Used to create for creative expression in a post digital world it's called confluence and it's Arts Center for May 5th roommate 26 more information at Center dot com. We're coming to 8 o'clock and that means it's time for Milk Street. This is most radio host Christopher Campbell this week I speak with some mean she's author of Soul fat as an eat before elements of good cooking so I mean has a curious scientific mind so I asked her about Mera nods flavor gluten and the anatomy of a grilled cheese sandwich no matter what you're cooking the goal is to get the outside done and inside done at the same time and so if you cook a grilled cheese sandwich over too low of heat or too slowly the outside won't get crispy and all the buttered will just get absorbed and get soggy in there and the cheese wove all melt away before you even get browning on the outside and if you cook it too quickly or over too high of heat the opposite will happen in that bread will burn and the cheese won't be melted also and today show Dan Pashman of the sport for podcast campaigns for the burgers of the future and we have a wonderful recipe for skirt steak salad I'm Christopher Campbell this is no Street Radio from Pier x. Coming up after the news. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm sure Stevens House Republicans appear confident they can pass a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act without Democratic votes but the measure comes up for vote tomorrow Michigan Congressman Fred Upton has changed his position after fellow Republicans backed as proposal for funding to help states set up high risk pools for people with preexisting conditions n.p.r. Susan Davis says the cost of options proposal is unclear we also don't know the economic impact of this bill at all the House is going to vote on it without an official score from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office which weighs in on how much it's going to cost and how many people it's going to cover so there's a lot of questions we still have about the bill this evening but we do know the vote will happen tomorrow in a statement House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said millions of Americans will lose health coverage if the g.o.p. Bill is approved and suggests voters won't forget in 2018 the Senate has voted to scrap an Obama era policy that allows states to offer retirement savings plans to millions of workers are paid the American Medical Association and others say the g.o.p. Plan will hurt small business employees more from N.P.R.'s Chris Arnold millions of workers don't have access to a workplace retirement plan like a 401 k. Plan so Oregon California and other states have passed laws to help small businesses and role workers in state design plans that was given a boost by an Obama administration policy which the Senate just overturned Dennis Kelleher is with the watchdog group of better markets every small business and America should be furious with the Republicans in Congress for throwing out a rule that makes it easier for their employees to save for retirement financial firms lobbied against the savings plans which they say get state government too involved in the private sector Chris Arnold n.p.r. News f.b.i. Director James Comey says reopening the Hillary Clinton e-mails investigation right before a lot. They last year came down to a choice between really bad and catastrophic options Komi told a Senate hearing today that the thought that he might have tipped the election outcome made him feel mildly nauseous but he believes he made the right decision flooding prompted the evacuation of a small Missouri River town and traffic along a busy section of the Mississippi River near St Louis was halted today levees burst or were breached in parts of eastern Missouri and North East are console and Arkansas governor Hutchinson says that situation is raising concerns and some questions I do think that there will be a very robust discussion about the levees and how they're. Maintained and how they work and the Corps of Engineers of course will be a major part of that forecasters say the region could get another 2 to 4 inches of rain in some hard hit areas through tomorrow this is n.p.r. News. In Venezuela police and protesters clashed in the latest round of almost daily protests today meanwhile President Nicolas Maduro addressed supporters about his proposal to set up a panel to rewrite the nation's constitution critics have accused of trying to delay elections the French presidential candidates faced off for nearly 3 hours tonight in their only debate before Sunday's runoff N.P.R.'s Eleanor Beardsley reports that centrists Emmanuel McCrone and far right Marine Le Pen showcased their entirely different views for the country the debate was heated and contentious Le Pen called maque home alone to Junior and tried to link him with the failed policies of President Francois Hollande she said the former investment banker wanted to France and sack the French economy she said macro was an elitist whose world was a cold one of profits over human beings called Lappin a fearmonger and said she offered criticisms in law but no solutions he also said she didn't have a clue of what she was talking about I feel sorry for you he said the French people deserve better the candidates only have 2 more days to campaign before a mandatory break 24 hours ahead of the vote Eleanor Beardsley n.p.r. News Paris Facebook says it plans to hire an additional $3000.00 workers to expedite its plans to remove that ios a Prime's another it objectionable content the social networking site has already faced criticism for not preventing videos from being posted including murders in Cleveland and Thailand this is n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include Margo and John Ernst supporting North Country Public Radio in Canton New York and N.P.R.'s environmental coverage which helps to raise awareness on issues surrounding climate change and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is No 3 radio. Host Christopher Kemp. What I've noticed is cooking sort of makes you a beginner every time which I love you know and so any time I get cocky and I'm like oh I've done this a 100 times I don't need to pay attention to the time when I burn it or that's the time when the log rolls off the fire. That was semi nose right she's author of that acid eat the 4 elements of good cooking it's an excellent guide to how cooking works it's also cooking science for cooks who don't. Obvious speaking to show but 1st it's time to head into the kitchen to check in with. This week's rest. Brenda how are you Hi Chris we're doing a Tuesday night stop we run this is a column in the magazine which means not too many gradients fairly simple you can do it in half an hour or less and we're starting with a skirt steak and a trip to Tuscany So Chris this is a Tuesday night recipe we don't have a lot of time so to get started we're going to do a few things we're going to make a spice makes of ground fennel salt and pepper the steak with that and then we're going to cook the steak to medium rib which is essential to the salad it's about 3 minutes on one side 2 minutes on the other and we want to make sure that we cut the steak in half so that it fits in the pan and gets a nice we're going to set that aside and then move on to our dressing so so far we have a pan seared steak nothing new about that but you're making a little salad out of it with produce So what are properties so Chris pepper to use a brand name of a type of pepper that come from South Africa they're a little sweet a little spicy just like we like it they're usually found pickled in brine near the olive section in good grocery stores or you can also find them online and we like to add them to dishes because they really brighten up flavors and for this dish we're making a simple been a gret with on the boil. Lemon juice and the pepper and they were going to use half Hispanic rich to dress the Greens and the other half to dignities the pan and what you get is a really rich flavorful pan sauce that marries the flavor of the meat and the pepper. So since this is a Tuesday night supper This is like half an hour right now under 30 minutes and to serve it we're going to slice the meat against the grain and arrange the slices over the years and then for each serving we're going to put a little bit of warm fan sauce and top it. That's it sounds pretty good you have to make it for me no thank you you're welcome. You can find all of my recipes and myths St Radio dot com. You're listening to radio I'm your host Chris Kimball you can find podcasts of our show on i Tunes stitcher and. Now let's take some of your cooking questions with my co-host Star of Sara's week meals and author of Home Cooking 101. Ok Sarah you ready for a new batch of questions. Welcome to military radio who's gone this is Mara from Brookline Massachusetts Brookline I worked at Brookline for 20 years you know around the corner from there you live in the post office right on the corner right near me so I go Well one of my favorite weeknight dishes for the family is chicken in right that I make in the pressure cooker and the chicken is moist the right tends to be waterlogged inch huffy quite a bit of chicken broth so I'm trying to figure out how to better make that right so it's for well I would add the rice at the end right before you serve that's what I would do if you look at the back of the boxes they often say 2 parts water one part rice which is much too much water for years we use other ratios that are smaller but we find that 3 parts Rice 2 for. It's water so a cup and a half or ice 2 cups of water a little salt bring it to a summer put the top on put it down really low for about 15 minutes or so then I take it off the heat I put a towel kitchen towel over the top between the top and the and let it sit another 10 minutes and then fluff it and that'll do it the secret is don't use too much water and you get really separate grains but let me ask your question were you trying to do it all in the pressure cooker at one time I was trying to do it that way so I'd have it like turn it on and go and walk away I have a feeling that I think that maybe asking too much are going to hurt yeah I know you know you could use a rice cooker you for 20 bucks you can buy an electric rice cooker and they do a good job the other supposed to be great I'm Rice unpaired I can bear I can I think my problem is because I have electric stove and you can't really control the heat the way you want to agree with Chris I think maybe you're asking your pressure cooker too much it's not even the amount of rice it's the pressure it's everything that's in there you're cooking 2 different things that cook at 2 different temperatures for 2 different amounts of time I'm going to be really annoying now which is so unusual I know really really never know refreshing there are these pottery cookers from Japan and this is really annoying but they have an inner cover and outer cover you runs the Rice put it into the pot with some water let it sit for a few minutes then put it right on the stove top with the inner and outer cover the inner cover has 2 holes the outer covers one small hole put the heat on and just when it starts to steam you turn the heat off steam as for a couple Mr in the heat awful of it sit and it makes amazing Rice I mean much better than a rice cooker or the saucepan method so if you're crazy about rice those are really wonderful things but it's a little more work but a rice cooker for 25 bucks like the National rice cookers fine right all right well thank you I appreciate all these ideas that are right take care Ok but I welcome to military radio who's calling Hello I owe my son. Dr you just you know my talking to you talking to Cynthia from Fairmont Ohio I think the area Ok Listen I want to tell you our local paper had a little story about you last week with a really flattering nice color picture of you in your bow tie I've never had a flattering picture maybe you could cut that. I recognized that that's why we're both I otherwise people of your senses right so how can we help you well my grandmother came over to this country from Italy when she was a little girl and she ended up making all of our holiday dinners we always went to her house she made all kinds of Italian food but never had anything written down so I asked her to come over to our house and make whatever she wanted that day and I'd write down the recipes and I have those recipes still that's what I use my cook myself. She made pizza this way she would take a tall water glass put granulated yeast and put a little bit of sugar warm water let it rise to the top of the glass then take it import into a bull plain white flour now it's that question is it good to put the wet into the dry or the dry into the wet she always point the wet into the dry and I do too is there a reason why so do I now Sarah get explained why we do it that one well here's what I do as I make a well in the center of the dry 1st of all I notice that she did you mix up the dry really well before you do it if there's anything else in there like salt there should be right and then you make a well and then you gradually mix the water into the surrounding flour and I think you end up with less lumps and it's easier to mix the whole thing Chris would you agree yeah except that I probably know what she was doing did I use a food processor for pizza don't know I'm sorry that's you know that's not old world. Really well place yeah so well good very great thank you very much nice recall thank you this is Christopher Campbell's Milk Street Radio if you like your cooking question answered his call is there 18554 vote that's 855-426-9843 can also e-mail us any time at questions at Millstreet Radio dot com. Welcome to Mill Street has gone I'm a Dell and I'm calling from Atlanta I have Dell How are you pretty good how are you different I'm good how can we help you I have a question for you about soaking. I was looking for a little bit of guidance on whether or not I should so dry being before I cook from on equivocally Yes I tried the quick soak method when you bring them to a boil take them off that he let them sit there just doesn't work it doesn't work because they don't get as tender right and they're not as evenly cooked and be sure to salt the water salt thing makes a huge difference both for flavor and even cooking so salt the soaking was soaking water and salt the cooking water but salt in water to begin with have you ever used baking soda for the soap baking soda when you cook them put a little baking soda in a does work but I find if you salt the soaking water and then salt the cooking water that's all you need to do also it flavors the being which is really important but doesn't it also tenderize the skin doesn't that yes the outer layer of the Bee has calcium and magnesium ions which are replaced in part by the sodium chloride salt which means that water gets in and you have more even cooking when beans blow out there's an even cooking and the outside just explodes so salting gives you even penetration the water even cooking right Ok you know for years we were told not to salt the beans and not to add acid and the acid part is correct you don't want to add acid till the beans are just about done because that will retard their cooking but the salt is a good thing cross the board and really flavors them nicely it's sort of like when you add salt to pasta cooking liquid or rice cooking liquid or potato cooking liquid it deeply flavors the item i should we just tested that did you guess how many tablespoons per gallon I'm scared kosher salt I'm scared Well kosher we know is very coarse What would you use for a gallon oh no I do use kosher but how much would you what is that suppose. To be a tablespoon per 6 cups so that about right we found that 4 tablespoons wasn't enough 6 tablespoons of kosher salt or you know the government would get after this way too much sodium for just a another mark against me so you go in so I soak overnight if you go over night oh yeah this is it possible to soak them too long yes I would soak them a 10 hours maybe 12 hours but after that I rinse and drain and put them covered in a refrigerator if you can't cook them right away they'll start getting a little gnarly a few little fun too long you know and also it's warm in your house they can start to ferment and you don't want that now Ok thank you so much and our pleasure thanks for coming. To listening to ministry radio I'm Christopher Kimball after the break I speak with Simeon those rats author of salt fat acid heat the 4 elements of good cook a. This was no boring backwater no cheap little village but a lively thriving even the shops and buildings seem to be moving breathing changing shape as he watched a boom town this week on selected shorts from p.r.i. Public Radio International. Join us for select a short tomorrow evening at 8 o'clock right here on North State Public Radio and support from a public radio comes from North State symphony performing Mahler symphony number 5 featuring the Shasta college theater department in Mozart's Piano Concerto Number 20 with Diego Bustamante That's at 730 Saturday the Saturday the 13th at readings cascade theater and at 2 o'clock on the 14th at lax an auditorium in Chico tickets at North State symphony dot org. This is mostly radio I'm your host Christopher Kimball. I read a lot of food science books beginning of course with Harold McGee is on food and cooking which I suppose is the Bible of cooking science you know many are too scientific while others are nothing more than really cookbooks and disguise so when I flip through the pages of some enough threats new book salt fat acid heat I was pleasantly surprised to discover a convivial book about the science of cooking written in the vernacular I started by asking Simeon about the rumor that she taught Michael Pollan how to cook. Yeah I mean he already you know the basic He's he was like you know in his fifty's when I met him so he already had been cooking for a lot of decades but I definitely helped him brush up on his skills your book salt fat as city heat and 1st which I loved by the way at 1st reminding me of lots of books like great consist elements of taste or Mark Bittman did a book on mixing and matching different things and it's one of these books where it's not just a cookbook you actually are talking about the techniques of cooking and instead I mean you have to take is like is like going to school and getting a textbook there's an element of that to it so here's my question what's your evidence that you can teach people to cook without starting with recipes is that something you think is really possible without Malcolm Gladwell 10000 hours of practice. Wow you got straight to the heart of this. You know I think practice is implicit in it so I don't think you will ever just immediately be able to use salt acid in heat or any sort of shorthand to and get to cooking I think cooking comes with time and with practice but I definitely think that these are the 4 sort of points on a compass that will lead anyone to Good Cooking and to good food and I you know in the beginning I was a lot bolder when I 1st started teaching this and when I 1st started having the classes and I really did believe that you could do it without a recipe but as I started teaching people in cooking schools and going into elementary schools and just meeting various people I realized that they needed recipes and so now I think of them more as the training wheels for people and you know getting familiar with recipes is a great way to learn the basic steps in a kitchen or the steps of how to navigate yourself through all sorts of different kinds of cooking. So simple question what determines the shape and size of a small crystal and just talk about why do they end up that way why is Malden solved that particular shape yet the main thing that determines the shape and the size of a salt crystal is the pace at which the water evaporates and whether or not anything is done to it once the crystal has been formed So for example thinking about it you know in the States the 2 main brands of kosher salt are diamond crystal and Morton's which comes in a blue box and they are entirely different in every way in how salty they are in how much salt per tablespoon there is by weight and so if you're following a recipe and it says one tablespoon kosher salt and you use the Mortons you're actually using I think almost twice as much salt so understanding that the way that those 2 kinds of salt have been treated to create different textures and densities will help you to follow recipes better or eventually get to a point where you're so comfortable with your salt that you can just use your palate to guide you there so the diamond crystal is actually rolled through rollers that makes it flat and hence it's a lot lighter and flakier and it in some ways resembles the mountain salt from the mountain see in England a lot more because that's also in a flake format which is light and hollow and crunchy and much less salty per tablespoon So how does salt. You know everyone understands that salt enhanced is flavor in some way but what you said in the book was sometimes for example or reduces bitterness not by reducing bitterness directly but by enhancing other flavors such as sweetness so how does salt work to enhance aromatic compounds or balance flavors I'm not a scientist I'm a cook who has struggled to understand the science so my translations of these into regular English might make some scientists shudder but you know I like to think of it in terms of almost like salt unlocking flavors for us and so when a lot of times it works with aromatic molecules and as you know you know most of taste is aroma so that's like when we're stuffed up with a cold we can't taste food very much I would say the vast majority of our experience of taste is actually through smell which means that when we have a deeper more intimate experience with an aromatic molecule our experience of flavor then is also more powerful so what salt often does is either by initiating OSs mosis and getting some water out of a food and making the percentage of aromatic molecules in a food higher then we get sort of a more more intense experience of that flavor Here's a quote from the book by disrupting a protein salt prevents the coil that's the protein quill from shrinking when he did so the water molecules remain bound and the piece of meat remains Boyce so I put that into English basically for me the way that I see that happening is you know we can we can just forget about the coils and just think about a piece of chicken so for me an example of something I do in my classes all the time is season some chickens with salt in advance and then I'll season some chickens with salt right before I throw them in the oven and then I do a side by side roasting of the 2. And when we pull them out and we butcher them you can see not only is are the chickens that have been solved in advance more deeply flavorful and more evenly flavorful not just salty on the outside and bland in the middle but also when I stick my knife in to but you're the legs off the ones that have been salt in advance the meetest so tender and falling off the bone that it really almost just falls off the legs almost fall off I I have I have you're charging for me. Lot of chicken eating that was the best page in the book it just. It was a very Chris Kimball kind of page. Let's talk about Pepper which is just drives me insane. Everyone says salt and pepper as if they were equivalent which they're not and you point out in other cultures you know people might have a shaker of cumin a Morocco or chili powder in Turkey or tar the spice blend in the Middle East or sugar in Thailand or fresh chillies limes allows So the idea that Peppers this ubiquitous thing in cooking is just nonsense is the spice that should be used when it's appropriate right I 100 percent agree I always say that salt and pepper need to divorce well so to me they're just there we you know in general in the States we sort of are cooking has more or less sort of descended from Western European cooking where Pepper is really commonly used and so I think people just sort of take it for granted because their grandma or their mother put pepper in everything that they should prepare and everything but it's a it's a flavor that we have to think about and so I would no more put pepper in everything than I would put I don't know. If you're lime leaves and everything. So I try to be conscious about when I use it and I try to encourage other people to start thinking about in that way too I think you did you were talking about olive oil and I all I know someone was making tomato sauce shape and he's right there was a contest analysis. Was obviously tasting and she could tell pretty quickly if the oil was a little bit off that begs the question which is the very best extra virgin oils you don't really should use them in cooking right is that just to put on something before you serve it or if you're making it so I made a sauce with a couple tablespoons of olive oil would you use a very expensive olive oil for that even though it's been heated I wouldn't use a very expensive I do agree that the very best olive oils are the beautiful newly pressed ones that are so vibrant and almost neon green with all of the you know everything that's in there those ones do suffer with cooking but that's not to say that good olive oil shouldn't be used in all cooking you know like I think one of the interesting things that I learned was that Americans just because out of habit essentially we have a taste we prefer the taste of rancid all of oil because that's what we're just all get for because all of the olive oil producing countries save the good stuff and and the bad stuff over here again we can't discriminate so it's more about learning how to discriminate and you know one of my favorite all of oils that's really not that expensive it is extra virgin but it's not the highest quality is the like Cosco organic olive oil which tests really well on the independent analysis done here in California every year and it's super clean and I use that sort of for my everyday cooking and then I save the go to oils for drilling on top and for even a grafts. How does fact carry flavor I mean I've heard that a 1000000 times I've actually talked about it many times do you understand how that works I guess I don't. Back to the idea of aroma giving us the most powerful experience of taste and flavor it's all about the aromatic molecules and I like to imagine them almost like clinging to fat and so easiest way I think to imagine that we're experiencing it is to slice up a couple clothes of garlic and have 2 pans and one pan has a few tablespoons of water and one pan has a few tablespoons of oil and you can simmer. Some garlic in the water and sizzle a little bit in the oil and then if you dip your finger in the water it kind of just is like watery garlicky thing but if you dip your finger in the oil it's aromatic and flavorful and the garlic flavor is really penetrated throughout So it's a carrier to me of that that word carry couldn't be more better like it's that it really is a carrier of flavor and when you put anything that has a lot of aromatic molecules in fat it will the flavors will be distributed and sort of travel throughout the food much more powerfully so. The question I've had is the idea that gluten like a higher gluten flour like bread flour actually produces a carrier loaf sometimes right because you get a stretch your gluten it allows more rise in the bread and then when you talk about gluten when it comes to cakes or biscuits you don't want to develop the gluten because they become tough so when bread baking sometimes gluten is is a good thing because it allows the bread to rise and actually become airier and less dense but in a cake gluten or a pipe history gluten sort of the enemy. How do you reconcile those 2 things well I used to talk exactly in the terms that you just spoken of like gluten is good in bread and bad in tender pastries so I before I really understood how gluten worked and what it what we were after and cooking it was easier for me to divide it into this black and white thing of like we want it here and we don't want it here but when I started to do a little bit of homework and understand. And I started well ultimately I had to come down to it came down the point where once I had to describe it to other people I realized that that wasn't true and I kept going to my friends who are these great bakers or green San Francisco and I would bring them these charts and I'd be like Is this true that like pie is on one end of the gluten spectrum and bread is on the other and every time they were they said no because there's very rarely that very strict division and even in a pike you do need some gluten to get everything to come together and to create flakes so there's sort of a sweet spot in the middle which is why we don't use cake flour to make a pie we use cake far only for the most tender delicate cakes and sometimes for biscuits but when you want flakes or if you want all of the layers in a puff pastry It's about a sweet spot it's a middle place where there is a little bit of kneading there is some gluten the has to be developed but has to be developed in the right way to get you that right texture and that took me a long time to understand why you're being very gentle with me but I think I just got a lot but it's Ok now I see that was a great answer you know the term your mommy's been around a long time. 5 or 10 years everyone's talking about it. And we're going overboard here or you know it's a media flavor. Was discovered by Japanese scientists. Are we to in thrall to you mommy I 100 percent agree with you on that you know my friend Cal Peter no who was one of my teachers that shape and he's he is very clever with words and he always calls it to mommy so and often my experience of that has also happened with Rahman and part of it is you know just because something good more of it doesn't make it better so I think it's great it's a great sort of secret weapon for home cooks to understand and be able to identify aware what ingredients have mommy. And how to work that into food or that sometimes when you taste something and it falls flat it's because it needs a little bacon or a little catch up or a little permanent on she is but maybe adding catch up and bake and parmesan cheese and mushrooms and so he's you know maybe a little too much you know what thank you very much. Grill marks I was interviewing someone a few months ago meathead Goldwyn as he likes to call oh yeah famous grilling book did very well last year. And he said grill marks are a disaster and I said No I said well what about all the gray meat in between the grill marks. So talk about Mark's meat had my new best friend for saying that you know that's exactly what I always say is if you're getting grown marks then all of this other flavor potential is being lost on all of the rest of it so I really learned this lesson by watching actually Alice Waters grill quails and sausages and she was just I remember I was really young cook and I had no idea I was always so afraid of the open fire in the grill and this woman like as small as a hummingbird just standing there and she just was a restless moving everything around making sure that everything got evenly browned on all the sides and it was a very big aha moment for me to understand that had so little to do with getting that perfect I think it's like 45 degree angle by 45 degree angle Mark you know then you're missing out on all the rest of the thing the crosshatch as are pointless time for philosophy here so in Vietnam I gather there's a term referring to the right intent for it but as for coming in to cook food you have to cook food with the right intent there's a mindfulness to it you're obviously very smart and you love to cook do you have a philosophy of cooking that might be similar to any of those are either for. Yeah I have yet to come up with the perfect sort of language for it for a while I used to call it the 3 P.'s you know presidents patience and practice and so if you could sort of have those things every time you come to the kitchen. That it would you know what you make will be great and what it's more about a mindset of like being Ok with mistakes and really just being fully present which I think in this day and age is really hard with the phone and all the things and people running around and stuff like that and everything sort of working against us from being too to be really present with our cooking but what I've noticed is cooking sort of makes you a beginner every time which I love you know and so any time I get cocky and I'm like oh I've done this $100.00 times I don't need to pay attention that's the time when I burn it or that's the time when the log rolls off the fire I mean you seen this it work when you've cooked with other people or watch other people cook and you see the moment we're cooking somehow. Gets into their soul you know it's sort of a transformative moment yeah I think for me one of the most powerful moments was working with Michael Pollan who is so analytical and so in his mind he's so intelligent and exists so much in his mind and I am all heart and like body you know and so we're a funny pair and I would show up and every time we cooked for the 1st like several weeks almost everything we made started with onions or mere power or some sort of vegetable base and so he they got the hang of that pretty quickly and then they started doing that before I even got there and I think over time he started to realize that this time taking doing this thing that he had always viewed as this drudgery of like cooking peeling and sizing and cooking onions are these things that seem so boring and sort of like the thing you have to get through to get to the fancy part of cooking they started to understand how that really investing that time and energy makes. Everything taste better and I watched him transform and what was so amazing for me was that I really saw this person who I view as a serious journalist and a person who takes science really seriously and philosophy really seriously I saw him sort of turn into a fuzzy heart man who came came around and really understood that cooking is about humanity and it's about being together with people and that the time that we spend doing it is not time wasted it's time well spent. That was so mean she's author of salt fat acid heat for elements of good cooking. Is once dumb enough to stand up at a technology conference about 20 years ago and argue that the promise of the internet to provide complete information was flawed because humans only need so much data to live the good life now I'm very glad that nobody posted a video of that moment to you too but I did have a point too much information can be a liability we're pursuing the creative force such as Coke for example I don't need to understand us most of us are the fusion coefficient to successfully pride of Turkey but if I don't know the table salt is in fact twice as salty as many kosher salt is by volume Well that would not only be useful would actually be critical and that's the problem with information how do you know which you really need to know. Listening to ministry radio I'm Christopher Kimball after the break more of your cooking questions with my co-host Sarah Moulton she star of Sarah's weeknight meals as well as author of home cooking 11. This week on Morning Edition Republicans face pressure to deliver on health care this bill is much different than it was a little while ago Ok This bill has evolved and we didn't have a failure on the bill you know would you put it like a failure the future of replacing the Affordable Care Act Plus France's president. This is Mr Radio and Christopher Kimball right now we're going take some calls with my co-host Sarah Moulton Sarah are you ready I am so ready welcome to Mill Street who's calling this is rain a help from cabinet a kind of how are you I'm great thanks for taking my call my pleasure how can we help you well I have you seen my daughters and then you are crazy for trouble and of course you make a great trouble cry you have to make a great French fry and I can't think of her. Being a huge training french fry hoping you could help me out Ok a few things the traditional method is to fries 325 degree oil peanut oil mean 2 rounds of tons of frying the 2 alone french fry. Fry them to the valley lightly covered take them out let them drain for 10 minutes heat the well to 375 and finish them off I've gone to a lot of places have good fries and ask them why theirs is 10 times better than mine well they have a fry a letter 1st of all which helps a lot of people told me they use potato starch on the outside of the fries and that seems to work and there's another method we did years ago which is based on joël Robuchon and oddly enough you put all the fries in room temperature oil in a dutch oven turn on a medium high and you cook it for 2025 minutes and then take them out it's one fry not 2 and the interesting thing about that is the uptake of oil into the potatoes is less when you cool down the fries between the 1st and 2nd Fry is the cooling down were all the oil gets absorbed if you put a french fry into oil the oil won't go into the potato because it's full of you know starch molecules of water you have to get some of that water out of the potato before the oil goes in and that tends to happen during the cooling down period so they were about 30 percent less oil uptake with that method that's now where they fabulous. Frys there were very good fries Recently I was reading your old colleague Kenji Lopez alt and he so close the fries in vinegar water and that really seems to help the knee fry them in a really high temperature to 403 and I was higher he does the to fry for 50 seconds and then he calls them oh for about 30 minutes and he said then it's really good if you really cool him and freeze them for the 2nd I did read that yeah so you know you might want to check out his Methodist food lab yeah the food lab book yeah i wanted me the fries and the vinegar water actually cooked them I'm sorry I sent it out to cook them until they were tender but not fall apart and they're about a quarter to 3 h. Of an inch thick so that is not very long I think one of the reasons there's a to fry process with french fries is you want to make sure they get cooked on the inside as well as the outside and the troubles if you just do one high heat or high ish heat and throw them in and cook them from start to finish they don't cook properly in the middle but whenever you cook potatoes otherwise in water you always start them in cold water so I wonder starting them in well room temp oil has the same effect of cooking them all the way through how do you recommend dressing out to get the truffle labor without adding a lot of extra oil just use truffle salt Well that's one in the other one is there's a truffle butter that Dartanion makes That's pretty darn good. Thank you so much I would definitely give these suggestions a try I appreciate it Ok thank you take care of by this is Christopher Campbell's mystery radio if you like your cooking questions answer give us a ring 18554 bow tie that say 554269843 You can also e-mail us at questions at most Street Radio dot com You can find our shows and i Tunes stitcher and tune in. Welcome to Mill Street who's calling Jared how are you I'm doing well and I wanted to talk to you it's an honor to talk to you so I'm getting married in August congratulations thank you my fiance is kind of a picky eater but I want to try and get her grandchild or I was wondering if you guys had any suggestion cookbook for kids and like getting kids you hold is your fiance. Not a kid Ok sure. She you know she has to take you know as a kid when it comes to food and well I mean like a hamburger with pickles and mustard and nothing else are you doing the cooking or she's doing it definitely will be my 1st thought is for kids we didn't make kids food for the kids we just made food maybe she just hasn't had a lot of experience with different foods and she might be surprise I wouldn't assume that she's only going to like him burger and mashed potatoes forever thing else you can do is I call them bridge recipes take a pasta you know when you use an unusual pesto with it take a steak every society almost has a steak every culture has a steak with different spices for seasonings is a Korean steak has a Japanese Steak do fried chicken they do it in South Korea they do in Japan they do it all over the world so do a chicken soup you can do a Mexican chicken soup or Moroccan chicken soup or such want to consume so take something that's familiar and just have a very Asian on the theme Yeah that's really a good way to get people to take one step I mean I would make you know hot stone pot you know or something totally different but chicken soup every culture has to consume and just make one that's a little more interesting and sort of edge a way from the basic information I would do now he did ask about cookbooks Katie Workman has a good book for cooking with kids and it has nothing to do about tricking the kids it's just good simple recipes but I think the trouble with good simple red. And they are good simple recipes is that's not going to expand her horizon which is seems like is what you want to do is she open to trying new things the sort of I have to cook book suggestions Mark Bittman How to Cook Everything You Know My Own former company America's Test Kitchen the best recipe whatever the revised edition is that has probably a 1000 recipes both of those books are going all that well tested the recipes work I would have a book like that on the shelf as well I don't yet I mean this is totally self promotional but we're coming out with our cookbook this fall most street and we have a lot of bridge recipes there so you might be able to pick up out things that if you want to step out a little and also I do think traveling so I'm not saying you can spring to go to Paris or Rome or anything like that but even take her to Charleston take her to Chicago where you might be there Charleston so great food town and there's wonderful Southern food and there's also other kinds of food there as well it's interest trying to gently coax her to try something new and I hope you do move to Charleston that's such a beautiful place oh I really hope you are my fingers are crossed yes thank you. Thanks. Hello Who do we have on the phone Hi This is Cheryl long Hi Cheryl where you come from Dexter Michigan how can we help you my husband and I our new time that we have turned Wow is that way that way that's the 1st person someone's called I said when we're new condos members you know. And so forth. They started playing towards the end of us went to her and now we're getting about 10 eggs a day oh my goodness and so. I've been kind of boiled eggs and they're really hard to peel do you have any suggestions for things that silky or texture and then the 2nd question if you have any suggestions for big things to do with a lot of eggs Well when I say invite huge crowds of people work for starts I'm going to tell you my favorite way to cook hard boiled eggs chicken eggs and I'm hoping that it will translate to duck eggs this is Sarah's favorite question this is my favorite question I got all I did I did well I ended up working with Julia Child because of a hard boiled egg so I have a real you know love of hard boiled eggs any right the way I used to cook them is the way Julia used to cook them which is you start the eggs in cold water you bring it up to a boil you remove the pan from the heat you let it sit she let it sit for like 15 minutes now I do it like till 10 and then you get them right out of the hot water and right into ice water then somebody turn me on to a better way to cook hard boiled eggs which is to steam them now I have one of those fold out steamers and I put it in a pot and you put the water right to the point right underneath it but not don't let it come up above the steamer and then you bring that up to a full boil with the lid on and then you turn it down to a medium boil take off the lid in very carefully I use my hands but you should use a spoon then you put the eggs in you put the lid back on you steam it in a medium steam. Again I do it 10 minutes because I like a little translucency in my egg yolks but if you want them to cook for you take it 12 minutes now stock eggs are bigger so you've got an idea how long it takes to cook them so you cook them for the same amount of time you would have boiled them basically maybe slightly less and then again get them right out of the pan and into ice and water and let them cool completely and then crack I'm a bit let him sit a few more minutes in the water so so the water sucks underneath so if you have to put the eggs in cold water let them cool down completely then you take them out and what roll them on the counter with your hand to crack the Ok that makes sense and put it back in to the yeah just so that the water seeps but it's ice and water not just cold water ice and water Ok Ok and I think that should work but I really would love for you to tell us now Chris I'm going to throw it to you ideas big ideas for using many eggs no I don't have any ideas you could make a gigantic frittata for dinner you could you know a Spanish tortilla with the potatoes in the olive oil would be to yeah yeah it makes a great best turkey would be my favorite thing to do Ok and we do report back let us know how it goes thanks thank you thank you this is Christopher Campbell's mystery radio if you like your cooking questions answer give us a ring 18554 bow tie that say 554269843 You can also e-mail us at questions at most Street Radio dot com You can find our shows and i Tunes stitcher and tune in. This week's mostly basic is pasta at the ready if you have leftover pasta simply oil it well with extra virgin olive oil the fridge with the next day or 2 if you want to use it simply heat a large cast iron skillet over medium high heat in a pasta stir only occasionally to allow the positive to brown and crisp up in spots this works with any style of pasta including Asian Week noodles Now you can. Dusted with grated parmesan and topped with a softly set fried egg for a quick meal. This is Mr Radio and Christopher Kimball right now Dan Pashman of the sport full pod cast is here to talk about the future burgers or rather the burgers of the future which apparently involve bloody vegetables Dan how are you now Chris how are you doing I just have a feeling you're going to just take it a totally different tack this week. Well I do like to keep you on your toes Chris and you know summertime grilling season is coming and it's time for us to talk about burgers I don't know what you Chris but I have certainly in recent years made an effort to eat less meat I'm still an omnivore but I try to eat less meat than I used to have you made a similar transition. I love meat I do and up using it more as a flavoring then as the main thing on the plate so a little bit less you know I don't need to remind folks that humans as in general eat a lot more meat than we used to couple 100 years ago and there's a lot more of us on the planet you got to 13 pounds of food into a cow to get one pound of food for us out of it the whole thing is just not exactly sustainable so as much as I love meat I'm trying to cut back and burgers are a really interesting front here in the effort to reduce our meat consumption so the 1st entry level step that you can try that I've been experimenting with is what people call a blended burger and that is when you take some non meat components and mix them with your ground beef for instance I had wanted a place in in New York made by a chef to hang his restaurant graffiti and he does a blended burger it's about 25 percent mushrooms and other herbs and spices 75 percent ground beef and he seasons it with cumin and coriander garlic and onion almost the way you might see is like a lamb kabob and it is fantastic you would never know that it was 25 percent vegetables and it does have a different flavor because of all the spices different flavor from a sort of traditional old fashioned American burger but. It's using less meat and it's got a much more complex flavor profile there's a 1000000 other kinds of things you could add in to your blended burger Have you ever tried that with that a blend of bird I never heard of that I like the name and I actually like the concept like that so yeah it's sort of like cough the seasonings with mushroom You know I think of a car like the hybrid car of burgers you know it's like it's using some gas but some electric so it's not using as much gas and it cost twice as much to. Actually the next step up in terms of where science is headed is that there's a lot of work and millions of dollars being poured into research right now for 2 different types of burgers one is a truly vegetarian burger that can pass for beef that looks like raw meat that sizzles when you put it in the pan that karma lies on the outside and stays pink on the inside that has all of the different components of a beef burger but yet is 100 percent vegetarian and I've actually gotten sampled some of these one is called the beyond burger made by company called Beyond Meat Bill Gates is an investor you know in a lot of money into this and there's another one called The Impossible burger at a few select restaurants in New York and San Francisco I tried that one I found that both of the burgers I was blown away 1st of all by how good they were at there not of the point that I would mistake them for a beef burger but certainly closer to be thin anything I've ever had in the veggie burger realm are these burgers that are grown essentially laboratories are these actually vegetarian burgers these are actually vegetarian they're made mostly with plant proteins and often ferment and wheat which gives it a certain kind of funk. I will say that they have the coloring of the burger and the texture down really well you get a very nice crispy Carmel ization on the exterior of the burger it doesn't have beefy flavor but you know if you want the kind of burger that's going to have a nice burger sauce or ketchup and mustard and are going to put pickles and cheese and lettuce and tomato on it and put it on a big bun you know the kind of burger where a finely crafted burger might get lost anyway you're going to have a great experience if you want something where the meat is on display you know it's still not quite there but still very promising and I actually do an experiment I take the ground beef from the beyond burger and mix it with real beef to make a blended burger and that I think could be huge and so like you. You got your play dough out and going to mix the colors and exactly but the real frontier that I think is the most amazing is petri dish meat lab grown meat. And this the best way that I can describe the way it works is. Kris Jenner get when you're a kid you ever have strep throat Yes Remember they would stick those swabs down your throat and they'd rub it in that red petri dish and then grows it means you have stripped Yes. Well the base of the way this works is that they I mean I'm simplifying the process a little bit but it is not so far off from essentially swapping a live cow rubbing it in a petri dish and then a burger grows Yeah a burger grows I spoke to one of these guys a year ago with $20000.00 pound for beef and $7000.00 a pound for chicken which I think they're doing I mean look at the price point is high I'll grant you that thank you it's not there yet but the idea of it is amazing I mean they had the 1st live taste test of one in London in 2013 Back then they could only grow the muscle not the fat now they're working on getting the fat in there combining the fat but the reports in that were that it did have a very beefy flavor and so if you can combine that beefy flavor with the textural component that we're seeing in the veggie burgers of the future I think this is very very promising Well this goes on in the category of things like driving cars the mission to Mars you know things that either will 10 years from now will go why didn't I think of that or what a dumb idea that we're. Yeah I think that's actually Instead the blended one I think is very interesting because that's sort of was you said it's like the hybrid car it's available technology and it solves a good part of the problem now that's right I mean if you think about if you're having a barbecue you're making 10 or 15 burgers you're buying several pounds of meat if you can use 25 percent less beef in those burgers and if everybody were to do that it would have a real a real positive impact and make some delicious burgers I have a question for you please you're a crusader for the inane. Right. Hold on a 2nd I just need to revise my Twitter profile and I get any doors or new business cards but yes go on you're talking about saving the world you're talking about the use of energy resources you're talking about the future is this the new Dan Pashman we should look forward to in the room the rest of this year well Chris I think that in all my work in one way or another I am trying to spread the love of deliciousness and you know if the planet can last a few more years then that's going to be you know a few 100 more good meals for us spread the love of deliciousness that's almost a t. Shirt almost Well Dan Pashman thank you for spreading a lot of. Thank you Chris take care. That was Dan Pashman host of the sports podcast you know my interview with some enough made me think a little bit about salt salt has been a driver of history as a currency because war and also the foundation for Empire today salt still retains its magical properties salting coffee reduces bitterness salt in the brine improves the ability of proteins to retain water during cooking and of course soaking beans and salt helps them to cook evenly my favorite use of salt is throwing it over my left shoulder which blinds the double who is always lurking behind me so when you ask someone to pass the salt you get history and magic not just seasoning. Thanks for listening to ministry radio you can listen to our weekly shows and i Tunes stitcher tune in Spotify also on our very own website Millstreet Radio dot com We'll be back next week. Mr Kimball's next street is produced by Milk Street in association with w t v executive producers Melissa volcano and Stephanie stoner producer a need to do action assistant Carly how much time. Audio editor Melissa Allison from. New it's. At Atlantic a public media production. Additional music by George. Radio is distributed. To. The new American workforce in the age of technology and automation work better automation for my own workplace. Workers. An exploration of the future of jobs and what it means for how we value work in this society it's a special hour from k.q.e.d. In San Francisco that's next time on the take away from. Public Radio International . Tune into the take away tomorrow morning at 11 o'clock right here on North State public.