Episode Transcript
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acast.com. This
1:21
is Milk Street Radio from PRX. I'm your
1:23
host, Christopher Kimball. To
1:26
make a single drop of honey, one bee
1:28
might visit a thousand flowers, and
1:31
they're highly selective about which flowers they
1:33
go to. So if you've
1:35
found out the yellow ones with the
1:37
bilaterally symmetrical flowers are the most rewarding,
1:39
then you store that in your little
1:41
bee head and seek
1:43
out subsequently only those flowers. Bees
1:46
are problem solvers, and they also
1:48
experience emotions, recognize human faces, and
1:51
communicate with each other through dance.
1:54
They run around in a repeated, roughly
1:56
figure eight shape, and
1:58
encoded in these movements. is
2:01
both the direction and the distance
2:04
to a rewarding source.
2:07
Later on the show, zoologist Lars
2:09
Chitka reveals more of his amazing
2:11
discoveries about the mind of a
2:13
bee. The
2:16
first I'm joined by Sylvan Mishima
2:18
Brackett. He's the chef-owner of Rintaro
2:21
in San Francisco, also former creative
2:23
director at Chez Panisse. His
2:25
new book is called Rintaro, Japanese
2:27
Food from an Iza Kaya in
2:29
California. Sylvan,
2:31
welcome to Milk Street. Oh, thank you so much for having
2:33
me. I'm thrilled to be here. So
2:36
your restaurant, Rintaro, is an Iza
2:38
Kaya. So could you just explain
2:40
the concept? What is an Iza Kaya? Sure.
2:43
So I guess when I was in my
2:45
kind of early 20s, I was finally of
2:47
drinking age. And when I'd go back to
2:49
Japan to visit relatives and friends, we'd go
2:51
out. People
2:54
don't tend to entertain at home as
2:56
much. Houses and
2:58
apartments are small. They're just
3:00
not really set up for it in the same way that you might find
3:02
in the U.S. So for a
3:04
night with friends, it's you
3:07
going to one or two or three Iza Kaya. So
3:09
these are places that tend to be
3:11
fairly informal. It's kind of focused on
3:13
the drinking and sake. Music
3:16
is sometimes loud. And
3:18
it wasn't uncommon for us to
3:20
go to two or three Iza Kaya called Hashiko,
3:22
like word for ladder. So
3:24
you'd start somewhere and then you'd end
3:26
up at some other place
3:28
at two thirty in the morning under the train
3:30
tracks eating yakitori. So
3:34
you're talking about drinking and going laddering and going
3:36
from one to the next, and you're two thirty
3:38
in the morning, you're under the overpass finishing up
3:40
the evening. And then on
3:43
the other side, there is great
3:46
food. In Tokyo, for example, would they
3:48
serve the kinds of foods you're serving
3:50
here? Or is Iza
3:52
Kaya more of a high-end version of
3:54
what you'd find in Tokyo? Yeah,
3:57
I mean, I think it's more complicated for sure. of
4:00
Rintara, which is not a huge restaurant, I think
4:02
we we seat 85
4:05
people, is
4:07
gigantic for Japanese standards. So
4:10
most of the isekai that I used to go to
4:12
would have seven seats, or
4:14
if you're like under the tracks, it's like
4:16
literally three seats. So
4:19
with the scale that we have, we're able
4:21
to offer a lot more because
4:23
I can have more cooks and more stations
4:25
doing more things. So for
4:28
instance, the dashi-maki tamago, the folded omelet,
4:30
I remember going to an isekaya and
4:33
Kyoto, the master of the
4:35
isekaya, was cooking yakitori. At
4:37
the same time he was making dashi-maki
4:39
tamago behind him. And I was like,
4:42
wow, this is truly impressive,
4:44
but really, really hard. So
4:46
we have somebody who can make dashi-maki tamago on one
4:49
station and then you know, we've got the grill and
4:51
then we can make udon. So
4:53
I would say that our menu is
4:55
probably more complex
4:57
and varied than most isekaya, just
5:00
because of the size of the
5:02
restaurant. Let's
5:05
go back to the folded omelet, the sort
5:07
of square pan. I looked
5:10
at the steps in your book. At
5:12
first I was excited because I've
5:14
always wanted to do it. And then I
5:16
looked at the steps and said, maybe
5:19
not. Because it's pretty complicated. It's
5:21
hard, right? It's
5:23
kind of one of those things that just takes a little practice. I
5:26
do have a little cheat in there, which is if
5:28
you have a little sushi roller, once
5:31
you've finished making it, you
5:33
can put it into that roller and kind of
5:35
wrap it up and put a rubber band around
5:37
it and let it sit for a minute or
5:39
two and then unroll it. And it'll look reasonable
5:41
and the flavor will be good. You want to
5:43
just describe to people just quickly what
5:45
the basic process is? Sure. So dashi-maki
5:47
tamago, it's a folded omelet. So you
5:50
make it in a rectangular pan and
5:53
it's one egg to 30 grams of liquid.
5:55
So one egg is about 50 grams. So
5:57
that gives you a sense of the ratio.
6:00
And the liquid is dashi,
6:03
of course, and mirin, sweet
6:05
cooking wine. And we
6:07
use light soy sauce and
6:09
sugar. Then we throw
6:12
in an extra handful of katsu bushi to
6:14
give it a real katsu bushi punch. And
6:17
then you cook it one layer at a time. So
6:19
you put in probably a
6:21
quarter of the mixture into your pan, let
6:24
it semi-set, and then you fold it. And
6:26
then you push it to the back of
6:28
the pan, pour more liquid
6:30
in, and then fold it over again.
6:33
And when you're done, it should be
6:35
extremely juicy as you bite into it.
6:37
It's very delicious. You
6:40
had a couple of little sort of dessert things, which
6:42
I thought were interesting. Ruby Red
6:44
Grapefruit Jelly. You
6:47
cut them into segments. You want to
6:49
talk about that one because that seemed
6:51
really appealing. Oh, yeah. So I'm a
6:54
huge fruit lover. I love all kinds
6:56
of fragrant fruits. So ume at the
6:58
Japanese plum, mulberries.
7:02
And you can really preserve
7:04
the fragrance and flavor of the fruit
7:07
by liquefying it,
7:09
basically, and setting it
7:11
with content, which is agar-agar,
7:14
seaweed-based, flavorless. It's
7:17
kind of like gelatin, but the texture is different. It
7:20
doesn't give in the same way gelatin does. And
7:23
when you heat it, you set it
7:25
through heat. So say, for instance, you
7:27
have a liter of very
7:29
good page mandarin juice
7:32
that you've seasoned with a lot of sugar. And
7:36
of that liter, you might use only a cup. Bring
7:40
that to a boil with content
7:42
to dissolve it. And then you
7:45
pour the cold juice in, and
7:48
then you set the whole thing. And what that
7:50
does is that the cooked juice doesn't
7:53
taste good. It tastes like airplane orange juice
7:55
or something. But the
7:57
fresh juice compensates for it. preserve
8:00
that really wonderful fragrance. Eggs.
8:05
How do you cook an egg to
8:07
get that perfect almost cooked
8:10
texture to it? Is that
8:13
just a question of timing? Is there any other
8:15
trick to doing that? Not really. It's pretty straightforward.
8:17
I mean we, you
8:19
know, in the olden days, and I'm
8:21
sure it still happens, the cooks
8:24
and wives of the village would find
8:27
the spot in the hot spring that was the right
8:29
temperature. 64.7 is what
8:31
we use in Celsius. And
8:34
you leave the egg there for between
8:37
30 to 35-40 minutes
8:40
and voila! We
8:42
use an immersion circulator like
8:45
that you might use for sous vide.
8:47
Before I bought that machine we would just
8:49
hover over the stove with a thermometer. It
8:51
was really annoying. Adjusting the heat and adding
8:54
cold water is necessary to cool it off
8:56
or turning up the heat if it was
8:58
too cold. But
9:00
that certainly works as well. So
9:03
in terms of traditional Japanese, let's
9:06
say, restaurant, apprenticeship concept and repetition
9:08
and doing the same thing over
9:10
and over again, do
9:12
you use that when
9:14
training people in your restaurant or bringing
9:16
them in? Is it a similar approach
9:18
or is it a more American approach?
9:21
Yeah, definitely. I mean people
9:23
tend to stay for three, four,
9:25
five years and
9:28
they tend to specialize in
9:30
a particular element.
9:32
So we have people who are very, very, very
9:34
good at Oden and I'll
9:36
train them first and then the kind
9:39
of culture of the restaurant has been such that
9:41
like each station kind of develops
9:44
on its own and finds little refinements
9:46
and changes. So that's actually
9:48
been really gratifying for me. That
9:51
notion of repetition,
9:54
details matter, investing
9:57
time in terms of years and decades to get
9:59
good at something. Do you
10:01
think that's something that's fading from
10:04
the modern world? Or do you think
10:07
it's something that actually will have a comeback? It's
10:09
hard to say. I mean, I sometimes
10:11
mention this acquaintance of mine
10:14
who's a 17th generation
10:16
Unagi chef. And,
10:18
you know, since forever, his family has
10:20
been grilling Unagi. And there really wasn't
10:22
a whole lot of possibility
10:24
for him to say, grill chicken. Like,
10:26
you know, it was going to be Unagi. Because
10:29
his family's been doing it forever and because
10:31
he's kind of devoted his life to it,
10:33
his Unagi is insanely delicious. You know,
10:36
it's like the best thing ever. But,
10:39
you know, that's kind of rough if you don't want to grill
10:41
Unagi for your whole life. To feel like you're not free
10:43
to do something else. So
10:47
there's a kind of a freedom in America, which I love. But
10:50
the price of that is that people
10:53
don't feel like they're required to
10:55
learn something very, very deeply. Sylvan,
10:59
what a pleasure. And I absolutely want to, you know,
11:01
five minutes with your book. I just I want to
11:03
get on the plane and go eat there. Oh, please
11:05
come. Yeah, I'd love to have you. I love the
11:07
book. I love the food. I just
11:09
love the philosophy behind it. Sylvan, it's been a real
11:11
pleasure. Thank you. Thanks so much. Appreciate
11:13
it. That
11:17
was Sylvan Mishima Brackett, author of Rintaro. You
11:20
can find his recipe for Ruby
11:22
Grapefruit Content Jelly at milkstreetradio.com. Now
11:27
I'm joined by my co-host, Sarah Moulton, to
11:29
answer a few of your cooking questions. Sarah
11:31
is, of course, the star of Sarah's Weeknight
11:33
Meals on public television. Her latest
11:35
book is Home Cooking 101. So
11:39
hot drinks, right? Mulled wine,
11:41
hot toddies, etc. Some
11:43
people like them. I'm not one of those people.
11:45
I like my drinks cold. But
11:48
I think you are actually an aficionado
11:51
of the mulled wine department, are
11:53
you? Well, I wasn't. I
11:56
Had the same terrible attitude that you
11:58
do right now. All
12:00
my son's girlfriend care to
12:02
made us some mulled. Wine
12:04
two Christmases ago. Now she's.
12:06
From Honduras but she went to high
12:08
school in Norway and this is something
12:10
you know gets cold at night that
12:13
they would have. I just loved it.
12:15
It was so good and are play
12:17
why there's a secret ingredient so it's
12:19
a bottle. Good wine and full bodied.
12:21
and you add three or four cardamom
12:24
pods, maybe few more, sixty eight whole
12:26
cloves, couple of cinnamon sticks, peel of
12:28
one orange which is very nice, not
12:30
the juice is just appeal, he sort
12:32
of get that sort of bitterness from
12:35
them. Peel to. Sugar to taste,
12:37
a quarter to half a cup and
12:39
then. The. Surprise Ingredient.
12:42
Is. Either half a cup of
12:44
or of and or half couple
12:46
whiskey. And it's interesting what that
12:48
high alcohol you know toasty spirit
12:50
does to the mold wine. It
12:52
makes it more sophisticated. it really
12:54
pretty nice. And then they did
12:56
garnish it with Rahman's and raisin
12:58
in the bottom of each little
13:00
cop. And it was really
13:02
pretty darn good if. I wasn't feeling
13:04
well. I can see making a
13:06
restorative you know how targets but taking
13:08
a bottle, a good wine and heating into
13:11
putting sugar and I'm gonna notice with his
13:13
phone. Yummy! You know what? I've not had
13:15
this recipe off to make our. Really, I
13:18
love this with great authority. A Not in
13:20
that a studded. I'm sure it's good.
13:22
Okay Moon, I'll move on. Welcome.
13:24
To Milk Street? Who's calling. Are
13:26
you guys? It's med student and calling
13:29
from the South Central Minnesota? Well hello
13:31
Meg, how can we help you today?
13:33
Assistance: Will you help me Quite a
13:35
lot. This abroad problem I was having
13:37
a few years ago and now I
13:40
have soup. And the oh, I'm calling
13:42
about soup. Okay, well. what it is
13:44
that problem. So like there's something that
13:46
Berkeley's have. No problem. Green and white,
13:48
Southern? No problem. Better when it comes
13:51
to the birds. Like a chicken soup
13:53
or turkey soup. it's watery, it's just
13:55
insipid, and I can't. quite figure out
13:57
why when i was a little girl growing
13:59
could put a chicken in a pot, throw
14:01
in some vegetables, and you have this just
14:04
mousy, delectable, rich chicken
14:06
soup, and I can't do it. So
14:09
you make it, you simmer it, the chicken is
14:11
cooked when you're done, you use the chicken in
14:13
the soup too? Correct. You take it out, you
14:15
shred the meat, and then you make
14:18
the soup with the broth. The
14:20
simplest thing you could do is, you know, you're
14:22
going to need to take the chicken out, let
14:25
it cool before you can shred it a bit.
14:27
While that's happening, boil the
14:29
liquid and cook
14:31
it down by half or
14:34
until it tastes like something. The problem is you
14:36
needed all that liquid to cover the chicken, and
14:38
so it's just a lot of liquid. It will
14:40
be great, all you need to do is reduce
14:42
it, it's that simple. So what I'm hearing is,
14:45
what I really need to do is take out
14:47
the chicken meat and reduce it
14:49
with just bones or with just the broth,
14:51
and I think I was just
14:53
cooking the stuffing out of the meat, and
14:55
then the meat tasted like nothing, and the
14:57
broth tasted like nothing. So that's great strategy.
14:59
The meat's gonna cook in like 20-25
15:02
minutes. I don't, would it cook at all?
15:04
I would cut into pieces. Do you cut it into pieces?
15:06
Yeah. Okay. I certainly could. Well
15:08
then, maybe that is a good idea. And the
15:10
other thing is, add a few extra chicken wings.
15:12
They have the three things
15:14
you want, which is skin, which
15:17
is fat, bones, which
15:19
is gelatin, and meat, which is
15:21
meat flavor. Supplement with chicken wings.
15:23
Yeah. I think I could do it. Do you have
15:25
an instant pot or a pressure cooker? I
15:27
do. Yeah. Throw a bunch of wings in it with
15:29
like a quart of water and cook it for 50 minutes
15:32
or so, or you could do it on top of the
15:34
stove. But the point is, I agree with the chicken wings,
15:36
and that should be the basis for your stock. Secondly,
15:39
there's another way around this, which is
15:41
using chicken soup recipes from around the
15:43
world, or in Vietnam they
15:46
might throw in rice and fish sauce,
15:48
right? In Somalia they have
15:50
two kinds of hot sauces they put on
15:52
top. So add some texture and add
15:54
some heat, add a strong
15:56
flavor, and that way you can
15:58
mask less than robust broth, but chicken
16:01
wings I agree is really the way to
16:03
go. That'll give you a lot of flavor.
16:05
You can play with chicken soup as a
16:07
base and just make up stuff
16:09
and just add a little extra flavor
16:13
and that makes it more interesting. So I think chicken soup
16:15
is the best recipe in the world because anybody
16:17
can play with it. Meg, let me tell
16:19
you one last thing that I just remembered.
16:21
Sure. It was a secret of my mother-in-law
16:23
when she made her chicken soup. She
16:26
added parsnips and that was a really
16:28
nice addition also. I had a wonderful
16:30
German Russian woman who took care of
16:32
me when I was a little girl
16:35
and she put sorrel in it. Oh
16:37
that's good. It was this bright lemony
16:39
burst of sorrel chicken deliciousness. Sorrel is
16:41
not easy to come by but that
16:43
is a brilliant idea. I don't know
16:45
how she did. Milwaukee, Wisconsin in like
16:47
1970 and somehow she found the sorrel.
16:50
Wow. Yummy. Thank you very much. I
16:52
will try both these strategies and I
16:54
will have better soup. Okay. All right,
16:56
Meg. Thank you. Thanks. Bye-bye. Welcome
16:59
to Milk Street. Who's calling? Hi. My
17:02
name is Diane and I am from Western
17:04
Massachusetts. How can we help you? So
17:07
recently my husband and I attended a wedding
17:09
and they had a delicious meal chicken and
17:11
I don't know if I'm pronouncing this correctly
17:14
veronique with dried cranberry
17:17
in apricot couscous. So
17:20
my husband and I loved the
17:23
cranberry in apricot couscous but
17:25
we can't figure out what the flavoring
17:27
was to make it sweet or tangy.
17:30
I tried to ask the kitchen staff but they
17:32
wouldn't tell me they said it was a special
17:34
recipe. I'm not very creative
17:36
or imaginative in the kitchen. I tried
17:39
adding honey, balsamic vinegar,
17:42
combo. I just
17:44
can't replicate that taste. Any suggestions as
17:46
to what I could do? Oh
17:49
I can always make up a suggestion. There
17:51
are two things that come to mind. The
17:54
liquid in which you cook the couscous could
17:57
be flavored. So for example you
17:59
could use a stock, but you could use some
18:01
orange juice or something else in it, you know,
18:03
and that would flavor the
18:05
couscous and give it a little sweetness
18:07
or cranberry juice. So that would be
18:10
one thing. The other thing is the
18:12
cranberry, the dried cranberries and apricot, whatever,
18:14
you can plump those too, you know,
18:16
in a warm liquid and add flavor,
18:18
infused flavor into those. You
18:20
could add, you know, additional sweetness like honey or sugar
18:22
to the liquid when you pump them up. But
18:25
I think it's the liquid in which you cook the couscous
18:27
where you probably could do the most benefit
18:30
in terms of adding something interesting. And I
18:32
think orange juice is probably your cranberry juice,
18:34
but one of those probably would help.
18:37
You like it because the couscous
18:40
itself had flavor or you just like
18:42
the cranberries and the apricot? It
18:44
was the couscous that had the flavor. I
18:46
know sometimes they say rather than steaming the
18:49
couscous, you can pan saute it,
18:51
I guess is the correct word. And
18:53
I wasn't sure if they added something that way
18:55
rather than just... Well you could do it
18:57
like a peel off, you could start by sauteing it
18:59
and then you cook it either steam it or boil
19:01
it or whatever, but you could start the couscous, that's
19:04
true, in a big skillet or
19:06
Dutch oven and you can saute with some oil and
19:08
some spices or whatever you want and then finish, add
19:10
water and cook it that way. I'm
19:13
sure they're adding the flavor through either that method
19:15
or just in the liquid itself. I
19:17
think steaming, however, in my
19:19
experience, steaming something you can't really infuse
19:21
as much flavor into food. So
19:24
it would have to be either sauteed in
19:26
oil or it would have to be actually simmered
19:28
in a liquid. Diane, I wanted
19:31
to ask a question though. Do you think,
19:33
was it the tiny, tiny grains of couscous
19:35
or was it more like the Israeli couscous
19:37
which is like little rounds? It
19:40
was the Israeli. Oh it was. Okay.
19:44
I mean if you wanted to try it with
19:46
the instant stuff, then I think Chris has got
19:48
a point. It's like, you know, follow instructions in
19:50
the back of the package and instead of adding
19:52
water, let it be half, you know, some sort of
19:54
juice or half juice and half
19:56
chicken broth. But if it's these
19:58
Israeli, yeah, you could certainly saute. ahead of
20:00
time and then cook it with flavored liquid.
20:03
And that takes longer to cook as I'm sure you're aware.
20:07
You should have slipped one of the people at the
20:09
wedding 20 bucks and you would have gotten the
20:11
recipe. That's the easiest way instead of calling out.
20:13
I know, really. Darn. 20 bucks
20:16
will get you anything. No, but I think
20:18
it's, you know, couscous is actually
20:20
pasta at Semolina Grains. Yes. And
20:22
so it just absorbs whatever liquid.
20:24
The liquid is the key, as Chris said. Okay.
20:27
Yeah. All right. Well that's what I will try.
20:29
Thank you very much. Oh, and Diane, let us
20:31
know. Please back out and let
20:33
us know. Well then next time take out the
20:35
wallet. Yeah, take out your wallet. Yeah. Good point.
20:37
All right. Yeah. Take care. Thanks.
20:40
Bye. This is
20:42
Milk Street Radio. Sarah and I want to solve
20:44
your culinary mystery, so give us a call anytime.
20:46
Our number 855-426-9843. One more time. 855-426-9843. Or please
20:48
email us at questions
20:57
at milkstreetradio.com. Welcome
21:00
to Milk Street. Who's calling? Hi, this
21:02
is Lance Cryley calling. How can we
21:04
help you today? A couple months
21:07
ago I was clearing out my
21:09
freezer and I discovered
21:11
two quart Ziploc bags of a
21:14
very nice beef bone broth I made for
21:16
French onion soup. Stuff must be
21:19
well over two years old by now. I always
21:21
hear in recipes people say, oh, this will last
21:23
in the freezer so and so months. I've
21:26
always been curious about what, especially well wrapped
21:28
food, what can actually go wrong in the
21:30
freezer or if you think this stuff is
21:32
still perfectly good to use. I
21:35
think, although I would get a
21:37
second opinion, so I don't kill you, I
21:40
would think from a safety point of view there's no
21:42
issue. And if you're freezing a
21:44
liquid, I think you're in pretty good
21:46
shape. So I don't think there'll
21:48
be a problem. I think the problem is when you
21:51
freeze meat or chicken or something else when
21:53
you have a texture problem. And some of the things I've
21:55
learned are, you know, some freezers are
21:57
frost free. Like I just, two weeks ago, I... I
22:00
have a full freezer and a refrigerator freezer in
22:02
my basement in Vermont. And one
22:04
of them was full of venison from like nine years ago.
22:07
Well, that was not good. I can assure you.
22:10
So here are the things, I would always vacuum pack
22:13
like meat or anything like that. I wouldn't just put it in
22:15
a bag. And two, make
22:17
sure that the bags are as thick as possible.
22:20
One thing we did in testing years ago
22:22
was discover that ice crystals form and
22:25
they actually puncture the bags with a vacuum
22:27
pack. And that's how things go south quickly.
22:30
You want the thicker milliliter bag if you do
22:32
that. But I think a liquid, I don't
22:35
see a problem with that. Again, I would check with like
22:37
the USDA or somebody else first. I
22:40
think it's fine. Yeah, I agree. As you
22:42
know, what makes food suffer is if
22:45
there's too much air in there and there's oxidation
22:47
and ice crystal form and so the taste
22:49
and the texture change. I mean, sometimes food
22:52
that's been not well stored and left in
22:54
the freezer gets an off taste. But
22:56
you're gonna boil it. I
22:59
mean, you hate to waste that. I think it's fine.
23:01
I think you're in good shape. Yeah, I agree. Great,
23:04
yeah. Okay, Liam. All right,
23:06
take care. I'll make some fresh onions. Thank you. Yes,
23:08
bye. Bye. Bye. Welcome
23:10
to Milk Street. Who's calling? Hi, this is
23:13
D'Amela. I'm calling from Northern Kentucky. How
23:15
can we help you? I have this Masala
23:17
tea mix that I got from a
23:20
store. It was black tea,
23:22
fresh ginger and cardamom pods. And I
23:25
wanted to replicate it. And
23:27
so I made some mix on my own
23:29
with the same things. And the first time
23:31
I made it, the ginger caused
23:33
there to be mold all
23:36
over where the ginger was, because from the moisture.
23:38
So I was calling to see what you
23:41
think about other ways to
23:43
have fresh ginger in that tea mix,
23:45
but not chopping ginger every day. So
23:47
the one you bought, it was dry ginger root,
23:50
I assume? Yeah, it
23:52
was fresh ginger root, but it was like, yeah, I have
23:54
been dry, definitely. And so I
23:56
thought, I don't know if like it dries while it's in there. You
23:58
know, you can buy candy ginger. which
24:00
I use sometimes and chop it up and put it into
24:02
apple pie and other stuff, but you
24:04
probably could do that. You can buy dry ginger,
24:07
but you couldn't use fresh ginger because that's gonna
24:09
go bad on you as you found out. I
24:12
mean the other thing is, do you want this
24:14
specific mixture? I mean masala
24:16
is just a spice mix, so
24:19
you could get a mortar and pestle, which are great
24:21
to have by the way, and you
24:23
could put cardamom and a bunch of other things,
24:25
warming spices in there as well, like
24:27
nutmeg, etc., and make up your own
24:29
mix. You just want to stay
24:32
away from anything that's got liquid in it, that's
24:34
water, which will turn bad. It
24:36
has to be dried. But candy, yeah,
24:38
candy ginger, you know, keeps nicely. That
24:40
would probably work. That's what I
24:42
would do. Okay. It's pretty strong. I
24:44
mean it's got a strong ginger hit
24:47
to it, so you're not gonna get something bland. I mean,
24:49
Sarah? Yeah, yeah, that's what I wanted. Well, you
24:51
could also make a syrup of all of
24:55
those spices, and that would keep in
24:57
the refrigerator. My daughter just bought some,
24:59
although I didn't look at what was on the
25:02
label. But I mean, again, I think Chris is
25:04
right. You could make up your own mix. It
25:06
sounds like you liked this combination. Yeah. And the
25:08
thing about doing that is to make a sugar
25:10
syrup, and then you add chunks of ginger. I
25:12
mean, bring it all up together, and you start
25:14
it cold to bring it all up together. Add the
25:16
ginger, add the cardamom, maybe some cinnamon sticks if
25:18
you want, or some cloves, whatever
25:21
mix you wanted. But the fresh ginger, yeah,
25:23
I make ginger tea when I'm sick, you
25:25
know, scrub it, but I don't peel it. You don't have to
25:28
chop it up, throw it in cold water, bring it up to
25:30
a simmer, and just let it simmer, and get stronger and stronger,
25:32
stronger as you cook it. If you added
25:34
sugar to a significant amount, and strain it all
25:36
out, or don't strain it out, you'd
25:39
have to strain it out, right? Let's not kill our
25:41
caller. No, he's right, he's right. You don't want to
25:43
leave the raw product in there,
25:45
which will absolutely make it spoil. But then strain
25:47
it all out, and you can keep that in
25:50
the fridge for, you know, weeks, and then just
25:52
add some to your tea. It's a good idea.
25:54
It'll be great. Yeah. You can
25:56
buy ginger syrup, like as a
25:58
cocktail bar thing. Right, but you can also
26:00
make your own. Also make your own. Yeah. Be a lot cheaper.
26:03
Since I make ginger tea all the time, I might as well.
26:06
Well, great. Thank you both so much. Okay.
26:08
Thanks for calling. All right. Bye-bye. Thanks. You're
26:12
listening to Milk Street Radio. After
26:14
the break, inside the mind of a honeybee
26:17
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dining experience. So for your
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next vacation, think San Diego, not just for
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the weather, but for the people and of
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course the food. Plan your
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trip at san diego.org today. That's
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san diego.org funded.
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in part with City of San
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Diego Tourism Marketing District assessment funds.
28:04
You know, I'm not a big fan
28:06
of one-size-fits-all diets that don't take into
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for more information. This
29:15
is Mo Street Radio. I'm your host, Christopher
29:17
Kimball. Right now, farmers in
29:19
California are getting ready to harvest 100%
29:21
of the almonds sold in the United
29:24
States. But to produce billions
29:26
of almonds, they need billions of bees.
29:29
Almond pollination in California is the
29:31
largest pollination event in the world.
29:34
It takes about 2.4 million hives. This
29:39
is Rowdy Freeman. He owns 1,100 of
29:41
these hives. A beekeeper like Rowdy
29:44
can make a lot of money by renting their
29:46
bees to a farmer. You know, somewhere between 200
29:48
and $225 per hive. Beekeepers
29:53
from all over the country head to California to
29:55
get in on this lucrative business. And
29:57
when the truckloads of bees start rolling into the almond
30:00
and orchards, Rowdy starts to get
30:02
busy. Because in addition to
30:04
being a beekeeper, Rowdy is also
30:06
a detective, and he investigates bee
30:08
heists. There's
30:11
probably a hundred different thefts over
30:13
the last 10 years or so,
30:16
you know, several hundred thousands of
30:18
hives. Rowdy
30:20
once helped catch a group who stole nearly $1
30:22
million in bee hives. They
30:25
had kind of like a chop shop
30:27
grinding off people's brands, and
30:30
then repainting everything and putting their stencils
30:32
on them and everything, so disguising the
30:34
stolen bees and equipment as their own.
30:37
They were caught in the act of doing
30:40
that. So more often, the thief disappears without
30:42
a trace. Finding the missing
30:44
hives is difficult. Kind of
30:46
like finding that needle in the haystack. This
30:49
is beekeeper Buzz Landon. He's been the victim
30:51
of bee theft. We went out to the
30:53
yard and there were just holes where the
30:56
hives were sitting. They picked
30:58
up the hives, they left the pallets, and
31:00
everything else. Rowdy
31:02
was on the case. When he shows
31:04
up at an investigation, he always begins by
31:07
looking for clues at the scene of the
31:09
crime. Sometimes
31:11
people get in a hurry, they drop
31:13
something. We look for tire
31:16
impressions at the scene. Is
31:18
it a tow behind forklift, or
31:20
are they using a skid steer? We can tell
31:22
all that type of stuff by the tire impressions.
31:26
At the scene, Rowdy can also tell how much
31:28
the thief knows about bees. A lot of
31:31
times it's an inside job, so it's like
31:33
other beekeepers who have lost a lot of
31:35
their own hives, so they go out and
31:38
steal hives from somebody else so they can
31:40
fulfill their contracts and get paid. Because
31:44
the culprit is usually in the world
31:46
of beekeeping, Rowdy might start getting tips.
31:48
Maybe someone overheard something suspicious or saw
31:50
some hives on the side of the
31:52
road. But as for Buzz's bees...
31:56
Mine were never found again, but
31:59
somebody else's... were found and it was
32:01
shown that somebody was stealing them and
32:03
then selling them. Even
32:06
after the almond season, the missing hives remain a
32:08
problem. Once they're stolen, they're
32:10
often mistreated or even abandoned, and a
32:12
beekeeper ends up with fewer hives for
32:15
future harvests. They're
32:17
not out there pollinating the crops, which
32:20
produce food all across the United
32:22
States and the world. So
32:24
it has a very large scale
32:27
effect. We know that
32:29
bees are essential to the food system, but they
32:31
also might be some of the world's most remarkable
32:33
creatures. For example, when Rowdy and
32:35
Buzz work with their hives, their
32:37
bees might actually recognize their faces.
32:41
And that's one of the discoveries made
32:43
by zoologist Lars Chitka. He also
32:45
says that bees can count, they have
32:47
distinct personalities, and they might even possess
32:50
consciousness. He joins me now
32:52
to share more revelations from his book, The
32:54
Mind of a Bee. Lars,
32:57
welcome to Milk Street. Hello, nice
32:59
to talk to you. You
33:02
wrote the following. Bees qualify
33:04
as conscious agents with
33:07
no less certainty than dogs or
33:09
cats. I
33:12
guess the dogs I've owned were
33:15
pretty conscious agents, but what exactly did you
33:17
mean by that? Well, consciousness
33:19
breaks down into basically two
33:21
things, and that's the capacity
33:23
to think and to
33:25
feel. And we
33:28
test these capacities in various
33:30
established paradigms that people also
33:32
use for dogs and cats.
33:35
For example, in problem solving
33:37
scenarios where we confront bees
33:39
with various puzzle boxes to
33:42
look into the future, think, what do I need
33:44
to achieve and how do I get there? And
33:47
indeed, it turns out that bees can do that. They
33:49
can also think about past
33:52
events and combine
33:54
them flexibly in their memory
33:56
to generate new information. So
33:58
there is a capacity. to think. And
34:01
by the same criteria that people
34:04
also use for various domestic animals,
34:06
it also appears that
34:08
they have some basic emotion-like
34:10
states. Bees have
34:13
the capacity to suffer, they sense
34:15
pain as well, and
34:17
they even exhibit play-like behavior. And
34:19
bumblebees that are offered balls to
34:22
manipulate, they come back to these
34:24
again and again because
34:26
they seem to enjoy the activity itself,
34:28
just like a puppy. So
34:31
let me ask this question because I think it's fascinating, it
34:33
goes to the heart of your research. What
34:36
if consciousness is
34:39
vastly different in
34:41
different animals? That is,
34:43
the way they think and what they
34:45
dream and how they
34:48
see the world or see what's inside
34:50
themselves and how they envision the world,
34:53
the way that's done is totally different.
34:55
It's like this thing about an alien
34:57
coming to Earth, their entire
34:59
frame of reference is different and so their
35:02
whole way of thinking is different. I
35:05
agree. That's why
35:07
I often refer to our bees as
35:09
kinds of aliens from inner
35:11
space because their whole
35:14
perceptual world is so entirely different
35:16
and so of course are the
35:19
things that occupy their minds. So to just
35:21
give you a few examples, bees
35:24
can see things that we are
35:26
entirely unaware of, for example ultraviolet
35:28
light. In a flower,
35:30
for example, we might just see
35:33
a homogeneously yellow pattern. They might
35:35
see two colors. They
35:37
can also smell things that we don't, such
35:39
as for example carbon dioxide. So
35:42
if you just start with sensory
35:44
perception, it's already completely
35:46
different in this insect world. And
35:50
they have a magnetic compass. They process
35:53
information through the eyes faster than we do.
35:55
They have 300 degree vision.
35:58
The list goes on and on. also
36:00
talk about it's very dark
36:02
inside the hive so they
36:05
get a lot of information in the hive but
36:07
they do that through touch and field not
36:10
so much through sight right indeed
36:12
so once you open up a hive
36:15
what you see is really some sort
36:17
of a strange civilization
36:20
you see thousands bees all
36:22
doing different things on these
36:24
vertical honeycombs that are
36:27
stunning in their regularity and
36:29
indeed their mathematical optimality and
36:32
all of the interactions you see there
36:35
all the activities of course cannot be
36:37
orchestrated through visual input so
36:40
much of the interactions as you said are mediated
36:44
by touch by smells and
36:47
by the bees engaging in
36:49
different movement patterns that in some cases
36:51
can take the form of
36:53
a kind of symbolic language and
36:56
encoded in these movements is
36:58
both the direction and the distance
37:01
to a rewarding source
37:04
so let's talk about food
37:06
and producing food as if this was
37:09
an agricultural seminar so bees
37:11
carry their own body weight in
37:13
nectar or pollen it
37:16
may need to visit a thousand
37:18
flowers and fly 10 kilometers to
37:21
fill its honey stomach only once
37:24
so this is a massive
37:26
amount of effort and energy for
37:29
what seems like a fairly small
37:31
amount of honey production indeed
37:35
it is from a human perspective of
37:37
course you often forget that
37:39
when you consume honey in your tea
37:42
just a single tiny drop of
37:45
nectar requires a bee to physically
37:48
fly to thousands of flowers
37:50
to identify the most
37:53
rewarding flowers so if
37:55
you found out through trial and error
37:57
with different flower species The
38:00
yellow ones with bilaterally symmetrical flowers are
38:02
the most rewarding. Then you store that
38:04
in your little bee head and
38:07
seek out subsequently only those flowers.
38:10
Yeah, you say that between
38:12
visits to 1,000 flowers, the bee may have
38:14
to reject 5,000 other flowers. And
38:17
then you say, this is really interesting. In
38:19
visiting 1,000 flowers, the bee has to work 1,000 floral
38:23
puzzle boxes, whose
38:25
mechanics can be as
38:27
complicated as operating a lock. But
38:29
there are various things that need
38:31
to be learned about flowers. So
38:34
if you think about snapdragons, for
38:36
example, you have
38:38
to pry petals apart vertically
38:40
or horizontally, depending on which species
38:42
it is, and then wiggle your
38:45
body in particular ways to get
38:47
to the nectar rewards. And
38:50
some bumblebees figure out certain
38:53
ways of cheating. They sometimes find that by
38:55
biting the spurs of flowers, you can get
38:57
to the nectar faster. Honeybees
39:00
can learn by observation how to
39:02
use these holes. So it's
39:05
not just learning how the flower appears, but
39:07
also how to handle it, how to
39:10
manipulate it, and so on. And that's
39:12
why many flowers can really be likened
39:14
to complex puzzle boxes. This
39:17
one really struck me. Honeybees
39:21
could be trained to recognize images
39:23
of human faces. Indeed. So
39:27
we trained bees to land on a little platform in
39:29
front of a black and white image of a human
39:31
face, where they got a little droplet
39:34
of sugar water. We do that a few
39:36
times and then present the bees essentially with
39:39
a scenario like a crime
39:41
witness test where
39:43
there are now several photos and they're spatially
39:45
shuffled, of course. And we then ask, can
39:47
you now locate that very same face on
39:52
which previously you were rewarded? In
39:54
the test, of course, there are no rewards Anywhere. About
40:00
eighty percent. Probability.
40:02
The bees return to the
40:04
correct face, even with quite
40:07
similar images of human faces.
40:09
and moreover, that not just
40:11
limited to remembering one image
40:13
and one particular configuration, but
40:15
even from different angles, they'll
40:17
be able to recognize it.
40:20
How is the same view as a
40:22
person? I mean you just talked about
40:25
somebody, amazing stimuli and in the where
40:27
they navigate and etc etc. But.
40:29
This must open up since
40:32
changed your view of existence
40:34
and life on earth and
40:36
humans interaction with it. Are
40:39
you different now? Yes,
40:42
by all means. so if for
40:45
example you had asked V thirty
40:47
years ago when for thirty five
40:49
years ago when I started researching
40:52
these behavior and intelligence, if you
40:54
had confronted me with the notion
40:56
that they might. Be.
40:58
Sente and that they might even
41:01
be intelligence. I would have thought
41:03
this is ridiculous. It's A I
41:05
would have thought it's untestable and
41:07
best and quite possibly laughable at
41:10
worst. Indeed, even human babies were
41:12
still off and operated on. Without.
41:15
Anesthesia because doctor said well yeah,
41:18
they're screaming and kicking but they
41:20
don't actually feel anything, they're not
41:22
conscious So that viewer think has
41:24
changed a little bit. but specifically
41:26
the work that we did with
41:28
my team over the decades. Has
41:32
changed my view of the world
41:34
quite profoundly and a sink it
41:36
it adds a very important on
41:38
go to our motivation to conserve
41:41
the natural world. Think we're We're
41:43
all know aware that we need
41:45
beast thrive because they're doing something
41:47
useful for us the pollen at
41:50
a crops. but that's an argument
41:52
from utility. It's not one that
41:54
grows out of respect. That.
41:57
motivational think is less
41:59
why spread yet for
42:02
things like bees. And I think that's
42:04
an important message that grows directly from
42:06
our findings is this respect for other
42:09
animals with other minds but no
42:11
less valid ways of thinking and
42:13
feeling about the world. So
42:17
tell me about the killer of bee queens. So
42:22
I have a band, a music project
42:24
in which we
42:26
generated an album, a kind
42:28
of concept album about
42:30
the world of bees. It's
42:33
a kind of 1980s style
42:35
independent rock music album and
42:38
that came about because while
42:41
of course I am scientifically
42:43
deeply fascinated by bees
42:46
but there is of course an element
42:48
of poetry. And
42:51
that if you think let's say
42:53
just about the world of the
42:55
honey bee drone, nowhere
42:58
in the animal kingdom is sex
43:00
and death so close together. So they
43:02
only ever mate once in their lives
43:05
but then they die. They die in
43:07
the act of mating basically and
43:10
all the many drones that are
43:12
unsuccessful in ever finding a queen
43:15
are basically slaughtered at the end of the
43:17
summer by the worker bees who
43:19
no longer have any use for them at that
43:21
time. And likewise if
43:23
you think about the queen's life we
43:26
tend to think of the bee
43:28
society as one that's full
43:30
of harmony and working together
43:32
in cooperation but a
43:34
queen's life begins in a
43:36
quite Shakespearean way by typically
43:39
attempting and succeeding in many cases
43:41
in killing all her competitors, all
43:43
her sister queens. Then
43:47
she mates with drones typically
43:49
with several dozen in rapid
43:51
succession in these drone
43:53
congregation areas and
43:55
they will never mate again they
43:58
basically return to the life
44:00
of a cave animal after these
44:02
exciting youthful experiences.
44:05
And all of this, I
44:07
think, lends itself to writing stories about
44:09
and linking it to music. Lars,
44:12
thank you. It's been fascinating. I
44:15
learned so much. And
44:17
I now think of bees so differently.
44:19
Thank you. Thank you very
44:21
much. This has been a very interesting conversation.
44:34
So, this is Lars Cheka, author of The
44:36
Mind of a Bee. And this is
44:38
his band, Killer Bee Queens, performing their
44:40
song, Drone Wars. Coming
45:03
up, Alex I. News' quest to make
45:05
classic I.A. I.A.
45:39
with Zibi. I'm an
45:41
author, publisher, podcaster, bookstore owner.
45:43
My own novel, Blank, is
45:45
out March 1st. And if
45:47
you love books, you're in the right place. In
45:50
fact, we call it the Zibiverse, or rather, the
45:52
LA Times calls it the Zibiverse. Check
45:54
us out. Moms don't have time to read books
45:56
with Zibi. Acast
46:00
helps creators launch, grow,
46:02
and monetize their podcasts
46:04
everywhere. acast.com. I'm
46:12
Christopher Kimball. You're listening to Milk Street
46:15
Radio. I'm joined now by Lynn Clark
46:17
to talk about this week's recipe, Basque-style
46:19
cheesecake. Lynn, how are you? I'm
46:22
doing great, Chris. How are you doing? We've
46:24
been doing this so long. We must have done,
46:26
what, 10 cheesecakes by now, I think? Probably. At
46:29
least. At least. And
46:31
it used to be cheesecakes all needed, a water bath, and they
46:33
tend to be on the heavy side. But
46:35
this time, we did a Basque cheesecake,
46:37
which has two things about
46:39
it that are remarkable, a dark,
46:42
almost black top, which I think adds
46:44
a nice contrast, and then
46:46
an interior that's, I think, more custardy than
46:48
heavy New York-style cheesecake. So it's
46:50
got to be right up there on the top, you know, one
46:52
or two cheesecakes. Getting the formula
46:54
right, we thought it was going to be easy,
46:57
but it turned out to be a little bit
46:59
less easier than we thought. That's exactly
47:01
right. So this is from the
47:03
Basque country, San Sebastian, in Spain.
47:05
It originated at a little bar
47:08
restaurant there called La Vina. You
47:11
know, it's eggs, sugar, cream cheese, and
47:13
heavy cream, basically. Those are the only
47:15
ingredients. The recipe was actually published
47:17
by the chef who created it. So
47:20
we started with that, thinking this is going
47:22
to be great. We're going to have this
47:24
really amazing recipe. It was great
47:26
when we made it at Milk Street. However,
47:30
we sent people out to try it at
47:32
home, and they had kind of wildly
47:34
different results. So it came down
47:36
to, you know, knowing your oven, taking
47:38
the temperature of the cheesecake, and
47:41
your equipment. So if you're using a light-colored pan,
47:43
you want to bake it at 450. If
47:45
you're using a darker-colored pan, you want to bake it
47:47
at 425. And
47:50
that will help get the proper results.
47:53
But what we found that really kind of
47:55
gave a good insurance
47:57
policy on getting success with this recipe.
48:00
And, you know, when we think
48:02
about cheesecake, it kind of is a way
48:04
to solve most cheesecake problems. It
48:06
was chilling the batter. So we chilled the
48:09
batter for six hours, at least, you can
48:11
do it for 24 hours. That
48:14
allows the cheesecake to kind of slowly
48:16
come up to temperature. So you have
48:18
enough time to get that really dark
48:20
top, but the cheesecake itself doesn't get
48:22
overcooked. So you keep that nice custardy
48:24
texture on the inside. And
48:26
then you've got this really great contrast between the
48:29
top and the creamy interior. And
48:31
you can make it the day before because you can just slip
48:33
it into the oven when you need to. Exactly.
48:36
It was my favorite kind of dessert. I just made
48:38
this over the weekend for a party. And
48:41
it was great because I did all the work the
48:43
day before. I just put it in the oven, baked
48:45
it, and it was ready to go when people came
48:47
over. Yeah, I noticed I didn't get an invitation at a party.
48:50
It must have been great. It was my first time making
48:52
it. I can't make it for you the first time.
48:54
I know. That's crazy reason. So
48:56
Bastile Cheesecake has an almost burnt top as
48:59
a custardy center. It doesn't need a water
49:01
bath. And you can prepare the batter a
49:03
day ahead. Thank you, Lynn. You're welcome. You
49:07
can get the recipe for Bastile
49:09
Cheesecake at milksreetradio.com. This
49:18
is Milk Street Radio. Now it's time to check
49:20
in with Alex I News. Alex,
49:23
how are you? I'm good, Kees. I'm
49:25
great. What's up? I've
49:27
been working on paella very recently.
49:30
After doing a trip to Spain
49:32
to Valencia, which is the birthplace
49:34
of paella, I
49:36
have the urge to try
49:38
and recreate this absolute magnificent
49:40
dish that I tasted there.
49:42
Now I've always thought that
49:45
paella was this huge
49:47
pile of bright yellow
49:49
almost fluorescent rice with tons and
49:51
tons of toppings on it, including
49:53
any seafood you could think of
49:56
and any meat you could think
49:58
of. Paella, you're welcome. not
50:00
that. Paya is first and foremost properly
50:03
cooked rice. Well and
50:05
it's also a relatively thin layer of
50:07
rice which is so different
50:10
than sort of the 1960s
50:12
and 70s Paya recipes we had here.
50:15
Exactly like the perfect Paya is
50:17
clearly a thin layer of rice, I'm talking
50:19
about half an inch of rice in the
50:21
pan, and a few toppings on it. It
50:24
looks very minimal. Now
50:26
after coming back from my trip to
50:28
Spain I understood the importance of rice
50:30
and I made it a mission for
50:33
myself to try and recreate that rice
50:35
to perfection. To understand
50:37
Paya rice and
50:39
to make it great it's about understanding
50:41
first texture but also
50:43
flavor. Texture because Paya
50:45
rice needs to be not overcooked,
50:48
not undercooked and every little grain
50:50
of rice needs to be separated
50:52
from the other. In terms
50:55
of rice variety Paya is
50:57
calling for Bomba rice, a
50:59
short grain rice that resists
51:01
the cooking very well. It's
51:03
very resistant to overcooking in
51:05
general. That rice
51:07
needs to be cooked in a broth which
51:09
obviously you have to make yourself.
51:12
I made my broth using carrots,
51:14
celery, onion, that's a very classic
51:16
broth but I also added some
51:18
elements of the sea because
51:20
my dream Paya is always with seafood
51:23
so I used fish bones and
51:26
also bits and pieces from scallops.
51:29
Now when it comes to actually making the Paya,
51:31
once you have all your ingredients ready this is
51:33
how you start. You place a pan over
51:36
medium heat and you start frying the
51:38
toppings you're going to use afterwards, frying
51:40
the seafood. I use two
51:42
shrimps and two scallops and
51:44
this is a serving for two persons
51:47
which may sound very minimal,
51:49
almost incredibly cheap and stinky if
51:51
I may add. Well
51:53
I don't mind being judged
51:56
as long as I keep the tradition
51:58
alive. So I went for two. shrimps
52:00
and two scallops. I fry them briefly and
52:02
then I set them aside and then I
52:05
actually focus on the rice.
52:07
First layer you roast a
52:10
bit of tomato and pimenton
52:12
that is smoked paprika and
52:14
also garlic in a pan with a bit
52:16
of oil obviously. You then
52:18
throw in the rice without any broth
52:21
at first because you want to roast
52:23
it and create some sort of a
52:25
very thin crust on the rice.
52:28
Then you add the stock and
52:30
so starts the first stage
52:32
of cooking the rice which is boiling
52:35
the rice for 10 minutes. They're
52:38
easy nothing complicated to it.
52:40
After these 10 minutes the
52:42
grains are almost cooked but
52:44
they need to be simmered for another
52:47
10 minutes. Now during
52:49
that time you want to introduce all
52:51
the delicate flavor that's when
52:53
you want to bring back the scallops and
52:55
the shrimps to the pan and that's where
52:57
you can also add some saffron which I
52:59
think is crucial to
53:01
making paella both in terms of flavor
53:04
and color. After these 20
53:06
minutes of cooking you may think that the
53:08
rice is now done it's ready to be
53:10
enjoyed. Wrong! You couldn't be
53:12
more wrong. The last step... I
53:15
love it when you get upset
53:17
and start yelling. Well I always
53:19
get upset when I cook. You're
53:21
passionate. Exactly. The last crucial step
53:23
without which paella can't
53:25
be called paella is
53:27
to create a socarat. A socarat
53:31
is an almighty secret
53:34
crust that is located
53:36
at the very bottom of the pan
53:39
and you create that socarat, that crust
53:42
by briefly toasting the whole dish
53:44
for 30 seconds on high
53:46
heat once everything is cooked. That's a
53:48
very scary move for a cook. Just
53:50
imagine all the work you have put
53:53
into that dish and
53:55
you risk the chance of
53:57
ruining it by doing this. If
54:00
you do it carefully and you pray the
54:02
gods of Paya, you might end up
54:04
with a perfect Paya in the end.
54:08
I didn't know the god of Paya lived in Paris. Alex,
54:11
thank you so much. A quick lesson in
54:13
making great Paya. Take care. Thank you so
54:15
much. That
54:18
was Alex I. News, host of Just a
54:20
French Guy Cooking on YouTube. That's
54:24
it for this week's show. Please
54:26
don't forget you can find more
54:29
than 250 episodes of Milk Street
54:31
Radio at our website milkstreetradio.com or
54:33
wherever you get your podcasts. You
54:35
can learn more about us at
54:38
177milkstreet.com. There you can become a
54:40
member and get thousands of recipes, access to
54:42
our online cooking classes, and get free shipping
54:44
on all orders from the Milk Street store.
54:48
You can also learn about our latest
54:50
cookbook, Milk Street Simple. Please
54:52
check us out on Facebook at Christopher Kimmels Milk
54:54
Street. Instagram is 177milk Street. We'll
54:58
be back next week and thanks as always for listening.
55:18
Senior Editor Melissa Allison. Senior
55:21
Producer Sarah Klass. Associate Producer Caroline
55:23
Davis with production help from Debbie
55:26
Paddock. Additional editing by
55:28
Sydney Lewis. Audio mixing
55:30
by Jay Allison at Atlantic Public
55:32
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55:34
music by Tubaap Krew. Additional
55:36
music by George Bernal-Egloff. Christopher
55:39
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