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- [00:12]
A
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New York City newsstand studios joined as usual with. John's not here. Got Joe Hazenrock in the panels. Do not have John here today. How you doing? I'm doing well, man. Great to see you. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, John actually is working on an opening now, so he's getting crushed.
- [00:35]
B
Where?
- [00:37]
A
I'm not exactly sure. I'm gonna let him talk about it when he comes back. Let him deal with it. But. And so like, we're skeleton crew as far as our normal peeps, except for we do have in the upper left hand corner. Quinn. How you doing?
- [00:52]
C
I'm good. I represent the entire left side today.
- [00:56]
A
Yeah, yeah. Even though you're like cracked off and floating in the. In the ocean over there. Have you bought all of the emu from your emu farmer before he moves up and moves to our side of the. Of the continent?
- [01:13]
C
Not yet, but I have a very fascinating story. They had an emu chick born with four legs.
- [01:24]
A
Yeah. Wait, wait. Four legs and two wings?
- [01:29]
C
Yep. It's like, must. Must have been like an absorbed twin thing, but apparently it's incredibly rare. They usually die. But he's. He's still kicking. Yeah.
- [01:42]
A
How does it. So you haven't tasted it yet?
- [01:46]
C
No, I don't think I'm gonna. I don't think I'm gonna eat the precious. Listen, more like Nemo.
- [01:54]
A
What else can I do with it? Anyway, before we go any further and before I talk about two headed cows and the Buckthorn. Buckthorn. Whatever the name of it is. The famous taxidermy restaurant outside of Denver, which has like so. Well, let's talk about it now. They have so much taxidermy. If you ever wanted to go to a restaurant and you're like, I want like, you know, kind of standard steakhouse fare along with like, you know, Rocky Mountain oysters and other. But what I really want is a whole bunch of taxidermy at the same time. I think it's called the Buckthorn. Someone has to look it up the lodge, I think. And one of the things they have, the owner I think was friends with, you know, dead President Roosevelt. So I think there's even some Roosevelt shot stuff in there. But they have a two headed cow. Yeah. Apparently they found it dead because, you know, like Quinn says, four legs. I think two heads is even harder than four legs.
- [02:47]
B
I would imagine.
- [02:48]
A
Yeah. Anyway, so introduce you now. So you can enter the conversation, not have an awkward silence. Special guest today, Greg Backstrom with his new book Nothing matters but Delicious.
- [03:01]
C
Right?
- [03:01]
A
Is that true? Nothing. Some things.
- [03:03]
B
It wasn't meant to sound that nihilistic. It was supposed to be more nonchalant if. It doesn't matter if you up kind of a thing.
- [03:10]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [03:11]
B
It sounds a little bit more scary than it's meant to be.
- [03:14]
A
Right. And you worked with. Now does Joshua Davis Stein. He's been on the show before. Does he prefer jds, or does he go by the full.
- [03:21]
B
I've known him for a handful of years now. I still just call him Joshua David Stein.
- [03:25]
C
Yeah.
- [03:25]
A
Because he's one of those people. You can't really. He abbreviates his. What's it called? What are those things called? Substacks. I think it's jds. But, like, he. He's one of those. You always use all the name people, you know, it sounds good. I think maybe he was, like, always in trouble at home, and so they always used his full name.
- [03:41]
B
Yeah.
- [03:41]
A
You know. Anyway, so was that fun writing the book or.
- [03:45]
B
No, it took him like. I had a couple of writers try to help me get through the process. I had been trying to do it for a long time, but they just happened to be out of state. And so sort of communicating the information that they wanted to get the book going was hard for me. I'm dyslexic. I have adhd. I'm bipolar. So Joshua just came and laid on my couch and would type while I made us food and talked, basically, and that's how the book got done.
- [04:12]
C
That's nice.
- [04:12]
B
Yeah.
- [04:15]
A
He does food books and kids books, but not yet a kid food book, right?
- [04:20]
B
I don't think so.
- [04:22]
A
Weird, right? Like, why keep your life so siloed?
- [04:24]
B
He's working on, like, a long format story right now. It's, like, about a chef and apprentice and.
- [04:30]
A
For kids or for adults?
- [04:31]
B
I think it's for adults. Well, I don't know. That's a good question.
- [04:35]
A
You know, who's working on a kids book? Is George Moats, the hamburger guy?
- [04:39]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [04:40]
A
About.
- [04:40]
B
About burgers. Yeah. The history.
- [04:42]
A
No, strangely. So the story is there's a diner, and the diner is going, you know, down the tubes. No one wants to go to this diner. And this kid is like, you need to make this hamburger that I want you to make. But it's some, like, weird, preposterous hamburger. By the way, speaking of preposterous hamburgers, why is your hamburger blunt upside down?
- [05:03]
B
I think it's trending now. We used to have this culinary director, Sherry. She was just on this season of Top Chef. She just opened a restaurant called Cynthia in the West Village, and she threw that one together, and people really liked it. And, you know, it was like trying to be a smash burger, but it's not really a smash burger because we put butter in that beef. If you smash, you just kind of smush all the butter out.
- [05:27]
A
Right.
- [05:28]
B
So we started smashing the bread instead.
- [05:30]
A
Huh.
- [05:30]
B
I've seen it. I've seen it.
- [05:31]
A
And then you flip it upside. But do people flip it right side? They can't because you've already sauced the other side of the thing. You can't flip it. You're done.
- [05:38]
B
You're stuck with it.
- [05:39]
A
And you butter it as well, right?
- [05:40]
C
Yeah.
- [05:41]
A
And it is true that the. It is true that if you're going to use a standard bun, the whatever you want to call it, the crust side, won't absorb butter properly compared to the bottom side, but it will maybe resist the sog more.
- [05:56]
C
Right.
- [05:58]
A
What are your thoughts on.
- [05:58]
B
I think it's just to be provocative.
- [06:00]
C
Yeah.
- [06:00]
A
What are your thoughts on English muffins for burgers?
- [06:03]
B
I had one at Olmsted and it was for brunch. It was a brunch burger. It was really popular. So I'm all for it. I like the. They're called like the. They're pork, Portuguese, English muffins.
- [06:13]
A
Yeah.
- [06:13]
B
Like the port muffins. So they're bigger. They don't really have all the nooks and crannies. It's more of like a straightforward.
- [06:18]
A
But the actual Portuguese ones that are slightly sweet.
- [06:20]
B
They are definitely a little sweeter.
- [06:22]
A
Yeah.
- [06:23]
B
And so we used to take like breakfast sausage and ground beef and marry them together like a 5050 mix. So it would kind of eat like breakfast sausage but have the substance of a burger. And then we made like a tomato, hollandaise, and yellow mustard, so it kind of tasted McDonald's Y.
- [06:40]
A
Which, by the way, people like McDonald's. I don't know if you know this.
- [06:44]
B
Yeah, I'm just figuring it out for myself now.
- [06:46]
A
I'm not sure if you're aware.
- [06:47]
B
Pivoting.
- [06:47]
C
Yeah. Yeah.
- [06:49]
A
All right, so wait, so let's finish the burger, which is in this book, by the way. So what's interesting is, like a lot of the well known items that you have had on previous menus and even at your place here in five Acres, here in Rock center are there in the book. You can make them. How similar are the ones in the book to the ones that you make.
- [07:04]
B
Make during the process. I was kind of convinced that if the recipe requires specialty equipment, someone's not really going to make it. So I tried to edit all of them so you didn't really have to buy anything too fancy. So like there's the carrot crepe, which was very popular at Olmsted, but I made an easier version of it.
- [07:24]
A
And since you brought up the carrot crepe, let's finish. Just remind me because I want to go. You would say, well, forget about, do it now. So like in the carrot crepe, right, you make a. You hyper reduce the carrot. How do you stop the carrot from getting kind of. You know how carrot juice, if you reduce it can kind of get like weird and break. Like how do you stop that from.
- [07:44]
B
Or keep whisking? You got to keep cleaning the side because you want all that pulp is what's going to help make it orange. It's not like an ugly color if you don't do it. But it will be much more orange if you keep whisking it. And you don't let all the pulp go to the sides while it's reducing.
- [07:58]
A
Because you reduce it quite a bit.
- [07:59]
B
Like I reduce a quart into about a quarter of a cup.
- [08:02]
A
Then you add cream and reduce again a la Peterson in his original cream based sauce book before he modernized it.
- [08:09]
B
Yeah, yeah. And then a bunch of butter and
- [08:10]
A
then a botan of butter.
- [08:12]
B
Yeah. And the trick too is like once you mount the butter, you'll have what you expect. Sort of like a beurre blanci looking kind of sauce. But if you put it in a Vitamix, a Vita Prep blender and you, you turn it on for like five seconds, you kind of like whipping air into it, it will thicken and be like more spreadable and it's more forgiving.
- [08:29]
A
And it helps last longer too. Or no.
- [08:32]
B
Well, what I get out of it is I could put it, I could put carrots and clams in that sauce in a pot and bring it to a boil and it won't split on me.
- [08:38]
A
What?
- [08:39]
B
Yeah.
- [08:39]
A
Really?
- [08:40]
B
So you can kind of hammer it
- [08:41]
A
a little bit, just that little bit of air or just.
- [08:43]
B
Yeah, it just like stiff and you can do more with it. You can put a little mohawk on a plate and how much is the
- [08:49]
A
fact that you have. And I'm assuming that when you boil it. So if you don't read the recipe, just go read the recipe. Buy the book and read the recipe. You can go on kitchen arts and letters, you can buy the book at a discount from Cooking Issues. If you're a patreon, you buy the book, you make the recipe, then we can talk about it with you folks at home. Right?
- [09:04]
B
Fair enough.
- [09:04]
A
But the carrot goes in. It's drastically reduced. Then cream goes in. That's reduced by half. Right. Which is kind of like you're taking that all the way down. But does the cream stabilize the mounted butter as well, or.
- [09:16]
B
I would suspect. Yeah.
- [09:17]
C
Yeah.
- [09:18]
A
Cause we had someone who wanted.
- [09:19]
B
It works well with, like, any. Any real root vegetable. I mean, I've done it a lot. It was a per se thing. So we did it with, like, beets and kind of other root vegetables.
- [09:27]
A
Well, so that's the other question I had. So in it, you're like, you could if you want to, and you like beets because you have plenty.
- [09:32]
B
Is that a Brooklyn accent you're saying?
- [09:34]
A
I don't know. You could do it where you. You could use beets, you could use sweet potato. Anyway, so, like, you do it. But the thing is, is that, like, does it actually change? And it made me think that when I used to want colored pasta, I would just, like, add ketchup if I wanted it red. Because you can't taste it in the pasta, can you? Clearly, I think you're going to taste it in the sauce. But can you taste the carrot in the crepe?
- [09:55]
B
Oh, because the carrot crepe, it's a crepe recipe that you just take the milk out and you replace it with carrot juice. So for sure you can taste the carrot.
- [10:04]
A
So it's not like colored pasta where basically.
- [10:06]
B
No, it tastes like carrot.
- [10:07]
A
Oh, nice. Yeah, I guess, because there's a lot more liquid. I don't know. I guess, like, it's the majority of
- [10:12]
B
the weight of the recipe.
- [10:13]
A
Now, do you agree with me? The most colored pastas taste like the base pasta. They taste like sauce and salted water.
- [10:20]
B
Yeah. I mean, the ones I see a lot. I mean, if you go to a grocery store, it's like the spinach ones or like the beet ones.
- [10:26]
A
Yeah. All right, well, so while back on spinach, you do make a soup with where the broccoli and the spinach seem to be cooked for a relatively decent amount of time without shocking. And yet it is very green. Do you have any tricks on keeping that soup green? You're blended.
- [10:43]
B
Just serve it right away. You know, like, if you need to, you can make it ahead of time or cook it less. Like you were kind of alluding to. But then you would have. If you make it ahead of time, you got to shock it, and then you're reheating it. But if you just make it, if you make everything else and you're just making that right before you're serving it, then you're just pureeing something, checking the seasoning and serving it. And you don't really need to worry about if it's going to last any longer than when you're going to consume it.
- [11:06]
A
Right. All right, all right. So back to the story of the. Of the girl in the diner. Cause that's where we started this conversation. On hamburgers. So she's supposed to have a hamburger and the owner, of course, dismisses her because what the hell does she know? She's a kid. And this guy, like a reporter or someone comes in, some sort of reviewing weasel, comes in and wants something special. And so the kid finally convinces this person to make the burger and it's a huge hit and that becomes their specialty burger. That's the.
- [11:40]
B
That's a good story.
- [11:41]
A
That's a nutshell.
- [11:41]
C
Yeah.
- [11:42]
A
Yeah.
- [11:42]
B
And that's. That's gonna be geared towards youths or adults. Yeah.
- [11:46]
A
Utes.
- [11:47]
B
Yeah.
- [11:49]
A
For my cousin Vinny. All right, so. Wow. I can't believe I remembered to bring that back around, Joe. Can you believe I remember to bring that back around?
- [11:56]
B
I would not have been able to do that. I would have gone on another tangent.
- [12:00]
A
I mean, as I. As I do.
- [12:02]
B
I think I thought we were talking about taxidermy again.
- [12:06]
A
Well, we were supposed to go back there, but I think we hit that one hard enough. I think we're good on tax taxidermy. Yeah, I think we're. Quinn, we good on taxidermy or no?
- [12:15]
C
I think so.
- [12:17]
A
Covered and smothered. Yeah. Well, unless you think that your emu farmer is going to make enough money on their four legged emu if it's like their equivalent of Mike the headless chicken. You familiar with Mike the headless chicken, Quinn?
- [12:30]
C
Vaguely. I was like the head, the chicken that like, survived a long time, right?
- [12:36]
A
Well, survived a long time. After the person miskilled, it left the brain stem. On Mike, the head was.
- [12:43]
C
Relatively speaking, yeah.
- [12:45]
A
I mean, for chicken lasted a lot. For a chicken without a head lasted. What are we talking about, like a year or two. Yeah, yeah. And it was touring around Mike the headless Chicken, and they would just. Because I think the crop was still there. So they would just shove like grain in the crop. Right. Cause the brain stem was still miserable. Yeah, Well, I Mean, Mike didn't know any better. And the guy, I think made a decent amount of money, not so much that they tried to do it again when I was.
- [13:12]
B
Oh God, I can only imagine. Yeah.
- [13:14]
A
Imagine how many chickens had to.
- [13:15]
B
And trying other animals.
- [13:16]
C
Yeah.
- [13:16]
A
Mike Tudor.
- [13:17]
B
I'm sure that got out of hand.
- [13:18]
A
Gets real, real ugly. I remember I found a microwave. When people throw away kitchen equipment, a lot of times it works. There's just something wrong with it. Like this case when I was in college, someone threw away a microwave and the cord was broken. I looked at it, I was like, I gotta fix this. So I fixed it. I had a microwave, but I didn't really care about it. Right. So I also found a crate of light bulbs and a crate of CDs. Anthrax Killer Bees was the CD. It was a whole case of anthrax killer bees. And so that's when I kind of fell in love with microwaving light bulbs and CDs.
- [13:48]
B
What's the result of that?
- [13:49]
A
Oh, CDs look like lightning fingers from the emperor for a little bit. And then they start humping up and getting all crazy because of the. So they look good, but.
- [13:58]
B
And you're trying to get fumes to get high off of.
- [14:01]
A
No, no, just the visuals, just the vis. You know what I mean? But the best is like incandescent light bulbs. You ever microwave an incandescent light bulb?
- [14:10]
B
I've hit my brother with incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent light bulbs.
- [14:14]
A
Fluorescents are the key. Knowing what I know now about how toxic the inside of a fluorescent light bulb is. But I remember once I found we had an entire loading dock full of. They had taken the entire building where I was and. And taken all the fluorescents out and replaced them all. So the entire loading dock was nothing but those eight foot long fluorescents. And then like one of those giant full dumpsters on a loading dock. So we were just standing there. We were lightsabers, of course. Cause like the sound of a fluorescent light bulb breaking.
- [14:48]
B
Yeah.
- [14:48]
A
Shattering is just choice.
- [14:50]
B
Yeah.
- [14:50]
A
You know what I mean? It really is. Just the noise. And then like if you like javelin them, they. If you hit just right, they kind of collapse in on themselves as they go. I mean, it's just.
- [15:03]
B
It's a good visual.
- [15:03]
A
Oh my God. And the poof. And the noise. And just. Cause they're so thin and long. The shatter. You know what I mean? And don't try to mimic it, people. A. It's not healthy. But with some puny little light. Get you an Eight foot fluorescent, old school fluorescent tube. They're like an inch over an inch around. What's the color of the explosion? Oh, in a microwave? No, no, just out in the street.
- [15:26]
B
It's like a. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [15:29]
A
But it's just the noise and just like. Just like this thing going away so quickly. You know what I mean? Just like disappearing into nothing. It's amazing. I never hit people with them, but that sounds like it was fun.
- [15:43]
B
It was. I mean, we were 13, probably.
- [15:46]
A
Yeah, yeah. But when you stick an incandescent light bulb in a microwave, it lights up all different colors and then what happens is like a plasma forms and then eventually. And this is what you would wait for. So we stole a box of 300 watt light bulbs, like industrial 2 or 300 watt light bulbs. And they were clear, no frosting on them, and they lasted quite a while, which was amazing. But occasionally. So what happens is the plasma arcs to the side of the envelope. It heats up there and then they blow up, they explode. So our microwave perpetually was just like, littered with glass shards. We would take the metal chunks out, but it was just littered with glass shards. We didn't need anything out of it.
- [16:29]
B
I was just gonn. You would still use it for popcorn or.
- [16:32]
A
No, listen, we had a dining hall that was open like almost 50% of the time that I was in school. So, like, if we wanted food, we would just break into the dining hall and get cereal. You know, we knew how to break into the dining hall. It was a butter knife problem. You know what I mean? Like, locks back in those days were no big deal. So, you know, every kid knows how to take a butter knife and go to the door and get in. You know what I mean? Anyway, so, yeah, I didn't need it. And plus my roommate Tom would always, like, get funky and order a pizza on his mom's credit card. So I didn't need any of this other stuff.
- [17:02]
B
So it was just for science.
- [17:03]
A
Yeah. So one time. This is where this comes. One time this happened. The plasma hit the light bulb and it blew out and it formed like one of those Edgerton, like splashes of glass and didn't shatter. And we were like, whoa. And I was gonna save it, but I was like, it'll happen again. Never. No, never.
- [17:24]
B
No documentation, no photos of any.
- [17:26]
C
No.
- [17:26]
A
This is like 19, you know, 90. 1989, 1990. There was like, you know, we waste film on this. I don't even think I had a camera right. You know what I mean? Who had a camera back Then, you
- [17:38]
B
know, I was four.
- [17:39]
A
Yeah, well, anyway. But those were the good microwave days.
- [17:43]
C
Yeah.
- [17:43]
A
How the hell have we got on microwaves? What happened? What were we even talking about? All right, let's get back on food.
- [17:50]
B
Maybe soup. I don't remember soup.
- [17:51]
A
Yeah. Quinn, what do you got for me in the week? In review for food,
- [17:58]
C
not too much this week. May. Another gelato. This time I'm testing out a Japanese cane sugar that was, you know, mild.
- [18:10]
A
But when you say Japanese, do you mean like, Okinawan?
- [18:17]
C
No, it was not Okinawan. It was some other prefecture where they just have, you know, historically, for a while, ground cane sugar. I wanna say this was like, also, like, even, like, traditionally boiled over fire. Maybe fire will make things burn. A while ago.
- [18:38]
A
Fire do that. You know what I mean? How was the sugar? Do you like those super funky black Okinawan sugars? Do you like those things, Greg? Too much. Yeah, too much.
- [18:49]
B
I find not in a dessert I don't like. Chef.
- [18:51]
C
Yeah, this was quite subtle.
- [18:55]
B
So subtle.
- [18:55]
C
Okay.
- [18:56]
A
Okay. So if it was subtle, I mean, my next question. Was it worth the money?
- [19:04]
C
I probably wouldn't get it again unless it was easier to order again. I ordered, like, a bunch of stuff direct from Japan. Okay, I got the details. It's called zarame coarse sugar from Kikijima Island.
- [19:26]
A
Don't know it, but here's my. Here's my feeling. You know what's pretty good? Like, just like, bog standard brown sugar if you want, like a less, you know, listen, I'm all for, like.
- [19:35]
C
Yeah, I know.
- [19:36]
A
You know, non standard, non cane jaggery's great. I like many forms of sugar, but, like, especially in recipes, my question is always in a recipe, did I need this fancy ingredient or am I hurting? In other words, like, if there is something special about this ingredient, have I damaged it by burying it in a recipe? Right. I mean, you have a tomato issue we can talk about. Greg does. So you do a fried tomato thing. Because specifically, you're like, any a hole can just get me an heirloom tomato salad. Paraphrasing. Yeah. So you do a fry on it, but to keep it crispy, there's. I believe, it's breading. Correct?
- [20:14]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, it's sort of like a fried tomato, however. So the idea was, like, I wanted the tomato to be the entree at Olmsted. I wanted it to be the vegetable entree. And, you know, when you play around with it, when you cook it, it does just turn to mushroom. So the idea was to make this mixture of flour and egg and have that be what gets golden brown. Like that is what's taking on the temperature and that's what's taking on the golden brown taste. And then if you start with a room temperature, ideally never refrigerated tomato, it will then have warmed through. It won't be like piping hot, but it will be have warmed through. And the golden brown meatiness is coming from the flour and the egg caramelizing. And then to take it a step further, because it's flour, egg and tomato, it can be a little sweet. So we make like a shallot butter with chives and like a lot of coars pepper and salt and we pour it over the top and then it kind of turns it more meaty.
- [21:06]
A
And now in the pictures, were some of those rubies Ruby, Aunt Ruby, German Aunt Ruby's green. Were they?
- [21:11]
B
No, it was. What was the tomato?
- [21:16]
A
Where were you getting them in the real life?
- [21:17]
B
Well, for that I had to shoot it in the winter, so it was incredibly hard to find. I think I got them from Italy or something.
- [21:23]
A
Yeah.
- [21:24]
B
And you know, there used to be
- [21:25]
A
a company that sold fake pumpkins for photo shoots.
- [21:28]
B
Oh really?
- [21:28]
C
Yeah.
- [21:29]
B
Yeah. That was like the, one of the hardest part. I mean the book itself was. I mean, I'm glad I did it. I hope it does well and hope it leads to more things. But it was, it wasn't my skill set. Like doing that was not my skill set. Even though every recipe I've ever done at all the restaurants are documented and there's photos, you would think it would be a no brainer, but it's still like you have to convert them to make them more homey and then you have to get like a recipe tester to test it. Oh, and getting all the vegetables, I mean we did it in the winter and it's a lot of vegetables in it, so it was hard to get my hands.
- [21:59]
A
What do you use in the real life though?
- [22:01]
B
What kind of tomato? Just, just, I honestly I just get. I don't stick to one kind. I literally just try to get the ones that like are as big as my fist or bigger. So that way you can like the perfect one is what if it's like your two hands together and you can top and tail it and cut it in half and still get about an inch and you get two steaks out of it. That would be the ideal. So I wouldn't worry so much about. I mean, to be honest, like even sometimes like a nice beefsteak works because it can hold up to the heat better. It's not as romantic as using an heirloom tomato, but it does hold up to the cooking process better.
- [22:32]
A
A lot of heirlooms suck though.
- [22:34]
B
It's true. Yeah, A lot of them are really. Sometimes they're too soft or it's a lot of water inside of them.
- [22:40]
A
It's a water bag.
- [22:40]
B
Yeah.
- [22:41]
A
You know, I like, honestly, like, I mean, look, I have my favorite tomatoes. I'm waiting a couple of months. They'll start, you know. Yeah. Soon. And I'll, you know, get.
- [22:52]
B
There's greenhouse ones available now, but, but
- [22:54]
A
the green, like so, for instance, feels like another, even like a, like just like a standard like Campari tomato. They're fine. They're better than like a crappy heirloom, I think.
- [23:03]
B
I agree.
- [23:03]
A
So what do you do with the tops and tails of the tomatoes? Family meal.
- [23:07]
B
Family meal. Stick them in a sandwich. Tomato sauce. This is a ketchup recipe that's pretty easy to follow.
- [23:12]
A
I saw that. But I mean, like, look. So we had a. Who was on recently? Who? Faraday.
- [23:19]
C
Yeah.
- [23:19]
A
And she's like Heinz. Which I kind of agree with. Your thing is ketchup doesn't have to be just tomatoes. So it's like ketchup.
- [23:26]
B
Yeah, I've done it writ large. Yeah. Like, so at Olmsted we were pretty strict. I had made up a lot of arbitrary rules about seasonality and stuff. So we would make ketchup a lot with green tomatoes or tomatillos because they were sort of a little bit more readily available and. But then that migrated into. I took all the tomato out and I just put cherries in it and it comes out. I mean it's, I mean it's some hodgepodge Alton Brown recipe with some other two recipes that I kind of just tinkered around with. And I'm not going to say it tastes like Heinz, but you know, the point was to get it as close as I could to standard ketchup. It's not supposed to taste like fancy ketchup. It's, it's supposed to taste like store bought, just you replace the vegetable.
- [24:10]
A
Right, right.
- [24:11]
B
Fruit, you know.
- [24:12]
A
Is that one of the, I can't remember, is that the one where you, you do the reduction with the vinegar and then you splash the vinegar back in? Because a lot of it volatilizes when you're doing the cook.
- [24:20]
C
Yeah.
- [24:20]
B
So it's, it's like, I mean at home I would just use corn syrup, but in the restaurant I would use it's equal parts glucose, sugar. And white vinegar and then there's like a ratio of clove and allspice and then you just take whatever you want and you robocoo it into a pulp. So like tomatoes with onion and garlic or cherries or whatever and you pour that equal part ratio over it and you just rock it down until it's half gone. You puree it as good as you can. And then because there's so much acid and so much sugar in it, like it just changes once it's cold. Like the taste of it changes and the viscosity of it. So I just like, I throw it in the, walk into the fridge and then I recalibrate the next day and I add a little vinegar like you just said. Or maybe it needs a little, maybe, maybe it's a little sweet. So you add a little salt to it on vinegar.
- [25:03]
A
I'm going to hit things as they come into my head. I apologize. So you're a fan of vinegar based pickles, right? Specifically the raspberries you call out two or three times. Do you pour the vinegar over the raspberries? Does it matter how hot the vinegar is? First of all, why do people always heat the vinegar? I would have guessed that it's pretty much dead. Is that just to dissolve the stuff or are you trying to heat the.
- [25:27]
B
I, you know, despite doing this for like 25 years, I am, I'm like a very nostalgic cook. Like I, you know, that pickle recipe is what I did at Alenia probably 20 years ago. And I mean it's like, it's sweet. Like now I would alter it and maybe like cut the sugar in half, depending on the, you know, I tried to give a straightforward kind of universal recipe in the book, but I do, I do boil it so that way it can take on, you know, the, the spices that I put on it so it perfumes a little bit more. But it's mostly to, it's mostly just, I guess sometimes it is to cook the product because like if I do ranches out or radishes, I'll blanch them for one minute just to take the edge off and then I'll, I, you know, I don't want them to have that much snap. So I'll put them, I'll transfer it into the hot pickling liquid and give it a day and they kind of curl up a little bit, but they.
- [26:16]
C
Right.
- [26:16]
A
Well, I was imagining the raspberries. Having the liquid be hot enough would like knock fungus back so that you wouldn't get any sort of softening or growth before the pickling liquid could. To the raspberry. That's because, like, you know, McGee, I
- [26:28]
B
also wanted it to be broken down.
- [26:29]
A
Right.
- [26:29]
B
Part of that, like, I wanted it to kind of be this slush of raspberries and pickling liquid and oil on top.
- [26:36]
A
You say?
- [26:37]
B
Yeah, that was like an old. You know, to save time at per Se. Like, if we had a pickle, like beautiful baby carrots, and maybe they were room temperature or cold in the dish, we would just, like, dress the top layer of the ninth pan or the pint container of the deli with a layer of oil. So when you were taking it out, there's already salt, there's already sugar, there's already acid, and now there's oil. So it's like a dressed component that can just go directly on the plate instead of having to then, like, you know, it just saved a millisecond. But.
- [27:05]
A
Yeah, but you call it breaking, which is interesting. What do you think that comes from
- [27:08]
B
also, per se, fine dining? Like, whenever. If we had, like, a meat ju or something or a fish sauce, and we. And it was emulsified, and we intentionally wanted oil floating on top of it. Like, we used to do this thing called agridu, where it was a ratio of sugar, vinegar, a juice and glucose, and we would. Same thing. We would just put that in a pot and reduce it by half.
- [27:28]
A
Glucose to syrup.
- [27:29]
B
Yeah.
- [27:29]
C
Yeah.
- [27:30]
B
And you would be left with something the viscosity of honey or maple syrup of whatever flavor. So it could be like pink peppercorns or truffle or horseradish or something. And. Yeah, it was universal. You know, we were able to use it a lot.
- [27:44]
C
Yeah.
- [27:45]
A
I used to drag. So you're adding. By dragging things in, I used to drag out. So when I would fry finished meats, I would drag them through broth to, like, knock the oil off the top. You know what I mean? Like, it's all about trying to save yourself some time.
- [27:59]
B
Yeah. I don't think there are any rules anymore. You know, Like, I just,
- [28:04]
C
you know,
- [28:04]
B
I used to be so like about French cuisine and a bit of a Francophile, and now I don't think there's a right way or a wrong way to do anything anymore.
- [28:14]
C
Yeah.
- [28:14]
A
Although, you know, something you said a second ago, like, you know, you made all the quote unquote, you know, ridiculous rules for yourself. But on the other hand, like, without rules, like, nothing's more frightening than not having some rules to follow.
- [28:24]
B
Oh, that.
- [28:24]
C
The. The.
- [28:24]
B
The toughest question I would get in my Career before opening a restaurant. Be like, so what is this restaurant going to look like? What is your restaurant? And like, I needed someone to put parameters on it for me to describe it. Like, is it in Chicago? Is it in Brooklyn? Is it in Manhattan? You know, do I have a million dollars? Do I have $4 million? Do I have $100,000? Like, I, I needed some context to then, like, I can solve that problem. But when it was too broad, I, I can't answer that. I need there to be some rules.
- [28:50]
A
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, rules are helpful.
- [28:52]
B
Yeah.
- [28:52]
A
Yeah. If you're listening live, that means you're on Patreon. You can call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And if you want to be able to listen live, calling questions and get the discount on the book Nothing Matters but delicious. Yeah. Tell them how to join, Quinn.
- [29:14]
C
Yeah. You go to patreon.com cooking issues. We have multiple membership levels. The top two levels get you the video feed. All of the levels get you the live audio feed. Early access to the recorded episode, and again, access to discounts at Kitchen Arts and Litters and a few other, you know, friends of the show businesses that we work with.
- [29:46]
A
Yeah. Oh, my. One cooking thing of the week that I didn't mention, I've actually had it for a while is. I don't remember how long ago, but J.J. johnson, when his rice book came out, came on and he introduced me to Jon Jon mushrooms, the Haitian mushroom, which are delicious but expensive and hard to source, but apparently everyone uses. So they're black. They're ink black. And what you do is you make.
- [30:08]
B
They come fresh or they're dried.
- [30:09]
A
No, they're dried. And you don't eat the mushrooms. So you make the, you make like a broth, and then you, you squeeze out and discard the mushroom. Nobody eats the mushroom. It's just the broth. And it smells. It's one of those weird things that kind of like when you're making it, people like, I don't, I don't know, they don't like the smell when it, when you're starting to make it. But they all like the finished dish. And so you make John. John rice and, you know, anyway.
- [30:34]
B
But where is it from?
- [30:36]
A
Haiti. It's like, it's wild. Crafted in Haiti.
- [30:38]
B
Got it.
- [30:39]
A
And. But they're expensive. Even in Haiti, they're expensive and hard to get. So everyone uses. Not everyone, but a lot of people use these. Jon. Jon Bullion cubes. And so that's cool. Yeah. So I finally, I've tried the mushrooms, but, you know, they're hard to get. So I bought a brick of the bullion and it's not the same, but it is good.
- [31:00]
B
It's mushroomy, like, it's like earthy and savory.
- [31:03]
A
Yeah. It's got a specific aroma you might like the actual mushroom to try once or twice. They're. They're good. They're interesting. They're worth, they're worth getting. You know what I mean?
- [31:14]
B
I'm a fan of bouillon cubes.
- [31:16]
A
Yeah. I mean, I use, you know, like, I don't use cubes as much as I used to because I just have all of these. I have a lot of vegetarians I cook for and so I tend to use the, I tend to use the better than bullion, like their vegetarian versions of like chicken and, or chicken and. Or beef. I use them a lot. I don't actually use their vegetable because I don't care. I can make my own veg stock. I can't make a chicken stock that doesn't have chicken in it.
- [31:45]
B
Yeah.
- [31:45]
A
You know what I mean? So. Oh, speaking of onion soup, so your, your mom's right, the gloop goop.
- [31:54]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:55]
A
So you say that, you know, for non fancy days, right, you always ration the chips, but for non fancy days, you use the actual lipton soup mix.
- [32:07]
B
Yeah. Sour cream. Lipton soup.
- [32:08]
A
Yeah. But when you make it yourself, you know, you're using like, I think it was beef stock. It might have been boiling on fire. But the key thing is that you don't use dehydrated and, or cooked onions. They're actual. Just raw onions. And so talk about the difference between those two.
- [32:23]
B
And the, it's sort of like, you know, the homemade version of what you're trying to achieve when you mix the lipton packet with the sour cream. So it's like my mom's side family recipe and it's just like the homemade version of it. So we, you know, you dice an onion, you can grate it if you really don't want to dice it. And it's a combination of cream cheese and sour cream. And then you make this liquid of. You can use beef stock, but you kind of want the salt from the bouillon. And so you, you dissolve a couple of bullion cubes in some water and a little bit of Worcestershire and then you paddle that all together and it's similar.
- [32:58]
C
Ish.
- [32:59]
B
But it tastes a lot better. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I go, I'm like in a phase right now with bullion probably because I did this book and I put that in there. But at five acres, we do like our take on a Chicago Italian beef sandwich and we make beef stock. Even though we don't really have the equipment to do it, we still found a way. But instead of seasoning it with salt and that's what I put the, the meat in, I season it with bouillon paste and that's the salt. So it's making it beefier. So like it's homemade, but it tastes a little recognizable and artificial in like a familiar way to me. It's like the best of both worlds.
- [33:32]
A
Yeah. I mean, I like, I was told by some, some of my friends actually that I was a bad person. But I like even not the cues, but you know, the powdered ones.
- [33:40]
B
Yeah.
- [33:41]
A
On like french fries and stuff. Mean like.
- [33:43]
B
Oh, vegeta is, you know, vegeta is like this chicken based powder.
- [33:46]
A
Yeah, it's good.
- [33:48]
B
I had a 10. I seasoned chicken with it sometimes.
- [33:50]
A
Please. Yeah. Chicken on chicken on chicken.
- [33:52]
C
Yeah.
- [33:52]
A
You know what I mean?
- [33:53]
B
Sounds very arzach the.
- [33:56]
A
You know, I've never been to any of those restaurants. I've never been really.
- [33:59]
B
I saw them dehydrating octopus and seasoning octopus. Salt on octopus once.
- [34:05]
A
Gotta go all the way.
- [34:06]
B
Yeah.
- [34:07]
A
You know, back at the sci, we had a, we had a dish that was like everyone wants at some point when they're cooking to just do a dish that's and ingredient all the way down. Like all turtles. Not turtles.
- [34:17]
B
Because that was a very random word choice. Ingredient choice.
- [34:21]
A
That's the old. It's not an ingredient. Like, you know, that's the old thing where like someone walk up, walks up to a physicist five ways.
- [34:27]
B
Is that what you're getting at?
- [34:28]
A
No, no, no. So like this woman's like the earth rests on the back of a turtle, is talking to a physicist. And the physicist goes, what's underneath that turtle? And she goes like another turtle. And then it's turtles all the way down. So when I think of these like multi dishes, I think of. It's turtles all the way down.
- [34:43]
C
It's a Dr. Seuss story.
- [34:44]
A
Yertle the turtle. Is that what it is?
- [34:46]
B
Yeah, you're all.
- [34:47]
C
The turtle is one. Yeah.
- [34:48]
A
And if you come up to a what? There's, there's a, there's a saying is
- [34:52]
B
like if a turtle was on a
- [34:53]
A
fence post, you kind of want to know how it got there. It's True. And it got there because another turtle.
- [34:58]
C
No, this is a. This is a world view. Like, it. Like, in ancient times. I don't know if it's still around, but it's, like, called, like, turtle world theory.
- [35:10]
A
It's turtles.
- [35:11]
C
Yeah.
- [35:12]
A
Listen, here's my point about turtles. The turtles that you see in the markets in here are probably not legal, so you probably shouldn't get them. Do not support turtle poaching, because don't. And frankly, everyone says that they used to be delicious. Greg, what do you think? Have you ever had, like, an Amazingly Deli? Do you even know what turtle tastes like? I don't. I've had turtle soup. But if you ask me, what does a turtle taste like? I'm like, I don't know.
- [35:38]
C
You know?
- [35:38]
B
I mean, I don't want to get into any trouble. One time at Per Se, somebody came. I can't remember who, and we made turtle soup, and there was a whole slaughtering ceremony for it. And, like, because they were following some cultural practice, like, they. They were really trying to stick to the standard, but it was a big. There was a big, like, knife, and there was turtle blood everywhere. I have had it. Dave Baron cooked it when he was at Next when he was the chef at Next for, like, the French menu.
- [36:07]
C
They did.
- [36:09]
B
It's fine.
- [36:10]
A
It's fine, right? Like, are you hankering for a turtle?
- [36:13]
B
No.
- [36:13]
A
I mean, but, like, the way people used to write about it, the calipash and the caliphy, all the different kinds of fats and, like, it's okay. I don't know, man. You know what I mean?
- [36:22]
B
No, I don't know. I don't need that one.
- [36:24]
A
No. Unnecessary, unnecessary kind of things are unnecessary. They're like, what's the matter? What's the most unnecessary thing you've ever cooked?
- [36:32]
B
The most unnecessary thing I've ever cooked.
- [36:35]
A
I cooked a whole raccoon. It was completely unnecessary. It was bad.
- [36:38]
B
I ate octopus eggs not that long ago. I didn't even know octopus had eggs. It kind of looked like rice.
- [36:43]
A
Oh, how unnecessary.
- [36:44]
C
Or good.
- [36:46]
B
I didn't need to eat it again. It's fine.
- [36:48]
A
Here's what's sad about that.
- [36:49]
B
I had a lot of cod semen in my life. Too much.
- [36:51]
A
Milt.
- [36:52]
B
Milt? Yeah. It doesn't get better, Uncle Milt, as I keep trying it.
- [36:56]
A
Yeah.
- [36:56]
B
It's not like beer when I was younger and I, you know, grew to like it. I'm not, you know, I'm not there on my appreciation level.
- [37:04]
A
You're not building up a tolerance for Octopus eggs or cod milt?
- [37:08]
B
No, I've never been. I mean, I'll eat anything. I was just in China for like three weeks. A few months ago, I ate like a chilled beef bile soup just to try everything.
- [37:19]
A
How bitter was it?
- [37:20]
B
It was pretty bitter. You know, there was a lot of ginger covering up some flavor. A lot of ginger and garlic.
- [37:26]
A
Well, are you using the bile for a health reason or because it's delicious? Anything that must be covered up, other
- [37:32]
B
people were ordering it, so I ordered it. Yeah, that's.
- [37:34]
A
Check.
- [37:35]
B
It was one of those things.
- [37:35]
A
Yeah, yeah. So on the octopus eggs, what's sad about that is, you know this, I'm sure everyone knows this, is that the octopus stops eating and just guards her eggs and blows water over it. So that to get the eggs means you go, you get the. You dive, go get the mother to be, and then scoop up the eggs. It's like a whole family done toast.
- [37:59]
B
Makes me regret even eating them.
- [38:01]
A
I mean, you know, it's that movie. My octopus Dinner or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I think that was the movie. I'm pretty sure.
- [38:08]
C
My octopus companion, maybe not.
- [38:11]
B
Dinner, Dinner.
- [38:13]
A
Listen, I've said this million times. Yes, they are like, they're the smartest invertebrate by far. The smartest invertebrate. How far that goes, I don't know. But smartest invertebrate, you know, if they could, if they lived longer. They only live like three years.
- [38:33]
B
Oh, really? That's their lifetime.
- [38:34]
A
Yeah, I mean, they're not living like a long time, even the big ones.
- [38:37]
B
So they're not learning that much in three years. They're still children.
- [38:39]
A
Ding, ding, ding.
- [38:40]
B
No, I'm just kidding.
- [38:41]
A
Ding, ding. I had a, you know. Yeah, whatever.
- [38:44]
B
They had the octopus vocabulary. A three year old. What's the.
- [38:47]
A
Exactly, exactly. So, like, you know, their future plans aren't that far in the future.
- [38:52]
C
Yeah.
- [38:53]
B
You know, they're not getting their hopes up.
- [38:55]
A
Yeah. All right, so I'd be remiss not to get into this. The beginning of the book starts with a story of, first of all, you worked for some tweaked out people back in the day. Like hardcore chef tweaked. And you yourself describe yourself as a hardcore tweaked out.
- [39:14]
B
Yeah, they were pretty stable. I mean, tweaked might not be the right word. I was probably, you know, torqued. Torqued, yeah, yeah. Specific, exacting.
- [39:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I've met a good number of the people, you know.
- [39:29]
C
Yeah, of course.
- [39:30]
A
By the way, here's the hilarious thing. So for those of you that have no idea, like, you know, I don't know, I don't know where, I don't know your history. I don't know you. You're hearing a voice over the Internet. The Dan Barber worked at Blue Hill
- [39:42]
B
for like two years.
- [39:43]
A
Two years, yeah. And so you do a Dan Barber. This is the funniest recipe I've ever read. Cause like you do a recipe that's like a part of something you did there and you're like, I couldn't get the dressing to taste right until I just used sunkest orange juice. And that is for anyone that knows the whole. That's like such a boom boom. You know what I mean?
- [40:06]
C
Yeah.
- [40:06]
B
It tastes good. It is not the same without a little extra zip, you know, zippity doo dah.
- [40:12]
A
Yeah. But the book is a history of your kind of culinary history, but also how that delved into something like alcoholism and self punishing behavior and kind of your road out of that. And that kind of feeds into the nothing matters but delicious title. I don't know if you want to mention it or talk about it or.
- [40:35]
B
Yeah, I mean basically, you know my, my background is, is almost. My background is basically like 10 or 12 years of three Michelin star restaurants and then 10 years of Olmsted. So like I, you know, I started at Alenia, was there for four years and then went to Spain, Mugaric Arzak, I believe for about five months. And then per se. And then I was a chef at Blue Stone Barns. And then I was around Atera for a minute and then I met Floyd Cardoz and I helped him open up a restaurant. And you know, I kind of just was a mercenary chef for a while and I bounced around, lived in Norway for a little while.
- [41:07]
A
How is that? Because you. Another recipe. You're like, winter is depressing and yet you worked in Norway.
- [41:12]
B
Yeah, there's this, you know, there's this guy Chris, he has a Michelin star restaurant. He also owns a Chinese restaurant. That's why I went to China. And he's just one of those guys where it's like, like life lesson. It's like why you don't judge a book by its cover. You know, he's a big guy covered in tattoos, he's got a fetus and a pickle jar in his arm, he's got a gold tooth, he's bald. But he's like the nicest guy in the world and most generous, knows more about wine than psalms that I know and can cook. Really well. And so I, you know, I just lived with him and his wife for like four or five months when I was getting divorced.
- [41:44]
A
The light months or the dark months?
- [41:46]
B
It was the dark months.
- [41:47]
A
Yeah.
- [41:47]
C
Yeah.
- [41:48]
B
And I've been there a lot. I like it a lot. It's, you know, it's this Bergen. So it's the other. It's like the west Coast. Very small, very walkable, very nice people. It's one of those things where it's like, you know, I still travel and I like to go places where it's maybe, you know, I don't know how to order the coffee there or what's the custom. But Norway, it's like everybody there speaks English. There's every brand that I know. So it's sort of like I get to travel, but I get to see my friends and there's. And I don't have to kind of have my guard up as to like my surroundings. So I. And it's very beautiful. So I. I go pretty often.
- [42:22]
A
So coming from the Midwest and also having spent time in Norway, you got any lefse information for me or. No, no, no.
- [42:28]
B
I mean, no, no.
- [42:31]
A
Because like, I went down a less a hole and like, you know, the rolling pins nowhere yet because it requires me deciding whether equipment's important or not. Whether or not do I need a grooved. So for those of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about, it's a. It's a potato based flatbread. Scandinavian potato based flatbread. They make big ones and little ones depending on.
- [42:53]
B
When we opened, we made a potato one.
- [42:55]
A
Yeah.
- [42:55]
B
At five acres. When we were like trying to be fancier, we made it.
- [42:58]
A
And so the small ones don't require like the. The grooved rollers. Right. And then there's no.
- [43:03]
B
We just did it with. We didn't have that. We didn't buy anything specific for it. We. We took those. That type of recipe and we just made a flatbread with it, basically.
- [43:11]
A
Yeah. So there's group. So the. I looked into it. I watched a bunch of videos because I'm a dummy. And the group. Cause here's what's nuts, right. Some people are like, you need to use a flat square roller. That's not a roller. That is a flat square. That's not a roller.
- [43:25]
B
That exists.
- [43:26]
A
Yeah. Don't ask me why. And then there's the grooved roller people. There's the regular roller people, and then there's the grooved roller with socks. So they put a sock over it and so the whole idea of the grooves, I think is to stop sticking so people like, they wipe a crap ton of flour into it so that it's kind of self releasing. Rolling pin, which is also the purpose of the sock. But then some people use groove rollers with no sock. The whole thing's confusing.
- [43:52]
B
So someday do professionals do the sock trick? I don't know if I've even seen that since I made a pie with my mom.
- [43:58]
A
I don't know. I've never had a rolling pin sock. Yeah, I have rolling pins.
- [44:03]
B
Yeah, same.
- [44:04]
A
I don't have any rolling pin socks.
- [44:05]
B
I forgot about the sock trick.
- [44:07]
A
Are you a taper or a straight pin?
- [44:09]
B
4.
- [44:10]
A
For rolling things out. What do you keep around?
- [44:13]
B
What do I have in my house? I think it tapers. Yeah, I think it's. But I have. I've never been an equipment guy. I don't have amazing knives or amazing tools. I think I have a plastic ladle in my house. You know, I don't. Somebody sends me something, I use it maybe. But I've never. I've never been a gadget person.
- [44:34]
A
No.
- [44:35]
B
I wish. I think it comes from my dad. My dad is like this really skilled carpenter, but he buys like the cheapest stuff at Home Depot to use and he just, like, he's just handy so he can fix it and repair it. So he buys the cheapest thing and it gets 20 years out of something. I think I've kind of developed that. Like, I've been told that it's impressive what I can do with a dull knife because just, you know, okay, when I was doing all that Michelin stuff, I, you know, I would bring them home and sharpen it for knives. Now I don't know how to do it, but.
- [45:05]
A
Yeah, because you'll get clowned in the kitchen if your knife isn't sharp chives or.
- [45:10]
B
I mean, I remember when I got transferred from fish station to canape station, Chef Beno was like, there's no way I'm letting you cut the fish with that knife. You got to go to corn and go buy something before you come in tomorrow.
- [45:20]
A
And Corin's fun, but I was getting
- [45:22]
B
paid $90 a day. I had to drop $200 on a knife.
- [45:26]
A
Yeah. What era was that? What were people buying then? Was that a UX10 era? What were you getting? There was a period where every chef had a Misona UX10.
- [45:37]
B
And then, I mean, I remember that era for sure.
- [45:40]
A
Yeah.
- [45:41]
B
I don't even remember if I have that knife anymore.
- [45:43]
A
That was the One. You look, you're like, oh yeah, you're in the, you're in the clear for sure.
- [45:47]
B
That was the popular knife.
- [45:49]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't even know what is popular anymore. I think it's like so diversified and knives have gotten so fancy and so expensive. I don't even play that game. I haven't bought a new knife in years.
- [46:00]
B
I bought one two years ago. It was like $600. It's too heavy though. I don't know. I don't know why I bought it because the handle looked fancy and it was like an impulse buy.
- [46:10]
A
What's your, what's your favorite?
- [46:11]
B
I like. It's too heavy. You know, like 10 and you know, you're a 10.
- [46:15]
A
I like tens. I like tens. Yeah, but you like a light 10.
- [46:19]
B
Yeah.
- [46:19]
A
And you.
- [46:19]
B
I don't want a big heavy knife.
- [46:21]
A
Do you. Do you favor the. So you favor like the Japanese Western light, light blade?
- [46:27]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [46:29]
A
Do people still do the.
- [46:30]
B
Do people still use Wusthof and stuff? Is that still around?
- [46:32]
A
I don't know. I still have mine.
- [46:33]
B
I still have my Macs and stuff. Do people still.
- [46:35]
A
No, I don't think so. I used to like Mac. I had a Mac pedi that I used for a long time.
- [46:40]
B
Yeah, yeah. Mac pedi. I used to rock that long time.
- [46:44]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I haven't, haven't.
- [46:46]
B
I don't have like a series of knives. I have like a Pedi and a chef knife and I just kind of do everything with those two knives.
- [46:52]
A
I have knives that I let my kids use or that I let people coming to my kitchen use because I just don't want to have to deal with them throwing it against a piece of metal and chipping the thing. I just don't. I want to deal with it.
- [47:06]
C
Yeah.
- [47:06]
B
I just bring my downgraded stuff to my house and that's, you know, it's no longer restaurant quality anymore. Then it just gets degraded and used in my home and I use that like. I don't have anything fancy in my house. In fact, I sort of regret it. When I was shooting this book, I had to do some of it at my house and I was getting insecure that people were going to look at it. So I bought a whole bunch of made in pans and a whole bunch of stuff. And they're great, you know, they're really great pans. But I had still had the Wolfgang Puck, probably under a hundred dollar set from Christmas when I was 15. That's what I had been cooking and using. And I threw it away to make room for the maiden ones. But I had them for 25 years now.
- [47:48]
A
You miss them?
- [47:48]
B
I miss them. I'm very nostalgic, you know, like, I'm
- [47:51]
A
sure you can get in touch with a dude and get. Get a set of pants.
- [47:54]
B
I feel like I let my family down by getting rid of those pants, you know, just for some photos.
- [47:58]
A
Just for some lousy photos, man. You know how.
- [48:01]
B
It wasn't worth it.
- [48:01]
A
I've never been to a California pizza kitchen.
- [48:04]
B
I have in Chicago.
- [48:05]
A
Was it good?
- [48:07]
B
I think that was like one of my first dates. I went to Chicago or California pizza. It was downtown.
- [48:12]
A
All right, so on Chicago, talk to me about the Chicago Italian beef sandwich and how it. How relates to the other pantheon of beef sandwiches served with liquids to dip them in.
- [48:24]
B
Well, here we have to be careful because people are not going to want a big wet sandwich. And like, if you're in Chicago and you go to, like, a real blue collar place, like, they'll still, they'll put the beef sandwich, it will be dunked like you expect. And then they'll even put the french fries on the same parchment, and they'll roll it all together and it will become one big steamed mess. And that's how we eat it. I don't really know why, but, like, I remember, like.
- [48:46]
A
But there's joy in that.
- [48:47]
B
There's joy in that.
- [48:48]
C
Yeah.
- [48:48]
B
You open up the whole thing and, you know, it's a mess and it's. The fries are not crispy anymore, right? Nothing about it is crispy. It's been steamed. So here, like, here at the restaurant Rock center, we, like, you know, we acknowledge that we're like a tourist restaurant and we've kind of come and go. When we open, we had lobster three ways. And then, then I was like, I could see the writing on the wall that, like, this isn't what fits. So I, you know, I put a Caesar wrap on and, you know, I kind of just begrudgingly changed the menu. And then again, I guess I'm an insecure guy. Then I got. I didn't like that, so I, I redid it.
- [49:20]
C
Okay.
- [49:20]
B
There's still a Caesarette because that's kind of what people want. But we make like a bright green Caesar dressing every day. And we make rotisserie chicken, and we roast 10 off in the beginning of the day, and we roast more off later on. And so now it's nice and I like it. And like, even if Chef at came, like, I would serve it to him, it's good enough. But with the beef sandwich, you know, it's something where we're in Rock center, so we have bills to pay. So it is expensive, and we don't want to get, like, the eye roll. You're a tourist restaurant, and it's expensive. So we at least try to make it worth it. So instead of, like, top round, we use prime rib, and we cover in all these spices and butter, and we roast it off, and we slice it paper thin. And then that broth where we make our own broth, but we season it with the beef bouillon, and then you get the jardiniera and the green peppers and stuff. But we put the broth on the side, and we just tell people to pour it over it, because we would get them sent back too often if they were a wet sandwich.
- [50:16]
A
Do you tell the servers to tell them how it would really be done? You're like, if you were real.
- [50:19]
B
I try to. English is not the first language for a lot of my staff and for the customer, so I don't want them to feel like they're getting lectured or something. I do try at lineup. I go remind them, pour it over the top. It's not a French dip. You're not trying to dip it.
- [50:32]
C
Pour it over.
- [50:34]
B
And the bread is made by Bien Cui. So it's a nice product, but it has to be edited for the masses.
- [50:43]
A
Talk to me about sport peppers in Chicago and how they differ from the peppers that I would otherwise get here.
- [50:50]
B
They're sort of like a very abrasive gundija pepper. If you were to make a comparison, they're very vinegary. There are some that tend to be spicier than others. They're not my favorite pepper. I mean, I would take a Spanish candida pepper over that any day of the week. But in the same vein, we tried to make it as valuable as possible. So it has, like, it's shockingly hard one to buy poppy seed hot dog buns in New York. So we have them.
- [51:21]
A
Yeah, we don't do that.
- [51:22]
B
No. And one company did, and they had it sometime. So now we have them made for us. And so that checks that box. But, like, we. We're apparently still okay with food coloring, because if we get relish and it shows up and it's not neon green, we send it back until the right one comes. And usually it's from some producer in Chicago, like Vienna or something. And. And it has everything. You know, they say it's like running it through the garden where there's like tomatoes and celery salt and onions and dill pickle and. And the sport pepper.
- [51:49]
A
I feel celery salt's coming back. I feel celery seed and celery salt are coming back. I'm hearing it more, which is good.
- [51:53]
B
Look at how it sounds. I like it on a salad.
- [51:56]
A
It's good stuff. My son puts it in tuna fish salad.
- [51:59]
B
I can see that celery's in it. That's not a salad.
- [52:02]
A
He won't put celery in, but he won't put the celery seed.
- [52:04]
C
Hmm.
- [52:05]
B
Interesting.
- [52:07]
A
I had some question. Now it has gone out of my head. Oh, in the book, you have a list of. Okay, roundabout. Cause I'm gonna run out of time before I run out of questions.
- [52:16]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [52:16]
B
Oh, my God. It's almost over.
- [52:17]
A
I don't cook. You have a pork tenderloin recipe wrapped in prosciutto that goes back to your early culinary school days. You say when you had some sort of a nightmare scenario dinner where everything got lit on fire.
- [52:29]
B
I did a dinner with Patrick Deep Dish Burletti, who's a competitive eater. He's won the Nathan's hot dog. He was my roommate, and he was like some church auction for, you know, bid on this guy in culinary school, and they'll cook dinner. And I bailed them out. So I. You know, it was the first time we ever thought about food ourselves.
- [52:49]
C
Right.
- [52:49]
A
Right Outside of the confines. So pork tenderloin, I don't like it. I don't cook it ever.
- [52:55]
B
Like you like it overloin? Like you just don't like pork that way.
- [52:59]
A
No, it's just like I'm always nervous when I make it that it's going to go that either it's going to be under and so I'll like it, but other people are going to get squeamy deamy about it or it's going to be a little bit over. It's going to dry. When I'm doing traditional cooks, I mean, I can obviously low temp it. You know what I mean? But then I don't know. So it's like never. Because, like, as soon as it goes a little bit too far the one way, then it's. Yeah. So, like, it's just.
- [53:24]
B
To me, that's like too porky. Kind of like an overcooked duck taste like when it's hammered like that.
- [53:28]
A
Yeah, to me, it's just like, to me, it. It's future sadness. So, like, if you are, it's very uniform.
- [53:34]
B
Yeah, it Is like, you know, once you do it once or twice, you can, you know, it clicks and then you can make it nice.
- [53:41]
A
Yeah. So you're. You're pro.
- [53:44]
B
Yeah, I mean, I. You know, something. I know I was just in Chicago doing a bunch of events, and it is interesting. It's, you know, I'm sure it has to do with the Jewish population here, but there is way more pork on menus in Chicago than I see here in New York.
- [53:58]
A
Really?
- [53:58]
B
Yeah. Like, I don't.
- [53:59]
A
Because I always think of you guys as a beef town.
- [54:01]
B
Beef, but just meat.
- [54:02]
C
Yeah.
- [54:03]
A
You know, meat's delicious.
- [54:04]
B
Like, there's not a lot of seafood in Chicago.
- [54:06]
A
Less makes sense.
- [54:08]
B
Yeah.
- [54:08]
A
I mean, does anything come out of the lake that you eat?
- [54:10]
B
I mean, back in the day, I mean, I'm sure, like, not off of Chicago, but people get perch and stuff and walleye. I think some areas. You still eat salmon in the lakes.
- [54:21]
A
So here's a question for you.
- [54:22]
B
Smelt.
- [54:23]
A
One of the things I like to do when I read people's cooking books is search for ingredients that come back again and again that aren't necessarily part of everyone's all the time toolkit for you. Fennel seed. You like fennel seed more than the average person. But at least that was my impression.
- [54:43]
B
You know what's also weird is there's a lot of dill in this book, which I have. No, I don't know why really.
- [54:47]
A
Just showed up. Well, but you don't put fennel in your sausage mix. It's not that kind of sausage.
- [54:52]
B
That one, I think is like a curry one or something.
- [54:54]
C
Right.
- [54:54]
A
Lamb with curry and no fennel in it. And that's like the lion dance. People are on their sausage. No sage in it, even though it was breakfast.
- [55:01]
B
Yeah, the. The fennel thing. Like, I. So I used to be the private chef for the Seinfelds back in the day. And sometimes there would be, you know, I would really try to. To make it as nice as I could, but sometimes there would be, like, something on the fly and. And I wanted it to stand out and not seem mediocre. That guy wasn't trying. So I would. I came up with this, like, whenever I use fennel, whenever I use black pepper, I use the same amount of fennel and coriander seeds, and I make like a pepper mill with it, or I just make a grind. And like using that in chili or in a broth base or something or like on hamburgers or a meat, like, it makes it, you know, slightly different, but it's not changing it to where, like, you got to worry about the crowd and if they're going to want it or kind of a thing, which is why it's in the book kind of a lot. Like, it's just like my kind of lazy trick to make things slightly different without putting any more effort into it.
- [55:56]
A
Yeah. My go to is not as neutrally inflict coriander and cumin. And you have coriander and cumin because you have a chili style thing in there. But, like, I'm always like, coriander and cumin.
- [56:06]
B
I like coriander too much.
- [56:07]
A
No, I like it.
- [56:07]
B
Oh, you do?
- [56:08]
A
That's what I use. That's like, you know, if I'm gonna spice something, yeah. I'm gonna add coriander and cumin to it, like, all the time. You know. What's the bad thing about coriander is, like, if I'm doing a bunch of it, I'll, like, pulse it instead of grinding it through a grinder. And then if you get husks. Coriander husks are so persistent if they're not ground well and then you're, like, picking them out. And I hate that because I know then when I'm tasting something I've made and I get a coriander husk, I'm like, I know everyone is going to be experiencing that. And then I feel deeply sad because now it's too late. I can't get it out.
- [56:41]
B
That kind of stuff is such a. I'll eat anything again. I was just in China. Beef bile, chicken, they just chop up the whole thing with the bones and everything. If I know it's there, no problem. But when. When it's like, if there's a bone in something and it's not supposed to be there, it's like the biggest turn I know I'm a chef, is up. But I. I can't. Like, I just, like, I'm done like this. It was built, sold to me as deboned or boneless or seedless, you know, and it's in there. It just, like, it turns me off.
- [57:07]
A
So when that little piece of cartilage from the thigh is not carved off of the chicken thigh and they don't.
- [57:12]
C
If.
- [57:12]
B
If it's. If you serve me a whole thigh, no problem, I'll total. You know, I get it. But when it's not in there, it just makes me question everything.
- [57:20]
A
That's so funny. All right, so in the book, things that are worth money and things that are not, Things that are worth Money Butter. Interesting for cooking or for eating? Or both? I think eating really more for eating.
- [57:30]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Spreading on bread. Yeah. You know, I always have.
- [57:33]
A
And what's your butter of choice?
- [57:36]
B
I mean, I wish Kerrigold would give me some sponsored content room, but is
- [57:40]
A
that the McGuire side of your family going Kerrigal?
- [57:43]
B
Yeah, I did a 23andMe or one of those. And I am definitely mostly Irish.
- [57:47]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I'm Northern Euro mutt.
- [57:50]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [57:50]
A
Yeah.
- [57:51]
B
But I did find out there's, like, a little Norwegian in me, which I didn't know about.
- [57:56]
A
Well, now you gotta get back on that lefse train. Let me know which kind of roller to use. All right. Not worth spending money on. Presumably not. Because they're not worth eating ice cream sandwiches. They're delicious. But you say, don't spend extra money on them.
- [58:08]
B
Buy the cheap ones.
- [58:09]
A
Yeah. Because they're good.
- [58:10]
B
The cheap ones are good.
- [58:11]
A
And the black cookie should stick to your fingers a little bit.
- [58:14]
B
I've worked at restaurants where we made them, and because it didn't stick to your finger, we had to remake them like you would. And it was a fancy restaurant. You would think that would be good. But no, the guy wanted the stick.
- [58:27]
A
Yeah. Because that's what an ice cream sandwich is supposed to be. And they need to be tempered. Right. They can't be too hard.
- [58:31]
B
They need to sit off for a minute. All ice cream needs to sit off for a minute.
- [58:33]
A
And when you do it, the cookie on top and bottom should break in the exact proper way. But that should all be basically free
- [58:40]
B
and they should be. It should be the cheapest one that the bodega has.
- [58:43]
C
Yeah.
- [58:43]
A
Yeah, for sure. Back to the hamburger for one second. Do you think that shit. Because for those of you that aren't going to read the book, you're a dummy. Go get the book. However you grate frozen butter in the way that I would use for biscuits into the meat. Do you think that's a good way to take. Let's say, like. Let's say you were getting grass fed at like. Like 85 or 90% meat in there. To get some fat in there. Take it to like an 80, 20.
- [59:04]
C
Yeah.
- [59:04]
B
You don't want to do the smush thing then you're just kind of. You're trying to capture some of that fat and butter inside of it.
- [59:09]
C
Yeah.
- [59:10]
B
And get some of that on the bread, ideally. But yeah, I would. I would think so.
- [59:12]
A
That's a cool idea. We'll try. Yeah, we'll try.
- [59:16]
B
We know how it goes.
- [59:17]
A
Yeah. Succotash rule. If you're gonna have corn in it, the largest piece you can have is this way. You cut the scallops in half. You're like, don't make the sizes crazy if you're gonna have corn. So the succotash is all a rule in proper size.
- [59:30]
B
There's something about eating a bunch of different things that are similar in size. We can, like, feel the knife work and the shucking and all that.
- [59:37]
C
There's.
- [59:38]
B
There's something luxurious about that.
- [59:39]
C
Yeah.
- [59:40]
A
Yeah. All right. What am I missing? I'm missing a lot of stuff. Oh, what about this? For those of you that want an exercise in being alone in your house, there is a recipe, I swear to God, for one cookie.
- [59:52]
B
Yeah. It's being. It's a controversial because it calls for a teaspoon or a tablespoon of egg yolk, which is wasteful. Okay. You could. You could add it to your scrambled eggs the next day. But the idea was, like, when I was getting sober, I had such a sweet tooth that I couldn't make a batch of cookies because I would eat the whole batch. So I developed a recipe that would make me one cookie. It was like a portion control situation,
- [60:12]
A
and we're out of time. But I'll say this because it's on your menu now, I think, and it's in the book. Rehab Nachos is specifically because of a better take on the kind of food that you would have during that time.
- [60:24]
C
Yeah.
- [60:24]
B
The first place I went to, they're not trying to get you to be vegan and work out and stop smoking. They just want you to stop whatever the shit you're doing too much of, you know, so. And they're not well funded, so it was always hot dogs and burgers and nachos, like, just in rotation for lunch and dinner. And I sort of got hooked on that.
- [60:41]
A
And if nachos were too healthy for you, this one's a cream queso base. So, you know, if nachos are too healthy, you can make the rehab nachos. Well, Greg Backstrom, nothing matters but delicious out at fine bookstores near you right now. Thanks for coming on Cooking back.
- [60:58]
B
Good to see you again, Mel.