into parts and they are... Our audience not scared. Our audience not scared by this. That's true. Actually, we're more scared about the questions they might ask us than them actually being able to complete the recipes. But yeah, so they're incredibly thorough. And something that you probably don't see very often. And we spent a tremendous amount of energy, you know, laboring over the language to make sure that it was understandable

[9:01] from people that were enthusiasts, but not necessarily experts. So is 100 layer lasagna in there? Of course. Okay, now, you know, that's like, like, what are your most most famous? Like you show up at the restaurant, you get the you get the arancini with the with the gold thing, right? Is that in there? Yeah, Marquesa, it's in there. Yeah. And then you got your 100 layer lasagna. You got your little... What about like your, like, your house pastas? Are they in there? Yeah, we have a couple different recipes. Your DP coins? What are those called? I don't remember. We're working this new one now that's actually little toys, so they're all different shapes, which is pretty interesting. Like what, like, but like extruded shapes or like actual fish? No, there's stuffed stuffed shapes, but like mix, match, meastie kind of thing, yeah. Like donkeys and puppets? Like what kind of shit? If only. If only we had, you know... Don start 3D printing pasta mark. have to have a fistfight right here. People that nimble. You'll beat me, I'm sure. don't know. I would. Where's the, where's this centrifuge? I won't talk about a name. Talk about this thing. Nastasia says you carried it on your back like an infant, is that true? I did last week. I brought it here because we had to negotiate something, but I'm printing out I'm printing out some I'm remaking the lid. So the centrifuge is designed to constantly feed new product in. So I had to print. So there's a thing called a feed or tube. Part of the patented process of making the spins all. It's the reason why no one else can build the spins all the way we can do it because we got a patent on it, a patent pending. Anyway. So it's this tube feeder that feeds the thing in and that's what allows it to do continuous feeding. So I was building a new, a new tube system on the bottom to, you know, increase the clarity of continuous versus batch mode. And I did like, I don't know, I did like, oh, like 2.5 liters of strawberry in a row yesterday and it was perfect. I actually took it to Oto. I was making strawberry cordial for the drinks I was slinging at Ocho last night. But it leaves me to this. So like, I'll just say, but we should talk about the book and then come back and talk about the center. Talk about later. That's about it. So it's, you know, broken down into chapters, Antipasti, Premi, Segundi. Dolce. There's an entire chapter just on gelato and sorbetti, which is unusual. We have a question about that, actually. Really? Okay, cool. You want to hear that question? Sure, I would love to. All right. So, and didn't we have a question last week, Nastasia, but we answered it, like, with theoretically answered it. But then do you, yeah? I'm hoping that Chef Ladner is going to be on the show this week. Well, you are in luck, Ellie. I just received the book this week and I'm enjoying it very much. What caught my eye are the gelato recipes. They use egg yolks but are not cooked. This seems peculiar. I like the word peculiar. You like to work here? It reminds me of Marvin gay. Mhm. Yeah. This seems peculiar, and I've never seen it before. Why? Do they still thicken the mixture like a custard wood? Are they left raw for texture or flavor? I'm looking forward to trying the recipes out soon, but would like to hear David Mark's thoughts about this topic. Thanks Ellie Nasser. Now, I have my own thoughts on this going way back from other, you know, from pastry

[12:09] chefs that I've known, one particular one. Well, John, well, make Sam Mason, actually. Oh, course, yeah. But anyway, go ahead. give your spiel. Well, you know, uh, definitely, you know, most of these uh, recipes were, at least uh, initially formulated by Brooks Headley, the uh, pasta genius, I mean, the pastry genius now at uh,

[12:36] Speriority Burger. And then our current pastry chef, Justine

[12:41] McNeil sort of completed the initial thought, but, you know, Brooks has always been a firm advocate of the hang and of the really

[12:51] chewy, viscous texture. so that it, uh, you know, hangs around your mouth a little longer. You can taste it a little better. You know, you can really similar to mayonnaise, you know, sometimes you're rolling the dice. I mean, on the safety? Yeah, but functionally, why not cook it? Uh, graininess? So, Sam Mason. Back when I 1st got to know him after WD opened in like, I don't know, like 03 or whenever it

[13:22] opened right around then, right? 0203, when I got to know him, you know, I came to realize that he had a bunch of ice cream recipes where he wasn't cooking the egg yolks, but it was still a custard base. wasn't Philly style. Basically, no one in New York makes Philly style. None of the big restaurants, I know, do a Philly style ice cream. which is weird. Even in apoco jet, you think someone would do a good Philly style ice cream. Maybe you can't. Maybe it overturns in a pocket. don't know. I haven't tried it. Anyway, I love good Philly ice cream. Do you like it? Yeah. It has to be super fresh. Has to be super fresh. Anyway, so I was like, yo, Sam, while you don't cook your egg yolks. And he's like, I don't like the aroma and taste of the cooked egg, but I like the texture that

[14:03] they kind of like the smooth texture that the egg yolk

[14:07] spring. And so the deal with not cooking the egg yolks is what they're not

[14:11] going to bring is the thickness of a cooked creme anglaise. It's just not going to have that thickness. That said, the thicker you cook your creme anglaise, the more eggy it tastes.

[14:24] So you can't like win on that account. Like, if you're trying to thicken up your, uh, your anglaise base and

[14:30] thicken it on glaze base is really good if you're going to serve it as a sauce, right? Or if you're really worried about meltdown. So, like, you know, a thicker on glaze base will do a slower meltdown than a thinner on glaze base.

[14:43] And, you know, basically all this is all these ice cream recipes is a flavored creme anglaise, right? So, um, but, uh, the what you pay for with that thickness is egg taste, and he hated it. He hated that egg taste. you know what I'm talking about. especially like for a pastry chef who cooks with eggs all day long, that residual egg nose that you get like after you wash out

[15:02] a stainless steel. You know, when you wash out a stainless steel bane that's had eggs in it, you're like freaking that egg smell. You know what I mean? It's more like a sabion or a hollandaise or something. Yeah, so he didn't he didn't like it. So he didn't cook the eggs. And then later on, you know, he started pasteurizing the eggs, load temps, so he would use pasteurized yoles. Yeah. So they would still, they would be safe, but they-ish, but they wouldn't have that cooked note because you can take an egg yolk, you know, up to 57, pasteurize it

[15:30] for like an hour and and it still is raw smelling. You know what I mean? It doesn't have that cooked kind of egg thing. Michael, do you remember any of the conversations happening when we were developing these recipes related to

[15:42] the yokes? Um, I remember I remember it being brought up as a potential safety

[15:49] issue. And then we decided it probably really wasn't that they would be pretty rare that anyone that was cooking out of this book was going to have a safety issue with their eggs,

[15:59] but also, if it tastes too eggy, it doesn't taste Italian. I mean, there isn't like a there isn't any sort of inherent egginess in Italian gelata. Are your gelato recipes like, you said Brooks likes the chew. Are they heavily stabilized? So that's like true. like there's all these like people who are like true Italian. No, true Italian gelato has stabilized to the freaking gills, right? So you don't need the milk protection from a thick on glaze base when you are, if you're going to add stabilizers. One thing about adding stabilizers, obviously, depending on which stabilizers you use,

[16:34] lisers you use is that you need to, you need to punch the flavors up. I mean, that's why like Italian flavors, they're smooth, but they're so punchy because they have to add so much flavor for that level of, of hit. Hey, you know what I want you to try? You know what? We should try sometimes, maybe in the next week or so. It's not like commercial quantity. Like you couldn't do it in a restaurant, but the paste that's left over in

[17:02] the... Oh, I can only imagine. Yeah, Nastasia and I were talking about that on the train today. Yeah. Yeah, take a centrifuge. You spin it, you get the paste spin that into an ice cream. It's got a, it's got like a grainy, like pumpkin pie texture, at least a peach that we did. but it's so freaking smooth and dense because what you do is you take your fruit, your fruit of choice, you hit it with the

[17:22] pectinex, it wipes out the structure and everything. Well, and then it just, oh, what the sweet potato is nuts. If we do the sweet, you even like the sweet potato puree. And Nastasi hates everything. The sweet potato puree, what you do with the sweet potatoes, you take the sweet potatoes, you cook it, right? And then you, um, just blend the hell out of it with the same enzymes that distillers use to do sacrification for their awards and

[17:45] stuff, and you get this hyper, and then you spin it to get rid of the liquids, right? And then you just have this like hyper, uh, concentrated, super sweet, no sugar added, sweet potato puree, just add like a little cream to that mother and spin it. You want to do it? I'm sure the applications are just infinite. We can make it. We can make a small amount, like, just in a kitchen egg, because you have LM over there. at Del Poste. It would be fun, right? I mean we'll do it. Tell people about it. But, like, even just, like, fruits, like, um, strawberry and whatnot. Like, you're just not used to having something that's so smooth but so high solids.

[18:21] I mean, that's the thing so high. For instance, I'll give you an example. So when I did, um, I did one. 75 actually, I did one. 75 kilos of strawberries yesterday in a batch to do continuous mode on my

[18:33] centrifuge. And, uh, I got 13 I got 1,350 mils of juice. So if you think about it, that's like 70, that's like 70 something percent yield, which means that the residuals that left over

[18:51] are... You know what I mean? There's no water. Yeah, I mean, it's like, I mean, there's, I mean, like compared, it's like compared to what an original strawberry was. So like, anyway, it'd be fun to play with. And is that just like a Driscoll regular available commercial? You could say garbage strawberry. Yes, it was a garbage strawberry, but it still tastes good. Well, there's some advantages to garbage strawberries. We could talk about that now. So, I'll get to the say something about the spin zone. I should give the pitch, right? Because Nastasia is, like, we're all nervous about this. So listen, so for those of you that don't know, we are pre-selling the spins all, should I

[19:25] give, I'll give it, the spins all. It's the only centrifuge design specifically for the kitchen and bar. So we're pre-selling this thing for 699. Make sure you check out the videos on Instagram. Yeah, I'm going to put up some more. We have a bunch more videos that we're going to put up. In fact, I'm going to chef steps on Thursday. I mean, on Wednesday and then I guess maybe we're meeting with Kenji in San Francisco on

[19:49] Thursday, try to push it out. We'll do a video on Facebook live with the chef steps and show it. What is Nastasia's spins all pitch sound like? Let's do it. Does it get a good one? Just buy it. Come on, Stos. buy it. That Nastasia right there. Right. So I'll say this. So, like, the spins all does 500 milliliters at a time batch, which is

[20:08] the more than most home people need for most applications they're doing, but it also does what's called continuous

[20:13] mode where you just stick the pipe. you stick a tube in it. It pumps it through and just feeds it through and continuously operates it. And so like orange juice, you could probably do, you could probably do like, I don't know, a gallon or 2 at a time without stuff. And then what would you know to change the basket? It depends on the solids ratio. So for something like strawberries, I probably wouldn't do more than like, uh, two, three, 3

[20:35] liters, maybe, at a time because you don't want the solids to overflow the rotor. Um, but something like lime juice or grapefruit juice or orange juice, gallons because there's not a lot of solids in there. So really, everything depends on the, on what you're, on what you're doing. Really, the best application, one of the best app. I'll give you some applications for chefs. Let's forget the bar application. By the way, I will say this. You go to modernistpantry.com forward slash spinsall to pre-order it. Now, I want to say something to people so they get this. If you do not pre-order, if we do not sell a 1000 of these, pre-order, then we can't afford to build

[21:10] it and we won't build it unless the angel comes in, which we don't expect, right? So if we don't sell a 1000 of them, they just don't get made. I mean, that's it. And then I'm just left with that one prototype, wah, wah, I call the people in China that

[21:21] Nastasia and I have been working with for 2 years on this project and tell them, you know what? Sorry, folks, we folded up, we walk away. I mean, that's unfortunately, yeah, I mean, that's what's going to happen. Yeah. So if you don't order it, we won't build it. But here's one of the people, someone came up to me. I'm not going to say who it is. It was Don Lee. the cocktail guy. Then he goes up to me. Hey, Dave, hey, why didn't you just use Kickstarter? Why didn't you just kickstart this? Why you got to use your own crowdfunding? Hey, hey, hey, hey. Well, who does? Wow. So Don doesn't talk like that, by the way. But the point is, is here's the reason, one of the reasons why. With Kickstarter, part of it was, Nastasia, I mean, to be honest, Nastasia hates Kickstarter. But, uh, like, but she hates everything. She hates biscuits. Like that's going to stop me from making biscuits, right? But the point is, uh, we're really taking the risk on ourselves, and this is what I think is not clear. With a Kickstarter, if you, if the campaign gets funded, you, all of your money is gone into a

[22:19] hole and then you either get the product or you don't, you know, you know, depending on whether or not the people who are making it are competent, blah, blah, blah, you know, that money is

[22:28] gone. You can't get it back. That's part of the thing about Kickstarter. One of the reasons we did this is we didn't want people to feel like they were taking a risk. It's one of the weird kind of incorrect notions that people have

[22:39] about, they feel safer on Kickstarter somehow because it's, because I know about Kickstarter, right? So they feel safer on it, even though literally as soon as that campaign is over, your money goes into a pit that may or may

[22:50] not, and you may or may not ever get your reward. Well, the other misconception is that money gained, earned on Kickstarter is free money, which is

[22:56] most certainly not. It's not. But in our campaign, you can get a refund up

[23:01] till the up till the very point at which we ship you the unit. So there is 0 risk to pledge in the spins all campaign, 0 risk. So you pledge now what you're telling us is that I'm going to want, we're going to spend the money, right? Because we need to build the spins alls, but at some point you're like, you know what? Uh, I don't, it turns out I hate awesome things. It turns out that, like, it turns out I am an enemy of quality after all. And, uh, you know, uh, you could be like, you know what, Dave, you know what, Nastasia, I want my money back. And we're like, okay, fine, boom. Here's your money back. And that's one of the main reasons we did it is that the risk, the risk is on us. So you should feel like super safe going out there and getting it. anyway. And remember, you don't you don't buy it. don't build it. So what are some of the other applications aside from bar? Right. So it, like, so what Renny Rizzeppi, did that tell you about the thing with, like, everyone who's chasing stars,

[24:00] we're like, back in the day, Michelin stars. or anything. But the thing is, does he does he, what does he has? He have 2 or 3 at Noma. Yes, too, but yeah, but he's got like the Pellegrino, like he was like the top restaurant in the universe, which you know, I hate all those ratings, right? I need test them. They're stupid. Oh, unless we have one. But, like, you know what I'm saying? It's like the idea of the, I mean, like, I like anything that helps my, uh, the people I know are good people, like, get more business. I'm for people getting business and if like awards and like accolades like this or what it takes for people to go to someone's

[24:32] restaurant who works hard, great. You know what I mean? Look at those, it helps. It helps. Yeah. I mean, like I wish that wasn't what helped, but it does. And so therefore, I'm glad when, you know, my friends get these things. But, um, you know, Fabulous and Jeremiah got their 1st Michelin star recently. Well deserved. Yeah, yeah. Contra got the star, right? Yes, contract. Yeah. Other Wilder deserved one as well. Yeah, because, I mean, they're joined kitchens, basically. They share their, like, not joined, but like there's just one wall between them. Anyway, not talking about that. Proteges of yours, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, what were we talking about? Oh, wait, Randy R Zeppi. So Renny, we used to, Nastasi and I, when someone was like trying to get all those awards, we'd be like, and we didn't think that someone was going to get

[25:13] it. We'd be like, yo, wake up and smell the red Zeppi. You know what I mean? Because it's like, it's like, you know, hey, buddy, you're not gonna get there. You're not going to be Renny Razeppi. Wake up and smell it. You know what I mean? Just be yourself. Anyway, uh, anyway. So the uh, that's neither here nor there. So, uh, Ariel um, Johnson, who was at the Nordic food lab for many years before she moved to MIT

[25:34] recently. She said that one of the main things that they do in the centrifuge is herb oils. So, but they do crazy herb oils. So like I asked her, they do like almost like one-to-one herb to uh, herb to oil. So it's like pesto thick, right? And then they spin the solids off. So, like, I don't do it that thick because I think it's kind of absurd and I'm

[25:55] not like, you know, I'm not trying to, but we'll do like, I'll do like 22 to one. So it's basically pesto. You take all the water out and it's super stable. Yes. So what you do is, is you blend, you can, like, in the, in the, in the spins all, you can blend any oil batch that has up to about 400 grams of herb.

[26:14] Like, it's sweet spot is around like 2 or three, like 300 grams of herb, and then, um, you know, the balance oil, but it can be any amount of oil you want. It doesn't have to be within the 500. And then you add, like, so you just subtract out the weight of the rotor. So let's say you use 400 grams of herb. You take like 75 grams of water, put it right in the spins all, start it, and then feed the oil in. All the water goes into the rotor, and you get this pure, intense green, highly stable herb oil with no water in it. And it's like, you can't possibly make this herb oil without a centrifuge unless you sit there and you

[26:52] twist, you know, like one of those fine bags and you get like 3 drops.

[26:57] You're not gonna get any yields. We get we get something like 80% of the oil back. So it's like super awesome. And so, uh, I did a pasta, actually, with, uh, I did a, I did a basil oil and a parsley

[27:10] oil and mixed them, and just because my kids are like, my kids are like, I don't want me, uh, like herbs in my, in my pasta, but I love that kind of fresh parsley or fresh basil thing.

[27:21] So I just toss the oil and yeah, did with the finishing oil, toss it off at that, and they were like, okay, they didn't complain because they actually don't dislike the taste. They dislike the idea of a leaf. Green leaf in their in their free product. Yeah, yeah. Anyways. So that's good. I really like, again, maybe not for restaurants, but I really like centrifuge butter. We're really excited about seeing that today, but we couldn't find any cream in any of these sister stores out here. But I'll come to Del Postos. Like, uh, when I get back, maybe like, I don't know what your schedule is. I'll come back maybe next week when I when I'm back. The butter is good. Another classic chef one, I'll tell you. So you take a fruit, right? And, uh, let's say you want to make a really reduced, uh, really reduced, like, fruit thing. This is what I brought. So like the garbage strawberries I had yesterday. What's good about them is they're relatively low bricks, which means if you they have low sugar. And the good news about that is, is that you can boil it way the hell down before the temperature gets too high.

[28:17] So it stays pretty close to the regular boiling point, so it doesn't get brown notes, and you can reduce it way down, and then dope sugar. No, yeah, right. And then at the end, you hit the sugar back in to balance out the acid because a garbage strawberry is low

[28:31] bricks high acid. But I didn't reduce it enough, but yeah, you could try it. I didn't reduce enough. I could have gone twice as much, but you can't reduce strawberry puree with pectin in it, right? So I only reduce this by like twice. I could have done it by like 4 and hit, you know, and hit it with some sugar, but or you could hit it with a hydrocollid. kind of tastes like shit, Dave. No, I'm kidding. Tastes really good. I mean it's good, right? I mean, but you could have reduced it like, it's like jam almost. But anyway. So like really fruity. It's really bright. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. So, like, but I could have, like I say, reduced it by another, like, if I had taken, literally, I was like, I thought about this as I was walking out the door, I was already

[29:11] late. So I put my widest fry pan on my stove, cranked it, dumped the strawberry, and was like, boom, like tried to take it as fast as I could, and then like as I knew I was gonna, in fact, I missed that subway, the one that would get me here on time. I poured it into that container, took a couple spoonfuls of sugar,

[29:24] it was like, ginger ting. She'll get in the can. And there's no there's no residual flavors from the enzymes or anything. Oh, zero. You're using like, you're using like 0. uh, like 0.2 to 0.4%. They have a vaguely kind of a ferment, fermented aroma, but they're, you know, and this one only uses one enzyme anyway. Also, the color is so brilliant. Right? incredible. Dave, did you say what the size of the devices of the spins all? about the size of a food processor. Here's the thing. If you look, here's the other thing, right? Let's say let's say you want to have a centrifuge in your restaurant or bar, right? What are you going to do? You're going to invest $8,000 on something that takes up half of your prep area? No, that requires training for someone to balance it. No, because here's the other thing. Let's say you could afford it, right? Now, Mark, what's the worst thing that happens when you're relying on a piece of equipment? Some knucklehead goes and tries to use it when they're not qualified. And they break and they break it, then you're out 2 things. You're out the money and all of a sudden you're 86 on all the products that use it. You know what I mean? Yeah, you can't make it another way, right? Right. So you have 2 or 3 Vitapreps. So when a knucklehead breaks the Vitaprep, which invariably happens. exactly what we do. Yeah, you have another Vitaprep there. So the good thing here is you can test out to see whether you like having a centrifuge, right? And then you could get a backup because they're so cheap compared to like the big size centrifuge, you know, anyway, that's what, because I think

[30:49] that like what I was thinking about it, like one of the main, um, aside from the size and the cost is just the lack of backup. I was so nervous, like, I always had 2 centrifuges, real ones, big ones, at Booker and Dax, because I needed them. And when one died and we were down to one,

[31:05] I like, I flew, I was constantly on edge that it was going to die. And in fact, did die, and I had to run borrow Wiley centrifuge, uh, and so like I borrowed his interfuge, but it's a real kind of a nightmare to be so dependent on such a large,

[31:19] uh, you know, £300 thing that cost, you know, 8 grand. It's very... A lot of your production is coming out of it. Yeah. I mean, like, well, some 80% of our menu had something that's gone through the centerfuge,

[31:31] like not necessarily like huge quantity, but like all the clarified citrus, all

[31:35] the, um, you know, all those things. Some of that stuff won't take the carbonation properly if it's not clear. No, none of it, none of it. You need to clarify everything that you're going to carve me, especially going to pre-carbonate me, if you're going to squeeze a lime into something afterwards, I mean, fine, but, you know, if anything, you're going to pre-carb, you need that. Uh, you know, and plus I just enjoy clear things. Anyways, so those are like, you know. For example, at your new bar, how many of these spinzils would you perhaps have on premise? Uh, four. Four. Four. Because what if you have 4 that matches the actual, like, real-time capacity of the big centrifuge, but you could task it with 4 different

[32:09] products or you could do continuous. So if you have 4 spins alls, you have the actual, like, real time, um, it's actually faster because they clarify faster than a normal centrifuge because they have less distance to

[32:22] go. So, yeah, you're actually at a faster throughput with 4 spinzols than you are with

[32:28] one uh 10,000. And you don't have to worry about the balancing. No balancing. Yeah, you can run the products separately. You can open it, you can look at it while it's running. You know what I mean? So it's, I mean, that's what I'm going to do. I'm not even going to buy, when we reopen, which by the way, I'm looking at space, you know, but when we reopen, it won't be called Booker and Dax, though, unfortunately. I don't know what's going to be called. Do you have any good bar names? I don't know what was what did you say the Arnold name means again? I, uh, what's it called? What that called? I focused on some of the people at the bar last night, Eagle

[33:02] Power, and they were like, no. I was like, here's how it works. Here's where Eagle Power is, right? So you walk into whatever the actual bar name is, right? Whatever it is, right? What do you think about Rochambeau? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so you walk into Rochambeau and you're like, I want to go to Eagle Power.

[33:23] And they, we take you downstairs into like a little like boiler room thing with just one seat and like you were at the Eagle Power

[33:28] Bar. Like, that's it. That's it. You are Eagle Power. Or alternatively, we just like clear your service. So, you know how many you walk in, like we give you the glass, we give you everything, right? You just say, Eagle power. And we clear your service and your menu, hand you like a special service and the eagle power, and we put like a box around you. So you are in evil power zone there. The other specialty bar, because we could have multiples if, you know, creamy tins, because I have so many recipes with like cream

[33:57] syrups and you're like creamy tins, because that's a bartender's worst nightmare. It's creamy, creamy tins, worst. Uh, okay. So, should we take a break? Yeah. Well, let's take a break, come back with more Del Posto and cooking issues.

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[35:17] For more information and to order yours now, visit chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. And we are back. So, um, actually, Mark, you saw us use the spins, all right? I did, yeah, yeah. I was super impressed because I had seen just video of some of the earlier prototypes and the thing looked like it was going to take off to Mars. I was scared for your life. trying to operate that thing. But this other one is like really tame, it's quiet. It's like the spin is like a pleasant noise. Yeah, and you value, uh, some sort of calm in the kitchen. Yeah, quality. You're a you're a calm cook, right? I mean, you're when things go wrong, you get sad, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like, oh, the fuck. Not the true tantrums from now and then. I picture you more as a. T takes too much energy. Yeah. People realize that. Before the sad, like, oh, you've hurt the food. years ago. You hurt the food. Why did you hurt the food? You know what I mean? I mean, my general philosophy is to remove variable forever from the equation prior to service so that when you're in

[36:28] service, you can just go. And most of the times those variables for air, the cooks. Especially with, yeah, that's best video. No, no, not our cooks. No, no, my I've met a bunch of your cooks. Your cooks are fantastic. I think you do. How many do you have? 8 million? Yeah, quite a few. Like, seriously, how many people work? Many dozens. Many dozens. But like over a 100 people work there, right? 200. 200. Yeah. 200 people work there and you have, what, 8,000 feet? 60 in the kitchen. Yeah, you have 8,000 seats? How many seats are you? 400 seats. Come on, really? 400 seats. That's like, that's like a high school. It's big. Yeah. Like a whole high school could have their graduation if they had the money. The whole high school could have their graduation party. 24,000 square feet. So it could actually be many more seats. So I'm actually considering myself fortunate to only have 400. Yeah, so also, like, I was thinking about this the other day because, and we've talked about this. Remember WD 50? Of course I do. Wiley's restaurant. Wiley's restaurant was kitchen wise, a cook's paradise. It was crazy. Like his ratio of back to front of house. I was like, I was like, like a kitchen that luxurious will never be replicated again. But then your kitchen is pretty freaking luxurious. I mean, you have, I mean, but you do a lot of, you do like a lot of work in there, it doesn't necessarily go out to the floor, right? Or do you use it just very luxurious? We just have like a super luxurious. The actual story that probably most people don't know about was that one time I took a walk with Mario early on during the demolition phase before the construction actually started, and he simply took a look at the

[37:59] room and took his orange clog and drew an imaginary line and said,

[38:05] no dining room past this point. Um, and that's how the kitchen was. And you're like, what am I going to do in my space? He's like, I don't care. I don't care. pretty much, yeah. Wow. So what is it like, just basically, like not having to like, not having to be in kind of crushing evil death for

[38:28] kitchen. What's that like? It's it's it's palatial. I mean, that's one of the things that I realized, you know, before I accepted the position was that, you know, if I'm going to be working in this profession as a

[38:39] chef, I'm going to be working many hours and I'm going to be toiling away and I might as well be in a nice, nice environment. It's bigger than it needs to be. And I don't think all of the necessarily all the young cooks really appreciate what that what that means and what reality is like because it's not reality.

[38:58] Um, but we just try to be sort of, you know, gracious about it and not take it for

[39:04] granted and, uh, yeah, we're lucky. I mean, assuming you can do your numbers on the front of house, because you have more than enough space, right, for what you want to do. So assuming that like, and I guess the bigger your space is, the lower the rent per square foot is probably, right? So assuming you can juggle the numbers, do you think that having a really nice, in other words, like

[39:23] pleasant kitchen, it makes the restaurant more sustainable because you have less turnover? You have same turnover, you think? You don't think they appreciate it? I don't think it matters. They get a lot of people who leave and they're like, man, I wish I hadn't left and they come back. Sometimes yeah. Actually, that happens quite a bit, which is pretty great. love that. And do you, do you then punish them for having left? No, I mean, we also treat our people well. You know, we believe in a new sort of world order of altruistic business and

[39:54] personnel management, you know, so we treat people well. Have you met your girlfriend, Nastasia? Yeah. She's the enemy of altruism. It is not true. No, she just, it's not this. No, look, let's be fair to Nastasia. not that she... That's not it. She just enjoys stirring the pot so much that she

[40:15] can't she can't stand. like a lack of strife. If there's no strife, she's not happy. Peter Kim, from Museum of Food and Drink, has turned coined a term for you. you familiar with it? I don't think Stasen Freuda. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a good one, yeah. a genius term, right? Work so well. Yeah. Did get to that. Oh, yes, okay. So, uh, you know, since I feel like we're on freaking NPR. We just asking people for money, freaking constantly. By my spins all. Buy the buy, you should buy the dope post a book. Not a big, not a big investment. How much does it cost? 50 bucks. But how much is it? You can get it way cheaper. How much is it on Amazon? Like 25, maybe. Really? No, it's like 40. Really? 40? They only cut you 10 bucks, huh? You get it for like 12 bucks at the strand. No, strand, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. Nastasi and I, we've gone, they sold other ones ahead. Listen, listen. The, listen. Uh, the strand used to be a freaking... I still go. I love going and like looking at it. But in this internet era. It used to be that everything in the stream was half off, basically. You know what I mean? Even new stuff was like half off. And like they would take old books and they would mark it half off of what it cost in like

[41:30] 1963. And so I would pick up, I bought, like, my, you know, the, um, my old LaRusse, my old, uh,

[41:37] Pellprat, you know, the, uh, the old, uh, French, the classic French one. I picked up my 70s dish in there for nothing 5 bucks. You know what I mean? And then, you know, as the internet started creeping in, and as price checking happened, as all these, their prices actually creeped up. So, You probably got a rent increase, so. I don't know, man. You don't think they own that building? I mean, they must own that building. My point is that it's not the bargain that it used to be. I still love going there. I used to like more going there when it was so piss hot in the summer because it wasn't air conditioned back in the

[42:10] day. And the employees would almost like, like, shoot you as soon as

[42:14] talk to you because it was just so freaking hot. Everyone was just dripping and it smelled like hot, wet, humid book all summer.

[42:21] And what I liked about it is there was no people there. And you know how I like, you know, how I hate dealing with, you know, people. So I was like, you know, I, you know, I love it. Yeah, that's freaking get out of my way. I'm trying to look at books, get out of my way. You know what I mean? You want to hate, anyway, I'm not going to hate anything. So the, yeah, I'm like, you know, dude, I'm looking. Get away. You know what I mean? Or like the, you know what I hate also? I say there's another one. I hate when, like, you're being quick and you're not really in the way and the person gives you the excuse

[42:49] me. If there's an excuse me because they don't want to touch you, whatever, but they're like, excuse me. I need, you know, you're like, no, no, I'm also doing this. By the way, I am getting so much meaner in the kitchen, I found over the years because I've taken the same attitude with my family that I take with like anyone, when I'm in even

[43:11] a regular kitchen, and I've just realized that Thanksgiving, We got to talk about Thanksgiving. I just realized at Thanksgiving that, um, why they think I'm a

[43:20] jerk, because when you're in a kitchen and you say, excuse me, what that means is, or, or, you know, excuse me, what that means is I'm about to continue walking through you unless you

[43:30] move, it doesn't mean I'm going to wait for you to move out of my way. It means this tray of stuff is headed in a straight line, and if you're in that line, you're going to get shouldered. Like, even if it's your family, that's what it means. That's what excuse me means in the context of a kitchen. Am I right about this, Mark? It's not it's not about people. Mind you are beside you. Well, yeah, but like, they don't even understand, but like, I used to smack people on the ass, but you can't do that anymore. I know. Anyway, but you get my point. I told you about the guy. I met a guy who almost died. This is another thing going back to the stupid bro crap in the kitchen they were talking about last week. I hate the spoon to the nuts trick. I don't like, you know what? I hate it. I've always hated it. First of all, it hurts like health. And I like, I don't I don't like, I don't I don't get it. You know what I mean? Like, I don't, you know, like, I'm okay with, like, a nice pat on the shoulder. It's a salt. It is. A pat on the shoulder, but like the whole like grabbing someone's junk from underneath, from behind or the hitting with the spoon. So I met a guy who got spooned in the nuts and got an infection, got blood poisoning and almost died as a result

[44:40] of, yeah, from a spoon, a spoon hit to the nuts. And it's just, it's just, you know, if you weren't going to get rid of the bro stuff in the kitchen to make it like a decent place to work for women,

[44:52] like, do it for your own nuts. You know what I mean? Like, the nut you save may be your own. I don't see that stuff happening so much anymore. Well, good. It's stupid. It's still, it's also, like, being constantly on edge that you're about to get hit in the nuts with a spoon when you're trying to

[45:08] work is not conducive to good work. You know what I mean? How do we get to this? Oh, yeah, yeah. Did you do the charity bus thing yet? come on All right, all right. So, uh, this is over, Dave. When is this over, this thing? Thursday at three. What's the website date? Thursday, 3 p.m. Eastern time. The URL is... not a Dave Arnold three. like 3 on the dot. 302. Yeah, Eastern time. It's charityboz.com. Wait, that's a long URL. No, Jebus. Hold on. All right, well, Charitybuzz.com slash support slash heritage radio. You want to throw any asterisks in, like, numbers, like, dash one, two, three, dash nine? I'll say it one more time. charitybuzz.com slash support slash heritage radio. I mean, it ain't no monitors pantry slash spins all in terms of tripping off the tongue. you know what I'm saying? But like, here's what you're going to get. So Nastasia and I have apparently donated this. This is what you get. Your experience will take place on a mutually agreed upon date between December 1st, 2016 and December 1st, 2017. Experience will occur on a mutually agreed upon Tuesday. This is valid for one person and has an approximate duration of 3 hours. This is a private meeting greet. The winner may take a photo. Of course, the winner can take a freaking photo. Nastasi, why don't you tell them, what do they get? You get to go on the radio show with us and then you get to eat lunch with us. It makes a lot of sense. All this cost of the meal is included. The experience cannot be resold or re auction. I mean, please, was that really going to happen? The estimated value is $5,000. What? We have one bid for 500. Yeah, that's Getting there. Yeah, 10%. All right. Whatever. That's a lot. Just to come on a radio show? And have lunch with you. That's the value. If only I told my kids, you know what? You should sit and finish your lunch. You know why? This is this is 5000 bucks that you're throwing away right here. Anyway, go on, donate Tuesday on a Tuesday. On a Tuesday. Lunch on a Tuesday. The most expensive pizza you will ever buy is to come eat with Estasi and I. So anyway, so like back to, we were talking, kitchens, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving. Yeah, we don't have that much. Okay, well, let me do this question real quick. From Tom Fisher in Philly. Last summer, in 2015, I spent about a month making large amounts of clarified strawberry and raspberry juice in my centrifuge and stored it

[47:23] non-spinsal, though, that wasn't a spinsal, and stored it in my refrigerator in my garage, intending to make

[47:29] caesyrup later. I made the strawberry cesera, but never got around in making the raspberry. Imagine my surprise when today I found about 2 liters of raspberry juice at the back of that fridge. It's still crystal clear and smells delicious. The question is delicious. Delicious. The question is, is it safe? You see the marathon, man, the movie, the marathon, man? Great movie. Is it safe? Is it safe? remember that? Awesome. Dustin Hoffman. Dustin Hoffman and 0 my god, his name went out of my head. The is a safe guy, the dentist. Oh my god, crazy. I'm losing my mind. It's not, it's like, gone. not losing, lost. It's still crystal clearance, smells delicious. Delicious. Gosh. The question is, is it safe? Given how many raspberries it took to make that much juice, I'm hesitant to just throw it away. drink that sucker. What you have is raspberry wine, my friend. If you've sealed it well enough. It'll probably be carbonated and you'll probably see a yeast layer at the bottom, but I've had OJ that I've left in my fridge for months and months just to let it ripen

[48:21] up and that stuff is good. soda that you make is amazing. No, yeah. and it won't kill you. It won't kill you. So, I mean, look, if you're, if you, uh, if you reply next week that it was delicious, I'm assuming that I was right and you didn't die.

[48:33] But I'm just saying that I will, I would eat it if I were you. So what Mark, what do you do on the Thanksgiving? Uh, I went to Boston and saw my family and enjoyed someone else cooking for

[48:45] Thanksgiving. Good. How overcooked was the turkey? Uh, it was it was overcooked. It was, yeah, yeah. I brought with me, though, to save the day, one of those M. Wells

[48:56] tortieres. Do you know these things? No. that Hugh and Sarah make. Writis with the primary ketchup. Oh, yeah. It's like this Canadian meat pie.

[49:09] Oh, I like meat pie. Oh, and lots of lard and the crust and... thing ever. Stars your Thanksgiving? Portland with my brother and my family. How was the turkey? It was good actually. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Michael, you? South Coast, Massachusetts. Oh yeah? Turkey was good. Yeah? What style of stuffing do they make you there? You're not some sort of weird oyster stuffing person, right? No, just like celery, bread, onions. Sausage in that thing? No. Well, with no sausage in your style? Sausage in your stuffing mark? No, sir. Stas, Stas, you're stunning? Stas is like, yeah, American. Hello. By the way, while I'm telling you what I did, I want you guys to think on this. Are we the country of gravy? Is there any other country that makes American style awesome gravy? I'm not talking about like Sunday gravy for your Massachusetts people,

[49:56] you know, Italian, like gravy, which is actually sauce. But does anyone make American style? I want to call it kind of God's gravy, gravy, real gravy. Anyway, while you're thinking about that, Here's what I did. This maybe was the smoothest without a hitch Thanksgiving ever. What I did was, I bought 314 to £16 turkeys instead of one giant one. I took 2 of them, boned them out, cut, I cut them all into chicken sized pieces. So, uh, I also, then I, um, I cooked the, I salted them down and cooked them in, uh, like milk, small amount of milk and sugar under VAC

[50:32] till they were cooked, pulled them, crypt attendons out of the leg pieces. So now we're all boneless, except for the thing. It took them out hot, let them flash off on racks so that the skin's got real nice and dry. And then I butter them up, breaded them like chicken fried turkey pieces. Then I took the other turkey that was left whole because you need to present a whole

[50:51] bird and but it was only like 14 or 15 pounds. It was easy. Let it air dry for like, well, 1st when I took all the bones that I ripped out of the other birds. I hacked them up, cooked them in the, you know, roasted them, made a double pressure cooker stock. So one half the bones, started with chicken stock, one half the bones, boom,

[51:08] boom, another one, boom, you know, freshened up the veg in that, and then took some of that, injected that,

[51:15] added a little salt, injected that into the whole bird into the breast. So it brining it with its own, you know, with its own kind, you know, cannibal brine. And then let that air dry for a couple of hours. Turn the other stuff back into gravy with the roux. Eh, I misjudged a little bit how much rue, so I had to add some Bermani at the end. You know what I mean? Sorry about that. Anyway. So then I had the chicken. So then I deep fried at a lower temperature, the whole bird in my commercial deep fryer outside with propane, deep fried that whole bird till it was done, you know, then

[51:44] pulled that, and then while that was resting at the table, did all the, like cranked the temperature and did all the pre-cooked chicken fried turkey and then pulled it

[51:51] out. So we had this giant table full of freaking, yeah, turkey, lot of turkey. I can only imagine the turkey frying explosion you could be

[52:01] responsible for. This is why I air dried. Yeah, air the trick with it, 1st of all, with any bird that you're gonna fry, whole fry. I think a lot of them say people make it, you dry it. You know what I mean? Otherwise, you get really kind of nightmare scenarios. And the other thing is that when you're frying in a commercial deep fryer as opposed to in one of those, the problem with the, the, the, the turkey fryers that they sell you, where you're cooking in those 5 gallon jugs and you go down, is that it orients the turkey such that if you have any moisture on the inside, you create a fountain. And I think that's what a lot of the reasons they overfill the oil and they get this like boiling fountain effect coming through the center of the turkey and it overflows.

[52:37] and miscalculate the, the, um, displacement of oil, right? Yeah. Whereas in a commercial deep fryer, you're going horizontally. So you still get some foam up, but it's not like, it's not a big deal. You know, in fact, the top of the breast was out a little bit. So we were doing, we were ladling, ladling over the top to get it done, which is actually not bad because that part of meat you don't want overcooked anyway. So back to the gravy question. Does anyone do gravy the way we do gravy? I don't know. Is it like a crayle thing? Did it come from New Orleans? I don't know. I mean, they like their roof for sure. Nastasia, if you don't like gravy, that might be the end. Do you like gravy? Really? Oh my god. Freaking guy. Oh my freaking God. Oh. What do you like, Nastasia? I like Las Vegas. I don't like I don't like... Do you like mashed potatoes? Yes, no gravy. Thank God. Mark puts enough butter and cream to kill 5 horses. Wait, are you an anti-cream in your mashed potatoes guy, Mark? No, I think dairy is helpful. No, but like, so I know some people, I'm not going to mention them, Wiley, who is like butter only. I don't want to add any liquid to my potatoes. I want to add all of the viscosity with butter. Robichol style. But I like cream in my, I like the cream in it, yeah. I bought a... I hate food mills, by the way. Yeah, I hate for potatoes. For potatoes. I detest them. I hate them. JJ, who used to work for Wiley, is now doing Ando. He, when a couple of years ago, he was cooking a feast with his mom. His mom handed him a food meal. He opened the door to her house and threw the food mill out into. I am convinced. So food mill, this is food mill is one of the biggest enemies of quality that's out there in terms of your life. I don't think there's any cook who likes food milks that uses them. No, you have cooks that will use the food milk for you. When was the last time you sit there and like took the food mill and you're cranking it and you're cranking it and there's only that tiny freaking wedge that works and it

[54:32] gets it gets clogged and then you have to back it up every 2 seconds. It takes 18,000 years. You're scalding your knuckles, the bowl sliding around. It's garb, bench. It's garbage, it's garbage. And I know they use it at Del Posto every freaking day because I was talking to your cooks at Oto last week. No, but for tomatoes, they make tomato strainers, dude. It's like, Nah, it's not the same. Wait, you're telling me that your cook's putting the tomato to a tomato to a food meal is better than one of those mechanical, like, KitchenAid tomato strainers or the large version of it? don't know what that is. I'll tell you what it is. It's a lot freaking easier to use than a food mill. Well, what else are they going to do? There's like 60 of them. They got to do something. That's true. It's like, I, anyway, I hate food mills. I think anyone that actually has to use them hate them. So I bought a really good ricer. I bought, because, you know, I've told you this? I like potatoes in a rice. Some people don't like them. I love rice. I love rice potato because you're going to break up those little rice pellets as you stir, but it like maintains as much texture as you want. I think I love the rice. I think getting like a last. There's something about it that's just right with the rice. I promise, I've broken every single ricer I've ever used, because I'm just like, like I'm an animal, somehow on equipment, like, it's not that I'm physically strong, but I can break anything, especially if there's a lever arm on it.

[55:44] So I bought the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I bought the cast aluminum one because I thought it wasn't going to bend. And so far, NorPro, yeah, they NorPro makes a stainless one, but someone was like, I bought the stainless one in a bent. I was like, I'm going to go with the cast one. If it breaks, I'll go get the stainless steel one. So, you want me on the way out, you want me to tell you what my potatoes this year? All right. So what I love, the way I break my riceers is cook the potatoes,

[56:10] I you know, I roasted potatoes in their jackets, right? And then I rice them whole, then I save the squash skins and I fry them up as a leftover. Right? But it's a huge paint in the ass and you have to cut all these hot potatoes and like nightmare and all this. So this year what I did was, I peeled all the potatoes like standard, foil wrapped them, threw them in the oven, baked them so they wouldn't take on any extra

[56:31] water, and you could do a long bake without them breaking apart. Then all you had to do was like quick, snap the foil off and throw them in the rice or boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

[56:39] boom. And we never had to clean out your ricer because it didn't have all of those skins on the inside. So that was my, that was my skiz illest trick on the potatoes. Anyway, that was Thanksgiving. My house. Thanks to Michael and Chef Mark Vladner for coming in and talking. marginally. It's like pulling teeth, getting you guys to talk about your cookbook. Go buy the freaking cookbook, learn how to make the fabulous 100 layered lasagna. Oh, on the way out. Here's what I didn't ask you. So, you rejigger all the talk and the way the recipes are organized for home folks. And I will vouch for you, knowing you for many years, that you don't like things that aren't the way you want them. right? Sure. Yeah. And so I'm sure that you put in 8 boatloads of work to ensure that the results that the people are

[57:24] going to get are pretty damn close to what you want them to get if they follow your instructions. Is that true? Do you feel you've achieved the same? In all honesty, Michael put in more of the time than I did, but I would absolutely agree that it's

[57:38] like, yes. insane amount of work that went into this book. But I'm saying, like, so if someone wants to make the 100 layer lasagna here, The workflow might not be the same because workflow in a restaurant is different from workflow at home, right? And like the plus is different. Everything's different. But if they follow the instructions, they are going to, and they are, and they're not enemies of quality. They will be able to produce with this recipe. absolutely no question. The same stuff. They're tested like 3 times, each one. I mean, each piece of the recipes were tested as we went along, but then the final recipe was tested

[58:10] 3 times. Once in metric, once in American. Um, and all this was done. All the final testing was done on a 4 burner stove in an apartment with our recipe tester. Nice. So it works. You ever set off the detectors, the smoke detectors? Sure. Nice. Many times. But the point is, is that it works. So we know it works because we literally did it as if someone in your home would be different. And the language is digestible, although long. And Dirty Secret, by the way, that I guess it's not a secret. Everybody knows it, is that, like, most cookbooks ain't nobody testing those recipes. Your editors aren't like, did you test the recipes? Editors don't care. Shockingly. I mean, like, you know, my other cares, but like vast majority of people, they don't care. So like a lot of the cookbooks you get out there, they're just completely untested recipes, especially

[58:57] just not knocking chefs, but like what happens is chefs, you know, don't have a lot of time. And so what happens is, is that you have your internal specs and then you try to butcher those internal specs directly into a home

[59:08] recipe. doesn't work. It doesn't free you can work. Also, because there's a conceit of like, oh, well, they'll never even get this piece of equipment. You'll never even be able to really get this ingredient the way we want it. So why bother? I'm talking about cookbooks from, you know, restaurants like Del Posto, sort of the top tier stuff. So they say, well, really this, we should just write this down because it's another outline for chefs and for people to look at how the food is put together and all that stuff.

[59:32] There's some cookbooks out there where they're fine print in the back. I mean, sort of some very high restaurants to say, basically, you can't make this at home. I mean, that's in the fine frame. Well, so, so I'm not suggesting that that's a bad... Well, I'm not suggesting that that's necessarily a bad cookbook or a bad thing or people aren't taking away something from it, but that isn't what this is. I mean, a lot of times people buy chefs cookbook just to see how a chef thinks or how a restaurant operates. Yeah, sure, absolutely. But, you know, look, there's a long tradition, and, you know, years ago, Mike, when Michael Batterberry was still alive, he had me like write something about

[1:00:04] this, there's a long tradition in Europe of chefs books that are written by chefs for chefs.

[1:00:08] Not so much here in the U.S. In the US, almost all cookbooks are published, even by like hardcore restaurant chefs. like your hardcore restaurant chef, you know, like our published 4 non-pros. They have to appeal to non-pros. And what that means typically is things get dumbed down. And one of the 1st ones that, you know, that's kind of pejorative way to put it, but, you know, it's like the chef doesn't really want to alter their recipes and doesn't really, like, know what it means to cook at home because they're a chef. And so, like, it's hard it's hard to get that get that balance. One of the 1st cookbooks that broke the American mold, and actually was just like, I'm just going to give you the professional recipes, and if you don't want to soak all your anchovies and milk, then just don't make this recipe. It was French laundry book. Uh, way, way back in the day. Still sells like crazy. Yeah, well, I mean, it was a great book. You know what I mean? I mean, whether or not you, like, are a fan of TK or, or, you know, any of

[1:00:59] this stuff is like, that is, like, they were like, I'm just going to tell you how this thing works. Yeah. But I think this, like, what you're trying to shoot for here is different. You're like, I want you to actually get this result without having to operate like I'm in the French laundry, which

[1:01:15] is or at Del Posto in your case. So it's like, I think it's a different and almost harder task. Yeah, completely. We re-engineered all the all the recipes without dumbing them down. And the reason for doing it? I mean, the real question is why do the work for that is that we felt like Mark's food calms all the foundation of Mark's food comes from very, very traditional, regional, Italian

[1:01:40] cooking, and a lot of that cooking start is sort of passed down through the homes and home

[1:01:45] chefs. I mean, our home cooks, let's say, in the families. So going back. So we're like, well, this is, we should make this work in homes. Like, this is Italian food that's sort of found, the foundation of this

[1:01:56] food is home cooking if you keep going back and back and looking at these regional recipes. So we've got to make this work at home to carry on that tradition in some sense. But also, it's just, you know, like if you go to Del Posto, which I encourage you to do. Uh, you know, everyone there is very, uh, you know, keyed up on you having a positive experience.

[1:02:17] Like the overwhelming sense you get is like a respect for the diner, for the customer. And I think the same things flowing over to the book here. It's like a respect for the person buying the book that they're going to get the information that they need. And to me, really, that's the defining kind of service, uh, and even in back of house, also characteristic of Del Poso. So

[1:02:34] makes that post. Traditional hospitality. Anyway, well, thanks so much for coming, guys. Cooking issues.

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