So delicious because of how vulnerable and open to the elements they are that the chef scientists. With the word. Good and one particular kind of we should be getting more for the environment we've got Alison Romans fresh. And more this hour on the splendid. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington. 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 oh Iles Republican governor Mike De Wine says police were well prepared at a news conference he was asked whether more should be done the question 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 is the wrong term but to the. People who 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 yesterday an act of domestic terrorism the suspect is in custody accused of killing 20 people N.P.R.'s Hannah Alam reports at a news conference in El Paso John bash the u.s. Prosecutor in charge of the western district of Texas said the Justice Department is considering federal hate crime and weapons charges for the 21 year old man identified as the suspect fashion also said investigators say the attack meets the legal definition of domestic terrorism we are treating it as a domestic terrorism case and we're going to do what we do the terrorists in this country which is deliver swift and certain justice a manifesto attributed to the suspect is filled with anti immigrant and white nationalist ideology Hispanics in particular were singled out police say the suspect surrendered at the scene and is cooperating with investigators have now Lam n.p.r. News thousands were back in the streets of Hong Kong today after clashing with police yesterday this started demonstrating 2 months ago to oppose an egg. Tradition bill but the protest has turned into a revolt against Beijing's control over the territory and N.P.R.'s Julie McCarthy reports there's no sign the movement is losing stain I'm standing in a sea of black t. Shirts the color of this anti-government movement that appears to have only gathered strength by the 10s of thousands protesters have marched here to Hong Kong's velodrome it's a green oasis in the new territories they're chanting Monday strike a reference to the general strike they have called Hong Kong to join they are calling for Beijing to honor Hong Kong semi autonomous status it gives residents here rights and freedoms not found anywhere else in China the weekend's events seem to be a warm up act for what is to come Monday a general strike that could see unprecedented public support Julie McCarthy n.p.r. News Hong Kong this is n.p.r. News. Iran says it seized another tanker in the Persian Gulf Tehran accuses it of smuggling fuel to Persian Gulf Arab states Iranian officials are not providing details on the vessel $45.00 Republican senators have written to Britain's Conservative prime minister bars Johnson pledging to support a new trade deal with the u.k. After it leaves the European Union but as Vicki Barker reports from London the deal the g.o.p. Lawmakers have in mind could prove hugely unpopular with the British people agribusiness interests have been seeking untrammelled access to the vast u.k. Market for years but they've been hampered by British rules banning the routine use of hormones in meat production and by strict e.u. Rules on pesticide and chemical residues the letter authored by Arkansas Tom Cotton promises to advocate for a speedy new bilateral trade agreement once Britain leaves the e.u. The top administration has already made opening up market access to u.s. Agricultural products a precondition for any such deal that's something opinion polls show some 80 percent of the British public would oppose coverage of this issue is rife with references to chlorine washed American chickens and. Beef for n.p.r. News I'm Vicki Barker in London executives at London's Heathrow Airport are negotiating with the union leaders trying to avoid a 2 day strike beginning to Mark tomorrow workers are threatening to walk out at midnight this is n.p.r. Support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include Numa offering a personalized weight loss program that uses psychology and small goals to change habits with the goal of losing weight and keeping it off for good. Dot com. I'm Frances lamb and this is The Splendid Table from a.p.m. American Public Media the show for curious cooks and. 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 an avocado in an egg imagine tasting or something they could be described that way that's only bizzare 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 Syrians are super over fish but they had a bum you out today because alleys got a different take on the story. Now before he gets an alley is when the most interesting dude's in the world he is a pile chemist and an author and a trained chef and who happens to spear fish and freedom in his spare time hey Allie It's great to talk with you today thanks Francis is good to talk to you. About sea urchins wants to you know they like the most terrifying looking animals 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 scientists. 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 Syrians 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 rein to pull all of them waste her 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 mommy and 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 froze it is the reason that those animals are delicious That's incredible So Ok so you dive for urchins and actually the reason why you're in that is because he is right this 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 many sometimes called many become more and more popular chefs and so like you know they're getting into all these like Chef you dishes and they become the cliche were chefs of 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 version story than these 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 that helps get nutrients there was a freak outbreak that killed a bunch of Syrians natural predators which are see stars starfish but I have to say see stars or 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 revocation already where the local recreational abalone fishery which is where most where most non-commercially fished 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 as the anchor of the food chain. Will be swiftly kicked out. And the helper 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 deforestation 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 or even caught 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 and they're a 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 are 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 20 tongues and the reality is their applications in the kitchen go way beyond that you know so we talk to you as a scientist before and then as a diver and then we talk to you as a chef what can you do with them aside from just plucking them some way sushi rice chemically and Colin airily they should think of them as a wonderful hybrid between an artichoke in an egg or an avocado an egg maybe as a. Better comparison. And again I mean you asked 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 in everything almost to a point of of self-parody. Same same thing with any like they are full of fat and protein so you can use them as a source of Browning So you can incorporate them in the crazy a barbecue marinated are yakitori marinated you can use their fattiness to enrich. They make some of the best brioche that I've ever tasted. A 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. Or 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 per person per day right now. And we should be is what you're saying and should be 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 is awesome you are awesome thank you so much thank you come up to the county and if you do so much. I'll bizzare is the author of greedy unveiling the essential elements of food and to read his article on purple urchins and server. Coming up next. Around. The bus which is basically the. Principle goes from a lot of tools to use a lot of those of. Which is a book in the print for. Over 170 years in Italy and he uses that many of his recipes period period fun to bust as much as a not as much as is needed for as much as he like that's the author Rolando Baron Mendi and I could listen to him talk and which is good because he going to tell us about something you said 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 Good afternoon you're listening to The Splendid Table on k s u t public radio support is provided by Durango nursery and supply offering a seasonal palette of landscaping materials during the nursery is staffed with friendly nursery professionals who have the recipe for your garden success during the nursery helping good gardeners become better cooks and are located just south of the Home Depot bridge on k.c. Lane. 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 the 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 price our rice salad like even to the words freaked me out a little rice salad. But then that gnarly July 4th heat wave hit and I was like I will eat anything cold I'm in fact will only be cold to 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 isn't a stallion food importer a great cook and the author of I'll tend to 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 as a penny more so as a 1st course instead of pasta because you kind of like make a During the day and then let it sit all the flavors it all sort of amalgamated into it and then you don't have to you know bald pasta during a hot summer night so they tend to be very much take the place of a for scores 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 but with an insert the ones that you can do not just for the past and then it has the colander built in and you 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 I do say valued over 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 and 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 know 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 you just drizzle a little bit of it all olive oil and with your fingers you just spread it out and cool it off and so then think of it as if you were using rice as suspect that you can come up with different sauces 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 Could you use arborio or would it be better to go with long grain I think 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 a long grain rice from the same area not only but I find that that it doesn't stay al dente long as not only kind of really has a much more stronger bite and so for rice salad but the word sticking 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'd chose to include in identical was the contest because she was the woman who I work with in implemented 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 the best of bulls with different types. Of the greedy and stop 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 they even broken tuna and there it's just the most important thing I think for me is that you try to chop everything as Finally as possible then every bite that you will take of the salad it will be a little bit different so that not everything becomes homogeneous or there are 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 great 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 if you like some said splash of lemon renew 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 right is 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 know like with the contest is right salad chooses a mayonnaise base for it. How do you decide what dressing combinations which might use well I think that as I always say options and substitution Zdeno I'm trying to pass around the word Quando Busta which is basically this principled from the not to see a lot of the banner which is a book has been in print for over 170 years in Italy and he uses in many of his recipes and I've used to throw out all tentacles q. Period be period Basta as much as enough as much as is needed. Good 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 moral 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 a but just I think that the most important thing is to taste as you add 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 and 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 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 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. Maybe put cuts up or balsamic vinegar on it. It's so you know I think that's the beauty of our country Italy is so basic that 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 that for the most part we would we would put disparate agreed on such as you know ingredients that are very wintered like let's try something with truffles in the summertime or porcine mushrooms we would save those for the winter and use them in place all to instead so I think the seasonality is a is a very important. Aspect to a rice salad I think the fresher in the simpler the. Rolando and so delicious thank you so much for being with us. On our is all mine thank you so much for having. Him and He is the author of. Looking at how in the authentic with Russ Parsons is the author of How to take a peach ham for your rice salad needs Rolando gave us his recipe for the contest says Rice salad that's a splendid table dot org. Now if you don't know Alison Lohman you're probably going to want to and if you do know her you probably know her as the queen of the chocolate chip cookie I mean seriously the recipe live your best life it's like she rebelled against a chocolate chip cookie and somehow made it better it wasn't the sweets of the dining room or container Seana Seaver away it was her ideas for the thoroughly modern breakfast. One of the chapters that really grabbed my eye is the one on savory breakfasts it's it's really a unique collection of recipes it's not breakfast it's not brunch Can you describe it. Well you know I didn't want to just call it breakfast because while you know when I think of bankers I think of 2 eggs a side a bake and some 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 chick 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 eggs 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 ness 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 chapter I want to ask you about one of those things is the flavor combinations that you mention 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 saw it's in 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 ones so the chatter in the kimchi that recipe is really an egg 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 and 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. All of chickpeas with cherries over breakfast as a little intense sometimes but it sometimes it's exactly what you mean and you know it's not a revolutionary flavor combination necessarily I think that to think of something like that for breakfast as it's 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 salad 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 over and 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 there is really beautiful lettuce is that we had gotten from this little farm down there is 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 hung 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 a 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 and if I'm cooking at home and I have leftovers especially from a larger kind of mean or part chops are or whatever using up any roasted vegetable long without 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 funnel balled 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 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 this up 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 you know some deep diving I thought a lot about it 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 Allison thanks so much of course Thanks for having. Elsa moments book is highly. Charged a Sievers the author of a real sweet can find Alison's recipe for bait eggs with crushed chickpeas and bread crumbs on sport it's a. Do not have to wait for the morning. All right let's talk to us any way you like 10537525 you can find us a Facebook or Twitter and we have Larry calling from St Paul Hi Larry how are you Francis I'm just fine thank you and. Well I've got this recipe for spicy popcorn and I developed about 5 years after my return from India in 1974 and spent. That in London sorry education and when I got there in 1983 and realized they didn't have any popcorn and I love popcorn and we were living in. A smallish place and serious campus and that and I was going to school and and and I wanted to enjoy making our own port so I developed a recipe for Spacey groundnuts which is what they call peanuts in India. And I'm here you know it's a party all for a charity and still. Give us a really great recipe and then when I came back home in 74 I continued to face the grown ups to make them and then I eventually evolved over the next 2 or 3 years a recipe for spicy popcorn your love for popcorn would be unabated Yeah yeah. But here's the interesting thing so I I developed this recipe and I I started sharing my popcorn and but I found to my delight was that people couldn't stop eating at children muffed it was what I see you know lots of Klaver it wasn't Had I didn't add Cayenne So I see in the sense that you're using spices not you know much about and so I wanted to talk with you about it because I'm wondering if it's that combination of things you probably can figure out what most of the ingredients are . So I I have like organic yellow popcorn Coconut Oil I had turmeric to the oil and the popcorn before it pops ground turmeric blue ground. For sort of flavor and par and color and then after I add salt granulated garlic human cinnamon pepper spike and your traditional against those are the basic things I always add. So I don't know how I discovered the editors and I guess I just you know I'm a person just throw stuff together and it said. And but I just said that. Movie theaters small independent movie theaters in Pontiac west so I didn't put a nutritionally out in addition to cheese Poder. And so I'm wondering I'm wondering if this a magical kind of or if there's something about the nutritional used that added to it just makes it impossible to stop eating. Sort of like to read or as you're not you know I do think so what would you say that I'd like to read it was to real sort of my God. Ok so I know someone who does a crazy I know someone who refers to popcorn with nutritionally yeast as hippy to read us. And I think Ok so 1st of all the combination of layers sounds great you have turmeric the of garlic. You have these like savory flavors the coconut oil obviously is rich. But then the cinnamon you know adds 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 east like it's kind of like it's thought of as being like a health food store kind of like revive 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 begun so I think you know it's like she's powder. 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 it's a product of natural fermentation and so like you know lots of pickles or sauerkraut or 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 the growing. Powder it and so you get this concentrated beautiful sweet mommy flavor. And awesome addition to all those different spices sounds super great. Thanks so much for the call and thank you for the idea for popcorn and I'm going to make them . More conversation with you and I cannot honestly say that I know every technique for every falafel I've ever had but I will say that the way that we've made it with the tangs on I have never had one as good as asked that's all Simone from America's Test Kitchen while the 2nd cloth comes from Chinese. I'm Francis lamb and this is The Splendid Table from a.p.m. American Public Media Good afternoon you're listening to The Splendid Table on k s u t public radio support is provided by Durango nursery and supply offering a seasonal palette of landscaping materials during the nursery is staffed with friendly nursery professionals who have the recipe for your garden success during the nursery helping good gardeners become better cooks they're located just south of the Home Depot bridge on k.c. Lane. 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 noon and o.o.m. Dot com. We're back call 105375252 or 5 days of Facebook Twitter. And we have barista from Hot lanta. Tell me I'm good I'm good and we don't really call it hot lanta but. I'm sorry I just want to get so much into the outcasts. It's Ok so I am that kind of a recent budgetary and for the most part it's been pretty easy I love that little bit of. Any kind of edgy The only thing I really missed out of a long drawn out Sunday dinners like 1st chicken or beef burger 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 think you just yeah totally I mean I think. Yeah I think the whole sunday roast vibe is such a cool vibe right it is 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 or you know what's the obvious replacement for like a whole ham it's like well a whole pumpkin might you know it's not necessarily a super like $1.00 to $1.00 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 declined the 2018 is the year of lasagna. And she's the one then also everywhere I look like every food magazine is running 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 cottage just raw you know season it down took your sauce and I could also see you slipping in some nice roasted eggplant and they're. Sort of like a. 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 fennel kind of thin and drop the thing on there so they keep it keep a little crunch so you have like a variation in textures you know some iced 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 yeah 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 for meat like hummus is like such a delicious but it's like it's such a. Every day grocery store thing at this point 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 it's. Amazing eating that yeah it can't be. Man it's like still warm in the chickpeas or like sweet and buttery in the tahini and it's so good. So I would start with that and maybe can do a little bit of season thick yogurt maybe chop up a little bit of cucumber and 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 the Turkish way of cooking vegetables are basically it's only coming out so good use like or Basically you start with like an insane amount of olive oil and boil your vegetables. So the likelihood is yeah but he'll put up he'll probably 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 braze the green beans in the olive oil for like an hour 45 minutes oh er oh well yeah you know if it's getting in that's made a season you can like cut in half and grade 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 come along time they taste more like beans than 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 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 make 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 that's a most turkey shoot especially awesome cool I hope hope hope you have a couple weekends How do you know yes I do want to listen to your show while cooking and. I can't thank you so much Yeah I think you are right to camera as a healer I. Here we have Brianna calling me obviously to talk about today. Well my husband is enjoying some of the flavors 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 I just add better Google butter and Google will not help me Oh no question about what butter that actually mean because they were like so many different kinds and then you know everything with you know a bitter here today. I don't know what a better is and your last Sure sure well. I'm glad you called because I actually don't drink myself but I actually happen to really like bettors. It's a 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 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 work over various mountain herbs and were probably seen as medicinal and things like that but that they're exactly what they sound like they're 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 and really 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 wakens it up and it really like rounds it all out there's often can do that for a drink I think. Even though the flavor of bitter 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 of. And you know like you see in there are tons and tons and tons of kinds. For a person new to bidders 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. Of Plastic 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 that it gets you somewhere good. Well I loved like I said I don't drink I love butters and soda does a club soda I just shake and bitters 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 too. 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 to judge and like color the whole thing orange and feel like you taste that there is 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 girly cool yeah so I would try again maybe start with an I guess or something pretty classic And then if you want to get geeky into it there are all kinds of you know small batch bitters and orange bidders and cocoa bread enters Bay with all kinds of different flavors that they infuse with all the other herbs and stuff like that. Thank you so much I want you to kind of find them don't we fall in love with them we go all out like you know venture us already cool this is definitely unique out on thank you so much Yeah it's a Karen Joy. Thank you. Remember you can always get to us any time please Twitter just call 18053752. 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 fried chick peas 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 hey oh no 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 a variety and eaten 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 make ours with chickpeas So let me ask are these chick peas cooked or are they just soaked they should be as are not cooked they're soaked 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 milli 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 grass the only way to go south. Right tell me how to do it Ok so 1st thing's 1st we're going to start with uncooked chick peas and we let them soak overnight and it should soak at least 8 hours 8 to $24.00 is ideal right Ok 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 oversell chickpeas you end up with a paste the puree which is a great way to get hard paste the falafel the other just mushy I mean I've tried this I have to say so I didn't realize that chick peas are not supposed to be cut no they should not be cooked it's best to start we're going to cook them eventually we don't need them exactly Ok so so we have our chickpeas that have been sold and we go into a food processor with these chickpeas with some of my favorite or an insulin 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 it chunky not like looking like hummus right Ok so we have the Course the ground chickpeas with their spices and their Those beautiful green herbs and garlic and then what is next well I think this is a part of 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 make sure briefly in this case we just cook. 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 as well incorporated 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 has not been very successful so I need to really do a cooked flour paid cook far praise 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 a way to go Ok yeah we did buy and so you know we just scoop about a tablespoon at a time I do about 5 or 6 of them at a time because they're easier to manage and then you only fire for 5 minutes until they're golden brown and delicious and then what do you like to top them with I love this hot 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 office because I deploy lot of things into Heaney sauce but it's a simple Seanie paste Greek yogurt limb and use some water and salt and pepper it to taste delicious you can eat that on anything anything. Else thanks so much thank you for having me Sally is great. As a food stylist to Tesco and America's test you can find the recipe for falafel at Splenda table. And that's our show for this week thank you for spending all that time with us and it's all next week we'll drink well. Produced by e.p.o. And. Public Media and is supported by uncommon flavors of Europe. P.t.o. . And spec j.p.g. I too geographically certified cheeses and a ham with traditional places of origin recipes available at Uncommon you campaign finance but the aid of European Union. By new offering a personalized weight loss program that uses psychology and small goals to change habits to help choose the late keep it off for good. For information on a thing you heard your Splendid Table dot org Take a look at the recipe collection sign up for a weekly email with my kitchen and don't forget to subscribe to our podcast it's all there on Splendid Table dot org. Our production team includes senior producer Jennifer Jenni j. Luke either editor and technical director Erika Romero is our associate producer and is a digital producer. Or managing producer thank you for tuning and I'm Frances lamb and this is American Public Media. You've been listening to The Splendid Table on k s u t 4 Corners Public Radio and Southern new tribal radio Thanks for tuning in this afternoon stick around for full Cowley coming up next. This is. Q u t Farmington or us w. Flora Vista and. Springs we can also be heard in Cortez Maine coasts Silverton and online at k.s.u. T.v. Dot org. When Susie saw an ad for free slot machine did she play on her phone she thought. It was super easy to get in there and get online and start playing but this free game cost hundreds of thousands of dollars I felt targeted I was on just money Susie's money into Facebook's pockets on the next reveal. Join us for reveal coming up this afternoon at 4 full Callias Next support is provided by the herbal alternative with daily tours of their organic cannabis facility where the public can learn about the plants from those who grow them locally owned and operated in Cortez open daily from 8 am to 8 55 pm at 1531 Lebanon road and at the herbal alternative dot net. It's folk alley your weekly deep dive into the folk and roots music world I'm Elaine a scene I'm glad to be swimming around with you this week thanks for listening this week it's now on core presentation of a show we 1st broadcast last summer summer vacation is here after all on the way you'll hear from the Irish band we banjo 3 along with a sample from tain and next something kind of old but made new again Bahraini Crowl. He's got a birthday coming up in early August seems about right to start the hour with something from his acoustic classics album here's an updated version of one of his classic hits.