Certified heavy metal They're covered in the armor of calcium carbonate and fines that move around and out of there. As as heavy metal as. They are actually so delicious because of how vulnerable and open they are that's the scientists and diver. With the word. Good and one particular kind of sea urchin we should be getting more of the environment we've got Alison Romans fresh new take on breakfast and more this hour . Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Barbara Kline in Texas investigators are attributing white nationalist anti immigrant online postings to the gunman suspected of yesterday's mass shooting in El Paso a 21 year old man from Dallas is in custody accused of killing 20 people at a crowded Wal-Mart Yesterday N.P.R.'s Martin cost he says authorities gave an over some tree off to the end of a cupboard in genocide known as The Killing Fields known she was the Khmer Rouge's chief idealogue shipping the crazed vision of a utopian society which saw millions of city dwellers force of bridge of into the countryside in an attempt to abolish class needed 2000000 people died known she was the right hand man of pole point Brother Number One who died 20 years ago in mysterious circumstances no and she was one of only 3 people convicted by un backed special tribunal for Cambodia protesters were back on the streets of Hong Kong today after clashing with riot police who fired tear gas at them last night police say the protesters are challenging national sovereignty Barbara Kline n.p.r. News in Washington. Support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the estate of Joan b. Kroc whose bequest serves as an enduring investments in the future of public radio and seeks to help n.p.r. Be the model for high quality journalism in the 21st century and the ne ek c. Foundation. I'm Frances lamb and this is The Splendid Table from a.p.m. American Public Media the show for curious cooks if you think. It might sound odd for a food show to be saying this but deliciousness can be a real problem you should think of them as a wonderful hybrid between artichoke in an egg or a novel caught on an egg well imagine tasting or something they could be described that way that's only was are you talking about sea urchins which if you've never tried them are incredible and weird in a great way but when something taste new to you and it's delicious you want it and your friends want it and more and more people want it and seemingly only it until we get to the point where the good earth has no more of whatever it is to give and then a lot of places are super over fish but in the here to bum you out today because I always got a different take on the story. Now before I get to an alley is one of the most interesting views in the world he is a pile chemist and an author and a trained chef and happens to spear fish and Frieda in his spare time Hey Al it's great to talk with you today thanks Francis it's good to talk to you. About see your actions what's the you know they are like the most terrifying looking at most on earth. They look like headless ghosts of porcupines but are alive and live in the sea and they like kind of move around their spines move and then you eat. And it's like oh my God That is the most amazing flavor. Actually I read recently she calls them her single favorite flavor in the world and I 1st actually want to ask you because you're a scientist. What makes a sea urchin delicious they taste like butter that you harvested from the sea and I want to know scientifically how is that possible yeah totally I mean Syrians are certified heavy metal they are covered in this like armor of calcium carbonate and they've got these spines that help them move around and they breathe out of their feet and they're just weird. They are so delicious though as as heavy metal as they look they are actually so delicious because of how vulnerable and open to the elements they are so think about any time you've gone in the ocean for an extended period of time your skin starts to get all pretty you kind of feel the hydrated I personally always crave shrimp. A lot of changes happen to you because you're basically sitting in the world's biggest bathtub full of Brian. So now imagine living your entire life immersed in that super salty briny environment without the luxury of skin to keep all of your insides functioning and where they should be so don't have skin all of that Salt Lake City and yeah like fish or even an octopus. So all that salt that they're sitting in has free reign to pull all of them once you're out and just turn them into marine raisins so to combat that effect sirrah chins get into an arms race with with the salt in the water they stockpile stuff that water likes to attach to they stockpile sugars amino acids and salts which is runnable for us because those are maybe the 3 most delicious types of molecules in the edible world where you salty a new enemy. So yeah they brought in themselves for us and so when you hear people talking about and this is true for oysters too when you hear people getting thoughtful and poetic about. Their favorite oysters from wherever it is in the world they'll often talk about the fry. Any brackish water that those oysters come from and that that isn't just prose it is the reason that those animals are delicious That's incredible So Ok so you die for urchins and actually the reason why you're in that is because he is right there is really fascinating story about diving for purple urchins off the coast of California and in that story for several magazine you're talking about how it's good to eat them so I live in the East Coast and there are main urchins and I hear those are over harvested and that's a problem and sea urchins sometimes called many have become more and more popular with chefs and so like you know they're getting into all these like Chef you dishes and they become this cliche where chefs are putting out everything and were over harvesting all of them but part of your story is about how they are overrunning the ecosystem of like the coast of northern California so what's going on there yeah so the West Coast is a very different story than the East Coast here there are thousands of times more actions than there have been or should be historically and it's a combo of factors obviously several of them are our fault as humans some of them are just freak accidents but it's a combo of climate change warming the waters and causing problems with how to help get nutrients there was a freak outbreak that killed a bunch of Syrians natural predators which are stars starfish but I have to say see the stars are biologist friends will yell at me and. We're also still reaping what we sowed at the end of the $800.00 spy almost eradicating sea otters in this part of the coast because they also naturally prey on Syrians and so what's happening is this explosion of urchins has taken them from filling this very docile niche of just hanging out and vacuuming up the bits and scraps that need to be taken care of on the ocean floor to becoming the zombie hordes that are literally moaning down 95 plus percent of the kelp in Sonoma Mendocino County. Which which is a huge It's incredible bummer and there has been an immediate ramification already where the local recreational abalone fishery which is where most where most non-commercially fish abalone come from is closed maybe forever because the abalone also feed on kelp and they just can't compete with the sea urchins and after that will I mean everything that depends on the kelp in the at the anchor of the food chain. Will be swiftly kicked out. Like basically the forest of the sea is right so it's about you're basically deforesting the entire underwater ecosystem there yeah it's the forestation that happens crazy quick like I moved to Sonoma County a few years ago right before my friend and colleague Kyle was opening his restaurant single thread and his c.d.c. Aaron who I co-wrote the piece with. Taught me how to Spearfish which was just the coolest hobby for a chef to to have that you could possibly imagine and when we started literally 4 years ago it was like diving down through this canopy it was like a submerged tropical jungle and there's fish flitting in and out of the shadows of the kelp and it was amazing thing and now this spring we've started to go for the season it is almost like diving down to the surface of the moon and you can see it in the photos it's a bunch of craggy rocky outcropping that are just dotted with bright flashes of like eighty's prints purple that's crazy but Ok So normally when you have like invasive species you know it's like oh we should just eat them but it's hard to get to convince people to eat things like lion fish that they had before were Asian carp or whatever but like. Sea urchins are incredibly delicious they're expensive chefs want to use them why isn't there a huge commercial fishery for these purple urchin like why aren't we just like grabbing them all and eating them right well 1st of all so they're not invasive actually they're from here Ok just out of control Ok sure but one of the issues with purple urchins versus the Green urchins that you guys maybe get on these coast or the bigger rhetoricians that people also harvest out here is that they are a smaller cousin there are smaller species so there are there are row which are the reproductive organs that people call me it's also smaller. But that doesn't mean that they're not commercially viable and it definitely doesn't mean that they're not delicious so in the ninety's there were actually a couple years where there was a huge documented push to enhance this purple sea urchin fishery on the West Coast and I think we exported 300000 or so pounds of purple syrup into Japan where they were actually highly prized because they were smaller and more delicate and you could incorporate them in dishes I think in a way that was more subtle rather than just plopping this big giant fatty tongue on a piece of rice like suit like your sushi or whatever that is still at this point what the mainstream foodie consumer thinks of when they think of me as they think of they think of Japanese food they think of what they typically see on social media as these big fat robust many tongues and the reality is their applications in the kitchen go way beyond that. So we talk to you as a scientist before and then as a diver and so then we talk to you as a chef what can you do with them aside from just plucking them so my sushi rice chemically and Colin airily they should think of them as a wonderful hybrid between an artichoke in an egg or not a condo in an egg maybe as a. Better comparison. And again I mean somebody 10 years ago what do you do with with avocados 9 out of 10 times they're going to say guacamole and now they're everything almost to a point of of self-parody. Same thing with like they are full of fat and protein so you can use them as a source of Browning So you can incorporate them in crazy a barbecue marinate or yakitori marinated you can use their fattiness to enrich. They make some of the best brioche that I've ever tasted I used I sweated down urchins with on do we saw CIJ and use their fat to make probably the best dirty rice I've ever made. Yeah I don't know. Millionaire food. Food but but it doesn't need to be if you live on the West Coast for like a $44.00 a year fishing license you can even pick these things off the shore you can gather $35.00 per person per day right now. And we should be is what you're saying. But I mean we have this pretty horrendous track record of just decimating anything we get excited about so this is this is the universe offering up a chance a small chance at redemption where we can put our our fervor to good use. This. Thank you so much thank you. So much. Unveiling the essential elements of food and to read his article on purple engines . Coming up next. Around the word. Which is basically the. Principal. Puzzle. Which is a book from the printed. Over 170 years of middle age and he uses that many of his recipes period be periods. Of as much as to not as much as is needed for as much as he likes that's the author Rolando better than he and I could listen to him talk about anything which is good because he going to tell us about something I used to think I would never want to eat rice salad I'm Francis lamb and this is The Splendid Table from a.p.m. American Public Media. On the next on being Rabbi Amichai Lauder Livy on engaging tradition reinventing spiritual life and the very meaning of how to be cheeky without being cheesy and how to be profound how to bring the sacred I think where we're starving for the sacred I'm Krista Tippett Please join us. Join us for on being coming up this morning at 11 support for the Splendid Table on your State Public Radio comes from the galley fine cook where gift ideas for the kitchen and home with cooking demonstrations every Saturday at noon the galley is located at 551 country drive in Chico You're listening to The Splendid Table on North State Public Radio. This is The Splendid Table the show for curious cooks and eaters and I'm your host Francis lamb were supported by Babel a European made language learning program that teaches practical conversation in Spanish French German and other languages and they'll win the app store or online at Babel b a b b l dot com. I feel that it has a Chinese person the idea of being cold rice kind of upset and so I'll be honest I resisted our next interview for a long time because it's about Bryce. Rice salad with even the words freaking out a little rice and salad. But then that gnarly July 4th heat wave hit and I was like I will use anything called Life in fact will only be cold through please freeze the rice before you give it to me and so I finally came to the Londo very many is right salad ideas with an open mind and a really good. Rolando is an Italian food importer a great cook and the author of the go cooking Italian the authentic way and I contributor Russ Parsons talked with him about the Italian tradition of rice salads . They tend to be somewhat of a main and only Corps during the. Summer lunch however you also see it many times during the summer months being served. So as a 1st course instead of pasta because you kind of like make a During the day and then let it sit and get all the flavors it all sort of amalgamated into it and then you don't have to you know Board pasta during a hot summer night so they tend to be very much take the place of a 1st Corps and an Italian meal what kind of Rice do you use and how do you cook it . Well I do it exactly the same way that as you would do spaghetti I have one of those I think the most important. Part that I have and the most important instrument that I have in my kitchen besides my knife is it's a pasta pot with an insert the ones that you can do not just for the past and then it has the colander built in the new can actually like lift it up and then drain it into the sauce Well I do the same thing with Turtle not only rice which is the longest and you say. To her more precious grain that we grow in Italy because it's the longest and it has the largest amount of starch inside so it's very to some very you know the remains are dented for a long time so basically I just you know put a lot of water with salt and then I just toss you know a couple or 2 if I want to have more for the rest of the week and cook it like past and just check every now and then and taste when it's all done and and then what I do is you lift the colander right away and you bring it to the sink and you're shocked at with running cold water and then I spread in a big cookie sheet or a baking dish and what I do is then just dress a little bit of olive oil and with your fingers you just spread it out and cool off . And so then think of it as if you were using rice as a spec it you can come up with different sources and variations different ideas but you use that Rice as if you were dressing it as pasta Karna really can be a little bit difficult to find sometimes good use arborio or would be better to go with long grain I think can not only is actually you'll be surprised how widely available it has become right now and there are many different brands of all you can also find it online very well. It's also. You know long grain rice from the same area not only but I find that it doesn't stay al dente long as not only kind of Ali has a much more stronger bite of a rice salad but we weren't sitting at you know because it's a really incredible grain so Ok we've got the rice cooked and we've done the initial cooling on it now we have this blank canvas What kind of ingredients do you add to a rice salad What are one of the things that you're thinking about well the recipe that I chose to include an authentic or was there contest because she was there that the woman who I work with in Torino she actually. Told me that in the sixty's she was the 1st one to start making these little rice salad with with everything sort of like chopped in the same Can you imagine the the labor to make best of all for different types of ingredients chop them up to the size of the rice so it becomes this colorful specks of you know different vegetables in the rice salad and serve that with some. Hard boiled eggs and you know even broken tuna in there it's just the most important thing I think for me is that you try to chop everything as Finally as possible than average bite that you will take off the salad it will be a little bit different so that not everything becomes homogeneous. Are there other variations that you like my way of cooking and my way of thinking is always to make things in a perfect proportion so it should be a 3rd Rice a 3rd another ingredient and the 3rd another ingredient for example my favorite rice salad is to make it with with shrimp and zucchini and dressed with really good extra virgin olive oil and a splash of maybe some if you like some said splash of lemon new some lemon zest as well I'm a I'm a firm believer that less is more in many cases and you know in this particular case with a summer salad I think it's you know that the simpler the better as is the rice that it's the star of The Dish Now you mentioned dressing it with olive oil and maybe a little bit of lemon juice but I don't like what the contest is rice salad chooses a mayonnaise base for it. How do you decide what dressing combinations which might use well I think that that's as I always say options and substitution and you know I'm trying to pass around the word quantum Busta which is basically this principled from believing in order to see a lot of the banner which is a book that has been in print for over 170 years in Italy and he uses in many of his recipes and I've used that throughout the tentacles q. Period be Terra Buster as much as enough as much as is needed or as much as you like I think that we need to encourage people to not be afraid to create their own interpretations if you like one thing more than another then do it and if you want to put more all of I drench my everything with good extra virgin olive oil because I love it so much and if you want to use one type of vinegar if you want to use another type of a nigger of that's the only one you have in your pantry and go for it but just I think that the most important thing is to taste as. You know at things I mean just put the rice in the in the bowl and then start adding things I mean it's not half a cup of this some half a cup of that just just throw it in and I mix always the rice salad with my hands and then just start adding you know a little bit of things at a time and as much as you have you know maybe leftovers in your fridge just be creative as long as you just keep tasting and I had as much as enough that's a very generous description but this is an Italian dish so I'm sure there are things that must never absolutely never under any circumstances be done with a rice salad one just wouldn't do that anything come to mind but yeah maybe put ketchup or some examiner on it. I think that's the beauty of our country. If you think about it it's the Contessa might make you know one way but then the next door neighbor makes it another way what I love about Italy is that there's no right or wrong you just do it I think for the most part we would we would put disparate greed and such as you know ingredients that are very wintered like something with truffles in the summertime or porcine mushrooms we would save those for the winter and use them instead so I think the seasonality is a very important. Aspect. I think the fresher in the simpler the better. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you so much for having. Him for your rice. Recipe for the. You're probably going to. You probably know. I mean seriously. It's really a unique collection of recipes it's not. Describe it for us well you know I didn't want to call it breakfast because you know when I think of records I think of a side of. And toast maybe some hash browns. So I wanted to kind of draw attention to that world of of you know savory porridge is and the skillet hash is that's not a strict Uka and and you know kind of introduce people to different ways to start their day there's a salad and there are and you know I think that people do that people eat now especially 1st thing in the morning is changing a lot and I think that when I eat at home you know savor granola is a big part of it Ags of course but you know what I do with those eggs and I'm makes a report with parmesan and soy and scallion and I want that really hearty homey savory nice 1st thing and I just never been a sweet breakfast person at all so I wanted this to be very personal Well there's so much about this after I want to ask you about one of those things is the flavor combinations that you mentioned the savory barley porridge with parmesan and so away which I think is such a great combination and you have chatter and came she what are some of those other flavor combinations that are really unique that we need to start incorporating into our savory breakfast routine Well I think with those you know one thing that I think people think when they hear oh you're putting So I Sausan something in it oh it must feel you know Asian inspired or parmesan does it feel Mediterranean or Italian but I think that really what what I'm getting at is you don't need a ton of ingredients you just need really intensely flavored one so the chatter in the kimchi that recipe is really chatter in eggs pretty much and within those 3 ingredients you get something really really special and really amazing that you wouldn't otherwise just because those 2 ingredients on their own are already so powerful and same thing with something like Parmesan So you're just using them as a seasoning agent right just to kind of introduce a little bit more flavor rather than just salt into your breakfast and you know I don't know I think that eating something like a bowl of chickpeas with cherries over breakfast is a little intense sometimes but it's sometimes it's exactly what you mean and you know I. It's not a revolutionary flavor combination necessarily I think that to think of something like that for breakfast it is definitely interesting well and it's so satiating and nourishing and I was really impressed by the fact that you do some very produce heavy meals in this section which we don't usually think about 1st thing in the morning and you mentioned the salads earlier and you have this great call out about the morning after breakfast salad which is really more of a a concept than a recipe how do we do it yes well it can be anything you want to be which is the beauty of the morning after breakfast salad and this recipe was something that I 1st made Actually while I was visiting one of my best friends in Maine where she lives and we had of course bought too many crabs and lobsters the day before because we were so excited to eat them all he's seen them all and are just you know looking at the Bounty and thinking Ok well there's literally no way we are going to finish all these and so the next morning I put all the leftover lobster into a salad but it was really beautiful lettuces that we had gotten from this little farm down there it was very idyllic I don't live my life that way all the time and I don't expect anyone else to but in this moment it was really special and you know of course with all those lobsters and crabs we had the night before there was a lot of wind and so we were we were feeling a little maybe hung over or definitely going over and you know the idea of using up our leftovers a but also be eating a bowl of really lemony Irby leafy greens just made us feel amazing afterwards you know and I think that we think of a hangover breakfast or savory breakfast in that capacity as something really fatty with you know cheese and sausage and eggs and the hot sauce but you know for me what I want is oftentimes a bowl of really really nice greens with lemon and olive oil and salt kind of resets the system but it's like you know Yeah exactly yeah and then that sort of evolved because I realize that you know any time I go out if I have leftovers which I try to bring home if I'm cooking at home and I have leftovers especially from a larger kind of me or. Chops or or whatever using up any roasted vegetable along with that leftover meat in a salad as is also awesome and you don't have to eat anything up you can kind of just fridge clean out a little bit you know you have a half of a final ball throw it in there you have to rogue radishes rolling around in your crisper like definitely slice those up and put them in there too it's kind of a free form build your own Choose Your Own Adventure salad really well before everyone starts thinking that this chapter's is too virtuous to be fun you also have eggs cooked in chicken fat Yes which is pretty mad as far as breakfast goes yeah it was an accident really I mean I literally had leftover chicken fat and just kept thinking of ways how can I use that because I didn't want to go bad and it was so delicious it was really highly seasoned chicken fat and. I was like Is it wrong to fry an egg and I think you know some deep diving I thought a lot about I really dug deep I did some soul searching I never answer that question but it is delicious it is really truly excellent Now it sounds genius Well it was great talking with you so much. For. 5375 to 5. And we have. Francis I'm just fine thank you yeah. Well I've got this recipe for spicy popcorn that I developed about 5 years after my return from India 974 I spent . 30 minutes or an education and when I got there in 1983 I realize we didn't have any popcorn and then less popular and. We were living in. A smallish place and serious camp person could do that and then I was going to school and and and I wanted to enjoy make you know thought so I developed a recipe for Spacey groundnuts which is what they call percentage said India. And I'm here you know it's a party all for a charity so all of. Developed a really great recipe and then when I came back home in 74 I continued to be exposed to grownups to make them then I eventually evolved over the next 2 or 3 years a recipe for spicy popcorn. Popcorn would be unabated Yeah yeah. But here's the interesting thing so I developed this recipe and I I started sharing my popcorn and I found to my delight was that people couldn't stop eating at children loved it was y.c. And that's a flavor it wasn't high tide and cayenne in the sense that you're using spices not to you know. And so I wanted to talk with you about it partly because I'm wondering if it's a combination of things you probably can figure out what most of the ingredients are. So I I have like organic ala popcorn Coconut Oil I had turmeric to the oil and the popcorn before it pops ground turmeric the grandchildren can. Settle flavor in for I'm color and then after it pops I add salt granulated garlic cumin cinnamon pepper spike and nutritionally taste those are the basic things I always add Wow Wow So I don't know how I discovered to add attritional Yes I just I'm a person just throw stuff together and eat. And but I just heard that. Movie theater is small independent movie theaters and see plenty of us started putting nutritional out in addition to cheese powder. And so I'm wondering is this a magical kind of a if there's something about the nutritional gaze that added to it just makes it impossible to. Sort of like to read it as you know you know I do think what would you say that like the readers like to read it was to read other people my God. Ok so I know someone Ok this is a crazy I know someone who refers to pop corn with nutritionally East as hippie to read us. And I think Ok so 1st of all the combination of labor sounds great you have turmeric you have garlic you have these like savory flavors the coconut oil obviously is rich. But in the cinnamon you know as the school sort of sweet kind of spicy no without Like you said it being spicy in the tongue so I think there's a very so much going on that sounds delicious and in the traditional east like you said it's kind of like it's thought of as being like a health food store kind of like rerun or sometimes you know people think of as a hippie food I think today it's getting sort of a little bit more of a revival cuz. It's sort of cheese like in flavor and so you can it has begin so I think you know it's like you can choose powder but you know it's really about it is yeah it has I think in some ways it's sort of cheesy but really it's about the fact that it has this it has some mommy and it's it's an interesting product it's made by I forget exactly what like the base is but the yeast it's like a wild yeast that grows and so it's a product of natural fermentation and so like you know lots of pickles or sauerkraut or really cheeses and cured meats you know they have that depth of flavor and so this is the just kind of skimmed that has been you know that growing off this base powder it and so you get this concentrated beautiful sweet mommy flavor. And awesome addition to all those different spices and sounds super great really great well thanks so much for the call Larry and thank you for the idea for popcorn I do I'm going to make them. Take care. 'd more conversation with you and I cannot honestly say that I know every. We've made it with the. American Public Media. Support for public radio comes from North Rim adventure sports offering an extensive selection of bicycles components and accessories as well as service and support at 17082nd Street. They also offer on line shopping cycling tips and updated listings of cycling events at their website Northam adventure dot com support also comes from a News Cafe dot com an online news magazine for nor state news and commentary with regional writers and photographers providing perspectives on local and national issues News Cafe dot com You're listening to The Splendid Table on public radio. I'm Frances lamb and this is The Splendid Table the show for curious cooks and eaters were supported by noon offering a personalized weight loss program that uses psychology small goals and technology designed to help people change habits and keep the weight off for good at new and o.o.m. Dot com. We're back 105375252 or find us on Facebook or Twitter and we have received from Hot lanta. Hey I'm good I'm good and we don't really plan but. I'm sorry I just want to get so much into the outcast. Ok so I am kind of a recent budget hearing and for the most part it's been pretty easy I was able to live. Through any kind of edgy feeling you know I really missed a long drawn out Sunday dinners like 1st chicken or beef burger and you know. Right now I put on a pot of beans or make your weapons grade Ratatouille. Any other suggestions or any other dinners I can have cooking away. To take really good on Sundays I like to listen to your show on Sunday and just from something cooking away I mean. Yeah totally I mean I think. Yeah I think the whole sunday roast vibe is such a cool vibe right is that you love the idea if you have something big in the oven it's going to hang out and forces you to be there as you say you want to bring other people there around with you. And yeah if you're cooking vegetarian sometimes and you know what's the obvious replacement for like a whole ham it's like well a whole pumpkin. You know it's not necessarily a super like one to one switch out kind of thing. But I would think a couple things right away I have a friend and he's all. Who I don't know if this was like because she was sensing a vibe or she just like declared it but she declared the 2018 is the year of lasagna. And she's the one then also everywhere I look like every food magazine is writing stories about lasagna I'm like oh my God she's on to something it's a list on your moment but lasagna actually is kind of a perfect obviously very vegetarian friendly analogy that you would take a nice long time assembling it you know you can find your mix of cheeses get your a card or just raw you know season it down took your sauce and I could also see you slipping in some nice roasted eggplant and there. Eggplant Parmesan hybrid where you slice eggplant like the big long way and bread it and fry a few pieces of that layer layer so yeah there I could see some nice roasted vegetables and there are maybe even some like roasted vegetables and maybe like slice some funnel kind of thin and drop the ball in there so they keep it keep a little crunch so you have like a variation in textures Yes And I think cooked vegetables a little bit of you know less cooked so they still have that crunch to it that Christmas. I would definitely play around with some like cool is on your vibes like that could be a very Sunday take all day kind of thing. The other thing I would think. Is you can also rather than one big thing kind of flip it and keep yourself busy by making lots of little things so I think maybe like a whole spread a message right so oh you know I love yeah so like you mentioned beans of butter you can make like a really beautiful homemade scratch hummus from dried chickpeas and I love you very meat like hummus is like such a delicious but it's like it's such a. Every day grocery store thing at this point you know like most people don't think of making it themselves but when you make a good hummus and like a recipe in Jerusalem for instance is super famous and is. Amazing eating that yeah I can't be a store. Man it's like still warm in the chickpeas or like sweet and buttery in the tahini and it's soul good so I would start with that and then he can do a little bit of season thick yogurt maybe chop up a little bit of cucumber isn't some mint leaves and a little grating of raw garlic in the yogurt so that's a nice thing and. My friend doc who's child a lot in Turkey is a huge fan of this Turkish way of cooking vegetables which basically if I'm like I'm not so good use like or Basically you start with like an insane amount of olive oil and boil your vegetables. So. Yeah but he'll put up an inch or you know of olive oil in a nice saucepan and then put in green beans or you know some kind of vegetable like let's go with green beans and simmer basically slowly praise the green beans in the olive oil for like an hour 45 minutes or were oh well yeah if it's getting in that's made a season you can like cut meat on half and great it on the grader see get that like ice tomato pulp get that in there get maybe help garlic close maybe some onions and just let it all braised together into the green means I like that like mushy consistency but like have that. I think the thing with green beans when you could a long time they taste more like beans them like green and I love that they're not pretty look out but they have that beautiful sweet complex earthy flavor that comes out so you have all that but in this mixture of olive oil and the tomato and the garlic it's just so good and you know you get a whole bunch of those things and if you're really feeling super ambitious maybe like bake your own pita and have a human spread you know like that's a great way to spend a Sunday if you ask me that's a great idea of all that stuff can be eaten throughout the week you know yeah exactly totally love let's say in most target shoot especially awesome cool I hope hope hope you have a couple weekends How do you know yes I do listen to your show while we're cooking and. I can't wait thank you so much Yeah I think you're right to camera as a healer I. Here we have Brianna like Holly Gagne would like to talk about today. Well my husband is enjoying some of the labors of yet and he has come to enjoy a whiskey sour and I want to make them for him but I don't actually know how to feel and I have a little bartender recipe book and it just so better I googled butter and the Google will not help me. With more questions about what it is that actually because they were like so many different kinds and then you know everything with the you know a bit or your case but I don't know what a better it is and you're. Sure sure well. I'm glad you called because I actually don't drink myself but I actually happen to really like bettors. Very weird tiny like window of opportunity where I could be helpful to you Ok so there's our alcohol they are alcoholic if you have to call because you can't actually have like the substance you can have them but in this case they are typically an infusion of herbs or roots a lot of betters go way back in history to having like you know like various mountain herbs and probably seen as medicinal in things like that but that they're exactly what they sound like they are bitter they are a little tinctures that will add a bitter note to whatever they go in but the nice thing about them is especially when you talk about alcohol and talk tails and there's so much that's usually acidic or sweet or herbal aromatic you've always flavors a little bit of bitterness really does help ground it every helps the cocktail taste more balanced and just like full and satisfying it's almost like. You know when you cooking food and you're missing a little something in that little pinch of salt that really sort of. Like waking that up and it really like rounds it all out bidders often can do that for a drink I think. Even the flavor of better the taste of bitter a lot of people don't like on its own when you mix it with these other things it can it can just give it a little more. And you know like you see there are tons and tons and tons of kinds . A person new debaters to be completely frank most of them will probably taste pretty similar and so will be pretty interchangeable so I would not freak out about like oh my god need to find the exact right kind. Is called Angostura a and g s t u r a. It's not expensive it's a few dollars a bottle they're everywhere it's a classic bitters that you would shake into a cocktail and what I would start with is you can definitely start just putting it into the cocktails and a drop 2 drops 3 jobs tasting along the way until you find it gets you somewhere good. I loved like I said I don't drink I love butters and soda does a club I just shake invaders and sometimes it is for me like I feel like literally 2 or 3 jobs just get a tiny tiny bit of the aroma because a lot of the others will have lots of floral notes and stuff like that. So sometimes I just want to have a little bit of that really nice beautiful scent while I'm just drinking soda water and sometimes I like her to like color the whole thing orange and feel like you taste that bitterness more and it feels like it's settling your stomach you know it does that kind of thing it's pretty magical stuff that's all you really cool yeah so I would try again maybe start with an I guess or something pretty classic And then if you want to get into it there are all kinds of you know small batch bettors and orange bitter and cocoa butter is made with all kinds of different flavors that they infuse with all the other herbs and stuff like that. Thank you so much you're willing to kind of find something we fall in love with that we go all out like a new adventure for us however don't call this is definitely unique out on. Yeah it's a clear enjoy. Thank you. Remember you can always get to us anytime Facebook Twitter just call 180537 prices for. A great falafel is the kind of food that just makes you live in a world with human ingenuity I mean right you look on paper and it's like Ok it's a blob of logic peace but then you get it and there's a crunch in the shell and the beans are sweet and earthy and they hold on to the flavor of savory spices and it's proof that humankind can take things from the earth and do good. And this week from America's Test Kitchen adds to the long history of falafel innovation salicylate got the word k.l. Great to have you thanks for having me I'm excited to be here so I ever so slightly obsessed with falafel and I have made many of Araya t. In eating them in many places and I have to say there's a lot of bad falafel out there yes there. Can be quite some unsavory falafels in the world so what's the what is the hard thing what do we need to know about them well I mean 1st you should know that falafels are made with chick peas they can also be made with fava beans but but we say we make ours with chickpeas So let me ask are these chick peas cooked or are they just so this should be as are not cooked there so it is that traditional Is that how they're usually done well here's the thing I think the debate is actually how is it really done and I think lots of you know regions make them differently although the movie asked you know claims the fame I grew up in Michigan and we have like the largest Middle Eastern population and so I've had lots of falafel and I've had them made in many different ways some were very good and some you know not so good I think that we've managed to nail down a way to make them consistently. Delicious now we are talking about really making falafel here this is not rehydrating a dried mix we are starting from scratch crass the only way to goes out all right tell me how to do it Ok so 1st things 1st we're going to start with uncooked chick peas and we let them soak overnight and it should at least 8 hours 8 to $24.00 is ideal right and where you were doing this instead of using canned because obviously cans are already in a solution and more than likely they've already been cooked for the sake of preservation right. And so when you are trying to make your falafel batter with cooked chickpeas or over so chickpeas you'll end up with the pace deep puree which is a great way to get hard hasty falafel Yeah they're just mushy I mean I've tried this I have to say so I didn't realize that this chick peas are not supposed to be cooked No they should not be cooked it's best to start we're going to cook them you venture we don't need the clip exactly Ok so so we have our chickpeas and so it and we go into a food processor with these chickpeas with some of my favorite our onions salon from parsley and some very warm spices coriander cumin cayenne pepper and a little salt and we blitz those in the food processor we're looking for a nice pebbly texture We don't want the chickpeas to get too small maybe about the size of a sesame seed which would be probably most specific so you want chunky not like looking like hummus right Ok so we have the Course the ground chickpeas with their spices and their bones beautiful green herbs and garlic and then what is next well I think this is the part where people really get hung up or tricked up the most they want to fry their falafels I think they're at that point but really you need to add something to make the batter stick together because if you fried it in this point they would definitely crumble in the oil. So we use an Asian bread baking step that's called Tang Zong and it's pretty much whisking a little flour with some water and cooking that mixture briefly in this case we just cook it in the microwave for a few minutes until it becomes more like a pudding like paste right yeah and it's not a large amount and it goes a long way and you just add that putting mix into your falafel batter of sorts and you mix it together make sure it will incorporate it and now you have the kind of falafel batter that you want to fry. That's so interesting because I have definitely tried to just add flour before and it has not been very successful so I need to really do a cooked. Flower pay raise is the way to go I mean we've tried like just rolling it in flour We've tried just adding flour to the mixture you know we've tried all these things but this. Method is like flawless it definitely gets the job done so and you guys deep fry your falafel balls or are you a pan fry or we are deep fryers. All day every day do you find is the way to go Yeah we did and so you know we just scoop about a tablespoon at a time I do about 5 or 6 of them out of time because they're easier to manage and then you only 5 for 5 minutes until they're golden brown and delicious and then what do you like to top them with I want to talk my falafels with to Heaney sauce. Which is a very simple sauce actually is one of the sauces I just like to keep in my house because I deplore lot of things I'm into he thought but it's a simple seamy paste Greek yogurt limited use some water and salt and pepper it to taste delicious on anything. Thanks so much thank you for having me Sally is great. America and you can find the recipe for falafel. That's our show for this week thank you for spending time with us and it's all next week. Produced by American Public Media and supported by uncommon flavors of. P.t.o. . And spec. To geographically certified cheeses and a ham with traditional places of origin recipes available at Uncommon you campaign finance with the aid of European Union. And by new offering a personalized weight loss program that uses psychology and small goals to change habits lose the weight and keep it off for good. Noom. Dot com. For information on anything you heard you're to build a Splendid Table dot org Take a look at rest because action sign a pro weekly email with my kitchen and don't forget to subscribe to our podcast it's all there when a table that or. A production team includes senior producer Jennifer Russell Jenni j. Luke He's an editor and technical director Erika Romero is our associate producer in his eye digital producer Sally Swift is our managing producer thank you for tweeting and I'm Francis lamb and this is the American Public Media. You are soon to n.s.p. Our North State Public Radio k c h o Chico and k f p r reading listener supported public radio connecting the communities of Northern California a broadcast service of California State University Chico on the web at my n.s.p. Our daughter or. An especially creative exemplar of engaging religious tradition while also remaking its forms for people now born of an eminent Orthodox or binnacle many and he once moved away from religion toward storytelling theater and drag these days he leads a pop up Synagogue in New York City with a global profile it's about renewing spiritual life and community while reinventing the fairy meaning of the week without being. Too funny the language that I've been trying to wrestle with that very thin line very tightrope between. The past and audience and we're finding that in between and it's how to be cheeky without being cheesy and how to be profound how to bring the sacred I think we're starving for the sacred I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being Stay with us. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Barbara Kline police in Dayton Ohio are trying to piece together clues into what motivated a 24 year old man to open fire in a popular nightlife area at about 1 am last night killing 9 people officials say his sister is among the dead Republican governor Mike De Wine says police were well prepared at a news conference he was asked whether more should be done the question is that policymakers have to think about is is there anything we can do in the future. To. Make sure something like this does not happen make sure the wrong but the possibility. Of people killed the gunman was wearing body armor and was equipped with high capacity magazines the u.s. District attorney in El Paso Texas says investigators now consider the mass shooting at a local Wal-Mart Yes.