A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Is Cheesecake Really Pie? ft. Max Miller

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Today, we're joined by Max Miller of Tasting History to ask the question: Is Cheesecake Really Pie? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Cheesecake is so popular that its factory has a cult following from the likes of Kim Kardashian, Steph Curry, and Drake. But would these mega-celeb superfans be qualified to answer the question, Is a cheesecake really a pie? This is a hot dog is a sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense.

A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show where we break down the world's biggest food debates. I'm your host, Josh Ayer. And I'm your host, Nicole Hendizadeh. And today we are joined by friend of the show, Max Miller. Max is the creator and host of the YouTube show, Tasting History,

where he recreates dishes from historical recipes updated for present-day kitchens with no shortage of historical accounts along the way. Recently, he celebrated the channel's first anniversary, Mazel Tov, Max, by creating the cock and trees, a half-pig, half-bird creature served in banquet halls of Tudor England. We're glad he could join us in hoping his knowledge of the medieval cheesecake, Sambocade, will come in handy for today's conversation. Max, welcome. Thank you.

Good to be here. Thanks so much, man. So are you LA-based? Are you local? Yeah, I'm out in Bur conversation. Max, welcome. Thank you. Good to be here. Thanks so much, man. So are you LA based? Are you like local? Yeah, I'm out in Burbank. Oh my goodness. We are also in Burbank. This is incredible. Recording remotely from the same city. We're huge, huge Burbank boosters. Oh, yeah. No, it's a great place because, you know, I used to work out here at Disney.

I got furloughed, but still very convenient, you know. So I love Burbank. Absolutely. And so, I mean, your channel is just about a year old. We'll get to the whole cheesecake thing soon. But I mean, we're just gushing because, I mean, we're huge fans of Tasting History. And I mean, you come off as like a television veteran. Like you just have such incredible presentation skills.

And that is a tough thing to learn. Fake it till make it um yeah that's us that's us well it's funny because so my my fiance jose has started a like a secondary channel called catch up with max where we're going back and watching the old episodes the old episodes from a year ago oh my god of tasting history and i just cringe at like how much more comfortable i am in front of a camera than i was a year ago um it's definitely something that takes a while to to learn but you know also amen it's funny how quickly like digital media moves especially the youtube space that you know you are now like max reacts his first video, which was like 11 months ago. That's crazy. That's it, baby.

That's how fast you got to make content in this game. But you also have a musical theater background? Yeah. So I trained in classical singing, and then I did musical theater in New York for eight years, performed all over. Amazing. And I think being on stage gives you gives you some of that

presentation experience, though. It's it's totally weird. I'm more comfortable performing or doing things in front of 10,000 people than I am in front of a camera or one or two people. You know, it's almost like with 10,000 people, you can't see the judgment in their eyes because there are too many. But with one person, you can see everything. Yeah. And then you're kind of in your own head with the camera. Like you see your reflection slightly staring back at you and like, oh, God, is that my soul? Yeah.

I feel that. I feel that. And the whole time I'm just like, do I look fat? That's me the entire time I'm recording. Straighten up your shoulders. Yeah. No, I'm always a fan. Jet forward.

Raise the camera angle so they don't get the double chin. Right. I'm always fighting for that in the kitchen. I'm like, can you just get top down? That's my good angle. Angle it. Angle it. Dutch angle.

Dutch angle. All right. So we should probably get into the topic at hand, which you did. One of my favorite videos of yours is the video of the Sambocade, which is the medieval cheesecake. Thank you. which you did one of my favorite videos of yours is the video of the Sambocade, which is the medieval cheesecake. Thank you.

And that one has a crust and you, you know, talk about making a tart crust for it. And so a lot of people argue that cheesecake is in fact a pie. Alton Brown, who I believe is an inspiration to you. And I mean, got an inspiration to like anyone of our age pretty much. So he tweeted very aggressively. Cheesecake is in fact a custard pie. Don't bother replyinglying in the negative just adjust your worldview and move on with it and that was i i personally took issue with that tweet but max is like the resident historian out of us three curious in your take i lost sleep over that that tweet it was yeah yeah it was a lot um but i did adjust you know what it's it's

funny because i don't know that i would say that it's a pie though it is a custard the thing is there are so many types of cheesecake but what it isn't is cake it's so not a cake um i agree oh what's a cake though well i mean what is so what is a cake so okay it's a cake in the way that a urinal cake is a cake it's not a cake it's it's got the shape and everything and if you go so if you go back to roman times they had cheesecakes uh they had several different kinds and they tended to be more like a cake because they either didn't have a crust at all or they would be wrapped in like a kind of pastry, completely enveloped. So it was more like a filling.

But by the Middle Ages, it wasn't a cake. It was, like you said, it was a custard, but it wasn't even a custard pie. I wouldn't call it a pie. I would call it a pudding because you were supposed to eat it. Yes. You're supposed to eat it out of the crust in the Middle Ages, you know eat it out of the crust uh in the middle ages you

know so would you discard the crust you'd usually just discard the crust yeah maybe give it to the dogs or something i agree i agree that it's a pudding in the british term that it's a pudding how you kind of steam it oh god yeah that's a whole podcast it's more of a british style pudding i would even call it a cheesecake a a tart. But calling it a pie is just, it's just not a pie. It's just, I can't, if I go to the store and I say, hey, honey, get me a pie. And he brings me a cheesecake. I was like, what are you doing? I want a cherry. I wanted strawberry. I wanted, I don't know, mudslide. Well, it's funny though, because pie is like a very American term, right? If you're, if you're in any of the Commonwealth countries and you say, hey, give me a pie

and you don't come back with something that has like, I don't know, organ meats and curry powder and tomato sauce on it, you know, then that's very weird for them. So this is all we often talk about in this podcast that so many of these arguments that we're looking at, we like kind of have to view through an American lens because that's what we grew up with. The terms are different. Exactly. But I mean, that said, cheesecake is a concept that has, it's spread all over the world,

right? And so when you talk about is cheesecake a pie, first you got to discuss what does is cheesecake mean? Because there are so many different kinds of cheesecake. I mean, has anyone been to Uncle Tetsu's in the, where is it? Is it in Westfield Century City? Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

The Japanese jiggly cheesecake? Yeah. That like, what is it? Sometimes they call jiggly cheesecake yeah that like what is it sometimes they call it cotton cheesecake or or yeah yeah yeah exactly that's a souffle but cheese you know it is yeah but i mean that said correct but that said like would you say that they are inaccurately calling that a cheesecake in the same sense that a new york cheesecake is inaccurately called a cheesecake also i will say the japanese cheesecake there's, I will say the Japanese cheesecake, there's flour in it, by the way. And there's flour in a lot of cheesecakes. So yeah, there's some sort of starch. There are typically eggs. I mean, obviously it's a souffle. So there are eggs in there. There's flour, eggs, sugar, and a leavening mechanism.

Like how is that not cake? Minute amount of cream cheese. I think the texture of it and how it moves and how it jiggles and how it wiggles is what makes it a souffle it's not a cake yeah so you would say that that is just a straight misnomer it's just strictly a marketing semantics that's all okay okay though i accept this do you know the basque the burnt cheesecake from the basque i sure do there's no crust there at all and it's very cake-like so maybe that's a cake but there's typically no so yeah it's called a gasta tarta which is one of like my favorite freaking desserts in the entire world but the cakiness from that uh it doesn't come from any starch it simply just comes from it like burning and coagulating so i know what you mean it's not like a creme caramel or a flan it has that that like density and chew to it.

It eats like a cake. But so I actually found something really interesting because I made a whole list of cheesecakes that don't have crusts, but could reasonably be called cheesecake. This is what I do in my free time. I love it. So the Basque Gasta Tarta, right?

There's no flour, there's no crust. I was curious in what the actual literal translation of Gasta Tarta means. Because Tarta, you look at obviously Latinate root for what we would call pie, but what is called a tart in typically the rest of the world. However, when you Google translate, for whatever that is worth as a scientific method, let's look at it. When you Google translate gasta tarta from Basque to English, it says cheesecake. However, you individually Google the words Gasta means cheese and tart means tart or pie. Right. Which is interesting.

So there is no crust on that, but they are calling it a tart. So in the Basque language, like there could, there's an alternate Basque podcast that you and I are hosting where they're saying is, is Gasta Tarta, should Gasta tarta be called gasta pastela, which is the actual Basque word for cake. So they are calling a crustless tart. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. There's, there's, we just understand. Doesn't it make, no, no, no. But doesn't it like make a pseudo crust with the coagulated burnt like bottom?

What does the word pseudo mean though? Fake. Pseudo means fake google it see but i would say that that's as much of a crust as like when you leave pudding out it's like the pudding skin on you know it's not really it's not a crust it's like a now you're speaking my language coding that has developed that's the filet mignon of pudding you just take i actually i uh i'm i'm fascinated with the fact that so many of these like fancy fine dining restaurants

are kind of just like serving you trash and dirt but convincing you it's fancy. Dan Barber, he made this whole burger situation out of the pulp that's left over in a juicer. And this whole thing was like I literally took trash and I served it to you for $400. Yeah, I wrote

a cookbook about that one time. Taking the discard from your juicer and how to bake and cook with that. It's all really cool, but I remember going to a restaurant once and there was something on a dish called smoked milk skin. I was like, what is that? And they smoked the milk and they removed the skin and they just like on a dish. And that place won Bon Appetit Best New Restaurant of like 2015. milked the milk and they removed the skin and they just like on a dish and uh that one that place won bon appetit best new restaurant of like 2015 shout out to ari timor and alma i think it's

a bit of the emperor's new clothes sometimes with with a lot of these new restaurants living in new york there was always a new restaurant that was like cutting edge and doing weird things so i worked at a place called clay which i can talk about because they're closed down it was an austrian restaurant and the owners were unique eccentric very eccentric people and they ended up making a um ice so the the one of the owners got pregnant had a baby and they ended up selling ice cream and cheese and everything with her breast milk. Stop it! Oh, yeah. There were big write-ups in the New York Times and everything about it. They closed not long after that. How is that legal? Is that legal?

No. It's not legal. That can't be legal. You are not allowed to sell breast milk. Yeah. But you are allowed. So I think how they got around the breast milk thing is that it's the same way that chefs in California were getting around the foie gras ban where it was illegal yeah it was illegal to sell foie gras

but you could sell a $15 plain piece of brioche and then give the foie gras for free I don't think it's actually legal and I just think that no one cared to shut them down because like what is the LAPD gonna go enforce that but I think that's the same thing because breast milk you're not allowed to sell for commerce but this is actually an issue for women who can't breastfeed. They're like, well, I would typically buy it from someone who is selling it. So instead they do like a network of sharing. Who thought we were going to get into the politics of breast milk in this episode? Yeah, I guess we all- This was actually on my list of things to cover.

No, wait, hold on. Hold on. Back to cheesecakes, back to cheesecakes, back to cheesecakes. So the word, the origin of the word cake, Max, I don't know how you are on the history of etymology, but I have a solid 38 minutes of Googling under my belt. So I'm kind of an expert. But, you know, pie comes from Middle English and typically refers to a savory pie. The word cake actually, though, takes its origin from, like, the Nordic languages. So, like, typically, like, old Danish kaka. And there is a Swedish cheesecake, Swedish and Danish, because they share a very similar language, right? You ever see a Swede and a Dane talk? It's just, like, chatter, chatter.

Nope. I grew up with a lot of Swedish and Danish friends at UCLA. Because you were shot putting? Yeah, we would recruit them for the large power sports. So we'd get the big Vikings to come in and throw the hammer at us. Makes sense.

But anyway, so I, you know, ate a Swedish ostkaka, which is also a crustless cheesecake. And interestingly about the idea, because a lot of people

say that, you know, cheesecake does not contain the cake ingredients which are typically flour. But this one is made with almond flour, which I know is not a grain. However, however like would you reasonably call something made with almond flour a cake

yeah like a yes especially during this time whenever there's so much like different ways to use almond flour and alternative flours that's what i'm saying yeah so like that to me is like very very phenotypically a cake, right? So there's literally a cake made of cheese that like somewhat eats like a New York cheesecake, you know, but there is no crust on it. So to say a cheesecake is a pie, but then, I mean, you got all the Swedes

and a couple Danes peppered it and you don't want to piss off the Danes, Nicole. You do not want to piss off the Danes. They will come a storm in your monasteries. Yes, they will. I don't want that. You do not want to piss off the Danes. They will come a storm in your monasteries. Yes, they will. I don't want that. They got their runes. No, that was the Norwegian death metal murders.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I do actually. I was actually watching those videos last week. Really? Yes, and I learned all about the, there was a band and the lead singer's name was Death. And the guy, Adoronimus something like that i god i know exactly what you're talking about yeah it's like this weird norwegian guy that like killed the band member and it was really interesting yeah you should watch it yeah

the black metal yeah black metal bands in norway i'm writing this uh uh look up norwegian black metal death and then see what pops up chances Chances are the first video is what we are talking about. Alright. But they were also trying to be just like super hardcore because there was this huge, and I think a lot of people liken it to what was happening in Ronald Reagan 80s in America where it was like everyone was so focused on

making money that the youth got super disaffected and you had the rise of American punk rock and thrash and grunge and all that. And then, I'm fudging my music history but i don't care but in norway apparently uh the black metal movement was kind of their response to that and so it's kind of this rebelliousness against like um the sort of like capitalistic christian culture so a bunch of these bands they would like you know just to be super like black metal and brutal they would like burn down churches and plant like ancient runes

there yeah there was like 15 burned churches from this whole black metal situation yeah yeah i did my research i've done my full research so what i'm saying you're gonna go tell that that those those nordic black metal musicians that their ostkaka is not cheesecake because it doesn't have a doesn't have a crust not me i'm not dying on that hill yeah no i'm good they can call it whatever they want there's one more example nicole i gotta give okay have you ever been we're all in la if you go to 7-eleven there is a little basket there's like a basket that has the cookies uh and the brownies by the cash register right okay and yeah yeah and in there there is one that says quesadilla and it's a little cake and it is a salv Salvadoran cheesecake. For some reason, they sell that. I mean, not for some reason, because it's a

huge Central American population in LA, and because they're delicious, but they're selling quesadilla salvadoreña in there. And so the quesadilla salvadoreña is a Salvadoran version of cheesecake. It is made with queso duro blando, and then Salvadoran crema, which to me is the Cadillac of all cremas, rice flour and sesame seeds. And it is actually some people there's some debate on the etymology on whether, you know, because quesadilla, right, is the diminutivization with the ia suffix and then quesa means cheese. But some historians think that it comes from the Spanish quesada pasiega, which is a Spanish version of that Basque crustless cheesecake. And so this is like a, you know, a diminutivization of the Spanish parent dish. Anyways, point is, the Salvadoran cheesecake to me is the most cake-like of all cheesecakes.

Which leads me to my ultimate thesis that cheesecake is ultimately a cake and not a pie. Because when you say cheesecake, you are specifically referring to the filling. So like a New York style cheesecake, or even this medieval sambal cod, right? When you say I'm making a cheesecake, the crust is extra. The crust is purely extra. The cheesecake that you are making and eating, I mean, like Max said, people would discard the crust, right? That was a very common thing with pies in in medieval times the thing that you are making is simply the filling so the filling is what defines what we are eating in this case in this specific case because there are so many different varieties of cheesecake throughout the globe i could i could see some merit in argument thank you especially because i'm trying to think

oh well it's you know it's doesn't hold its shape but it would hold its shape like a piece of cake and you could bake it in like a just a tin and then flip it out yeah yeah so that's what i'm saying somebody get all the ground on the phone does anyone have his we've tried he has not responded because we know he's seen us and he's like a friend of Mythical as well. He was supposed to be on the show before COVID shut down. But then he's gone AWOL. So, you know, we're kind of just like taking pot shots from afar was our general strategy.

It's kind of talking crap. Trying to get him to respond. Prodding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really good at that. Very good at that. prodding yeah yeah yeah yeah really good at that very good at that josh i think you like uh made my mind go like 360 and then 180 again and then 45 degree angle thank you so that's what i try and do so now you ruined my whole stance well i mean cheesecake we always associate with being sweet

but i mean max you talked about the first cheesecake ever in the summer cod video you talked about the first cheesecake was actually savory, right? Like it wasn't until much later that sugar was added. Yeah, no, they were they were pretty savory. They might have a little bit of honey in them, but nothing like we would think of today as cheesecake. Is that due to just like changing taste over history or like availability of processed sugar? Everything is sweeter now. Sugar is.

sugar everything is sweeter now um sugar it is i mean every so sugar was unbelievably expensive um during that that time because it had to come all the way from india or southern china or indonesia to europe and it was typically just used as a medicine uh against cataracts and and some other things uh very interesting so it didn't really become like for sweetening things until the middle ages and even then only the very very rich had it so you could only use a little bit that's really interesting yeah i had no idea it was used for cataracts no me neither how can you even use it for cataract you just rub the sugar in your eyeballs it's the abrasive i didn't say that it was effective i said that they used it good point good point that's like all those those ancient uh yeah things like i remember i had a toothache once and they were like well for toothaches in

you know medieval times they would rub raw garlic on it and i was like that seems like it's something that will work uh instead of calling up the dentist and i just rubbed raw garlic all over my gums and then my teeth hurt even more uh and i just had the raw taste of garlic in my mouth oh and so that was a very fun time and no dentist wanted near you they were like oh man what did you do i'm really fascinated by these recipes that people you know i'm sure you've heard like you may have done a video on it that i missed but about the origin of ketchup i haven't yet uh it'll be soon i i'm sure you will. But I'm always fascinated by when people, you know, talk about these recipes that existed 4000 years ago, right? And they say

ketchup actually comes from, you know, ancient China, where it was, I mean, essentially a fermented fish sauce, you know, like garam or, you know, Vietnamese nuoc mam. And then, you know, through some sort of translation, it now it just turns into the delicious syrupy sweetness, possibly a tomato smoothie that we have in a Heinz bottle. But I'm always wondering, like what I know the etymology is there. I know you can trace the history back so, so, so far. But like what actually links, you know, the ancient Chinese fish sauce to what is effectively just tomato puree, vinegar, and sugar. History. I mean, there's like nothing in common with them now. I think it's just that you can see the iterations throughout history

that have kind of moved along. I don't know. I'll have to get researching on that. I'm not sure. My thing is the spelling. Katsup versus ketchup. Yeah, yeah. Is there any difference between the two? Katsup versus ketchup. Yeah, yeah. Is there any difference between the two? Katsup and ketchup?

Only how they're spelled. That's it? One is correct and one is catsup. Is that just like a licensing thing where Heinz was like, we own ketchup? I don't know. No, I don't know. I think it's in certain parts of like the English speaking world says one and the... I don't know. I don't know either well in

australia they exclusively call it tomato sauce and people like say that they're different tomatoes tomato sauce tomato sauce uh that's a god a terrible i need to work on that i don't know it's not getting there yet uh but it is effectively ketchup and they'll argue that it's not because it's less sweet but it's like a ketchup with less sugar is still a ketchup in my mind. But in my mind, also a ketchup is technically a chutney and a really beautiful complex one at that. Yeah, I would consider ketchup a chutney. I have a question about cheesecakes. If you could be any cheesecake on the Cheesecake Factory menu cheesecake,

which cheesecake would you be? Easy answer. Which one? Oh, the pineapple upside down cheesecake. That's the best cheesecake far and away. Well, it's really, okay. So Cheesecake Factory. How did you know that? Like straight off the bat because i love the cheesecake factory they do a really great job

at what they set out to do which is to create it's like um i don't know weird like ancient egyptian themed nightclub that has cheesecakes and like six dollars yes very uh and i i you go there and you have a great time do they serve the best food in the world? No. Is it the best cheesecake in the world? No. Do I have an awesome time every time I'm there? Of course. But their pineapple pasta and cheesecake, yeah, it's got like the syrupy pineapples

baked into an actual thin layer of honest to God cake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's the cheesecake layer and then more layers of actual cake. Okay, what happens whenever the crust of the cheesecake is no longer a crust? What if they get all fancy with it? What if they put cinnamon rolls on the bottom? What if they put pineapple upside down cake on the bottom? Now is it a cake because it has a custard in it?

So a lot of people, I mean, this became a big meme of is cheesecake a cake or a pie? But a lot of people are like cheesecake is a tart. Cheesecake is absolutely not a tart. I believe to me tart since it has this latinate definition i think you would need to go back to some sort of actual tart crust because like when we talk about cheesecake the image that i think most people in america have in their mind is a new york style cheesecake right yeah and you know what the crust on new york style cheesecake is graham crackers a bunch of crackers that were made to stop you from touching yourself. I love Graham crackers.

Yeah, I love Graham crackers too. Stop touching yourself. The history of Graham crackers and Kellogg's cereal, both. A lot of them. Oh, we just went into the history of Kellogg's in a video that had nothing to do with history. We were just making, we were making like flaming hot frosted flakes. Yes, we were. And I was like, you know, looking up the origin of Kellogg. And yeah, that dude had some weird ideas about health.

Oh, he was kind of a monster. Yeah. He was a monster. Yeah. He was a horror movie villain. Yeah, he really was. Although he made a, what a really lovely breakfast product he made along with like forcing enemas and electroshocks to the eyeballs on mentally ill patients.

Nobody's perfect. Nobody's patients. Nobody's perfect. Nobody's perfect. Nobody's perfect. No, no, no. We all have skeletons. But you know what is perfect? Whenever you leave the graham cracker box open for like four days and then you take out a graham cracker and it's a little bit soft, that's like one of my favorite food

bites in the world. When my graham crackers are a little moist. Oh, I know what you mean. I can get that. I love a good moist graham you mean yeah i love a good moist i just spritz them down with some pam non-stick spray let's soak in there i hold on so i i am not a great baker that is an understatement which is why when i make like pies and stuff for thanksgiving holidays uh i'll typically use a crumb crust just because

i'm like lazy and don't want to deal with stuff. They're super easy. Yeah, but like, I mean, does that count as a pie? Would you say that that is enough of a pastry to even constitute a pie? I think we should put the entire crumb crust pie on blast here. Oh man.

And put them on trial. Because what does that really like share in common with making an actual pastry dough? Just the fact that there's any sort of starch on there? Oh man, that's a really good point point like what kind of pie did you make that had a crumb crust like what filling was it i did a uh it was a jasmine milk tea custard with like a little bit of like it was like a red bean bottom jasmine milk tea custard and then i used like chinese almond cookies as a crumb crust i don't know what do you think max i think it does count as a crust because okay

so what's in a pastry crust you've got flour sometimes sugar butter maybe or water you know and some something to hold it together what's in a crumb crust all those same ingredients mashed together but i guess it'd be like if you took a hot dog and then like pureed it into a pate and then put it back inside a casing to me, you know? It's like, is that really a hot dog at that point? That's what I plan on doing for lunch, yeah. Oh no.

It's good for the soft teeth community. Like if you have soft teeth, then you need your hot dogs pre-chewed essentially. What happens whenever you take a cheesecake filling and then you pour it into a cupcake mold? Is that now a cupcake? Or is it a mini cheesecake? Oh, no.

Is it a mini tart? What happens whenever you do that? Have you ever put an Oreo on the bottom of that? And you peel it and it's like, oh my God, look at the paper. Oh, it's so endearing. Oh, it's so endearing. What's that now?

Is that a cupcake? Yes, yes. No oh it's so endearing oh it's so what's that now is that a is that a cupcake yes yes no flat out if i if i have made my bed that cheesecake is indeed a cake uh because many have some sort of starch or otherwise starch equivalent such as almond flour mixed with cheese uh i must now eat the fact that if you pour that delicious souffle and or custardy cheese mixture into a cupcake mold, then it is indeed a cupcake. I just got really warm because you angered me. This here is a situation of where he's taken a stance, someone has taken a stance, and they're unwilling to move.

And now it's forced him into crazy talk is what this is. This is crazy talk. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to the show. This is exactly what happens every single week. We have decided much worse in the past that cereal is soup and that if we eat a hot dog, technically we become a hot dog. Yeah, that was a bad one.

That was a bad one, man. That was a bad time. Anyways, I mean, in conclusion, what is warp? Rap. Oh, okay, Megan. It's warp. That song. That song.

Oh. By the Bloody Beat Roots. Yeah, and Steve Aoki. Yeah steve aoki yeah yeah yeah do you want to beatbox it absolutely not don't ever ask me to be max how's your beat how are your beatboxing skills what's so weird is jose asked me that last night nobody's ever asked me about my beatboxing skills and twice in 24 hours they're not good okay they're not good well work on it geez i don't know what to tell you i got nothing i got nothing for you man you had two beats in there yeah all right so i in conclusion in conclusion cheesecake do we have any final stances i mean i i am now in the mode where i believe it is a cake so much that i am into crazy talk max what do you think i would say that it depends on the variety sometimes it's a cake i would never go with pie though i would say sometimes it's a cake

and sometimes it is a souffle with a crust the old crusted souffle uh it's a tart suck it it's a tart fight me on the internet out of left field no evidence it's a tart suck it it's a tart fight me on the internet out of left field no evidence it's a tart it's a tart

fight me that's it you can't tell the fans to suck it I did I did I don't know did it

alright Nicole and Max we've heard what we all gotta say now it's time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the twitterverse it's time for a segment we call...

Opinions are like casseroles. That was the most in tune we have ever been. We finally learned to harmonize. That was kind of embarrassing, but whatever. Nicole, Max, Nicole has a theater background as well. Nicole, tell them. Okay, so my mom put me in taste of broadway classes for like seven years oh wow yeah so like i would like be in like little

like vignettes of like broadway songs and stuff and like i really wanted to be on broadway and then i quickly realized that i cannot handle rejection of any kind and i immediately shut down yes so i decided to you know do a do a quick pivot. Quick pivot. To this. Smart. But I do love theater and I do love Broadway. And yeah, I have a background, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, fake it till you make it.

I started dating someone just over a year ago who is very, very into musical theater and I had literally no exposure to it whatsoever. And I am like in love with it. Like her cat is named pippin after her favorite musical um and so we just like go on road trips and we play soundtracks to musicals uh and i want to see dear evan hansen so badly uh and to me musicals are it's sports i love musicals yeah broadway is sports it's what i believe it's epic and that's not for me to just justify it to

liking it but i see it and i'm like, the intricate movement patterns. I mean, it's like a pick and roll in basketball. Right. Because that's my idiot brain. All right, we should probably get to the whole opinions thing. Yeah. All right, we got up first, at G.Keaton,

normalize using French fries and salad instead of croutons, spice them leaves up. All right. No. Max, how do you feel about French fry salad? No. Why? Because French fries belong with french fries i you know what for me french fries are a way to get ketchup to my mouth because you can't just eat it with a spoon in public anymore it seems um no i you know even poutine i i'm not

a fan of french fries with anything i like just french fries because they get soggy otherwise and i don't like anything with a soggy fry okay you need to go to dino's and get their chicken plate where the chicken juice seeps into the french fries and you enjoy the soggy fries you're not selling it second i no no no i swear it's actually really amazing and then number two uh they like to like uh whenever i go to like, Israeli restaurants, they like to put in the pita. They put French fries in the pita. And what is pita? It's a walkable salad.

Pita is a walkable salad. It's a hand salad. So French fries in the hand salad is all I care about right now. So I love this opinion. Way to go. I see both sides here. Because I do agree. I love Max's ketchup vessel theorem because I agree.

I'm an absolute ketchup fiend. Yes. And I mean, I put three French fries together, so there's more surface area. I do the same. To be able to shovel. Yeah. I do that too. And then I run out of my fries far before the person that I'm eating with, so then I

just have to steal theirs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sneaky, sneaky. You go three times the rate. That's how I lose all my friends. But that said, I also am just a garbage person who mashes all my food together into one bowl of slop uh but i agree i i've never liked poutine very much i love i grew up eating carne asada fries though which is like a socal version of poutine i suppose um so i also love that but i yeah in salads i've

made this before and it's delicious but doesn't give you the same crunch as a crouton. A crouton? Crouton. Crouton. It's French. All right. Tursasaurus underscore Rex says, barbecue sauce and mashed potatoes are godly. They're sweet and smoky.

This isn't, I don't know. I'd just rather have it on the side, not mixed in. I kind of like the sensation of like warm mashed potatoes and like cold barbecue sauce. Sounds really delicious. But you do put barbecue sauce on your mashed potatoes? Not on, but like on the side. Like if I'm having barbecue, I like do a little squirt of the barbecue sauce on the side. You eat mashed potatoes with your barbecue?

Yeah. Who does? You don't eat mashed potatoes with your barbecue? I don't eat mashed potatoes at all. It's my least favorite way to enjoy a potato. They're not bad. It's just potatoes are, yeah. I have never had barbecue sauce eat mashed potatoes at all. It's my least favorite way to enjoy a potato. They're not bad. It's just potatoes are, yeah. I have never had barbecue sauce on mashed potatoes,

but I don't think I would mind it. I think it sounds enticing, and that's maybe going to be what I'm doing for dinner tonight. Sounds good. I don't like the idea of it in, but as a sauce to dip in, sounds really good to me. Yeah, I enjoy a good meat juice on a mashed potato. I can imagine the barbecue meat juice with the spicing on a mashed potato.

To me, I mean, mashed potatoes are like, it's a porridge. It should be eaten on its own. It's a porridge. It's a good porridge. It's a good loose mashed potato. It's a good porridge. That opinion is not for me, and that's fine. That's fine.

What? D Shane DM, superfoods are a joke. Yeah, by definition, yeah, superfoods are a joke. Yeah, by definition. Yeah, superfoods are a joke. It is just a marketing term that means absolutely nothing. That was meant to trick you into buying neocolonized products like quinoa and acai that have actually been eaten for thousands of years. But now you're spending $12 for a bowl of what is essentially sherbet because acai does not travel well and they have to freeze it with a bunch of sugar. So yeah, superfoods are a joke.

Thanks. Plus that just made it so we had to learn how to pronounce quinoa and acai. I don't appreciate that. It's quinoa and acai. So that's what I say. I think acai is like a race in Star Trek. I have no idea.

The acai. Are they actually a... But how could they be a joke? What do you mean? What do you mean? How could it be real? What's the definition of a superfood? Isn't it?

I don't know. Like that contains all 24 ribosomic. No, it means nothing. There's foods that are good for you and there's foods that are bad for you. Of course. But a superfood, they're always like,

no heart disease, no cancer. Your babies will be geniuses. They don't stand up to scrutiny. I don't know. I guess I'm just like a dumb L.A. girl that believes that if I put spirulina in my smoothie, I'll be invincible. I don't know. I like to believe that superfoods are real.

But maybe that's just because, I don't know, I never believed in Santa Claus. I don't know. It gives me santa claus i don't know it gives me something to believe in it gives me something to believe in this is the saddest santa claus story ever i don't believe in santa claus but acai that is the most west la jewish thing i have ever heard i didn't get to believe in santa claus so now i have to believe in goji berries and acai yes i need something to believe in to perpetuate my childlike manner i nicole i that is the only good argument for superfoods thank you yeah yeah all right xeno kai says oreos dipped in kfc mashed potatoes and gravy are the perfect

blend of sweet and savory so much mashed potato content lately. This sounds disgusting. Sorry. I'm going to go with not so much. But, you know, what I used to do in college was I dipped Oreo cookies in cherry Coke, and that was my thing to do. So I can't really judge anybody on what they eat with their Oreo cookies. We just talked about how much we love eating, like, soggy graham crackers. I like soggy graham crackers, but I'm not graham crackers but i'm not gonna put it in my mashed potatoes and gravy no i i though i do think a mashed potato without the

gravy with oreos mixed in like a cookies and cream mashed potato that is the only way i could see mashed potatoes really working as a success cookies and cream mashed potato like potatoes have a relatively neutral flavor right like there's not a ton of yes sweet potato pie why wouldn't you make like a white potato pie? Okay, fine. I could see them serving something like that at the Cheesecake Factory. I could watch.

Oh, fine. Mashed potatoes. Whatever you say, Josh. Where are we at? Oh, at CM1607, a pinch of salt must go into chocolate milk. I first heard this on an episode of Modern Family where Manny,

Sofia Vergara's young child, I've only probably watched four episodes and one of them was the pinch of chocolate milk thing. And I tried it and it is absolutely life-changing. But that said, all desserts should be salted. That's the perfect mix of sweet and savory. Yeah. I used to work at a chocolate store and we would make chocolat chaud. Pronounce it correctly.

Chocolat chaud. Chocolat chaud. I'm sorry, I don't speak French. I'm just not sure. Okay, sorry. I'm sorry. I was so reactive. Chocolat chaud?

Chocolat chaud, oui. C'est vrai. Okay, whatever. I would make hot chocolate at a chocolate store, okay? And then I would always add a little sprinkle of fleur de sel on top. And it was really good. Fleur de sel. That's the way to go.

That's what I always put when I'm baking chocolate chip cookies. A little bit of that. Those huge grains of fleur de sel. Amazing. Get the crunchy. Same. Tu parles français comme une vache espagnole. You want to go to eat a Spanish cow.

No, you speak French like a Spanish cow. But I got the Spanish cow right. That was almost the only. I got the Spanish cow right? Look at me. Muy bueno. Oh, no, oh, no. Nicole, this is yours.

This is yours to read. Oh, Pretentious Hippie says ketchup is a waste of everyone's time. I'm fascinated by ketchup. It's delicious. I love ketchup. Because I think people, I mean, they say ketchup is a food for children. You see like a lot of burger purists say that like if you're over the age of 10, you should not be allowed to put ketchup on a burger or whatever.

I'm just wondering like what is people's obsession with conflating like lack of pleasure with adulthood? Yeah. I don't get it. Well, at what point does like your flavor like, oh, you can't have sweet stuff anymore? Like is there a cutoff age? There shouldn't be. There shouldn't be. Puberty.

Puberty. Puberty. When you get your first chest hair, you can no longer consume ketchup. At 23, I would have not been able. That is true. I did not have armpit hair going into college. Like, not a one. Not a one. But I was big. I was 6'2", 260, not not have armpit hair going into college. Like not a one, not a one.

But I was big. I was 6'2", 260, not a single armpit hair. Never shaved in my life. And then now I'm just, I just got like the lower back is just like a little shag rug. It's bizarre. Caught up with you. I just caught up so fast. I think the last podcast we talked about my newfound nipple hairs.

They're there. They're there now. All right right at love at first underscore bite crabs are just undersea spiders crab leg equals giant spider leg yeah honestly if you really look at it without any sort of cultural bias uh the idea that we eat crustaceans is like a little bit bizarre because they are just monstrous. I love them. Yeah, gross, but I love it. R. Steffen Finn says, pickled beetroot, cheddar, and mayo is a God tier sandwich.

Lots of God content, lots of potato content. What I don't get is, do people in England say beetroot? That's a common thing, yeah. Yeah, okay, okay, yeah. This sounds okay. I'm not like passionate about anything going on here. I love the pickled beetroots. Yeah, okay, okay, yeah. This sounds okay. Yeah. I'm not like passionate about anything going on here.

I love the pickled beetroots. They did that one song, Warp, Warp 2.0 with Steve Aoki. You know? It's his joke, it's his joke. Yeah, I love pickled beets. I grew up eating them because my grandma was from South Africa. And so we would all just have like a can of pickled beets at the table. And, you know, you mash it with mayonnaise.

It becomes like a pink slime situation. Really delicious. I'm down for the sandwich. I think we need to eat more gross stuff from Dananda. I've never had one. So I can't say either way. And I'm not even sure that I can imagine the flavor combination there. So I'm sitting at that.

You've never had a pickled beet before? No, I've had a pickled beet, but not in that configuration that they were talking about same same i never want to try it i like beets because they're like pickles but mushy okay yeah it's all soft the soft teeth community uh we all we ride for each other i ride for them they ride for me and on that note thank you for listening to a hot dog is a sandwich if you want to hear more from us here in the mythical kitchen we got new episodes for you every wednesday and, thank you for listening to A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. If you want to hear more from us here in the Mythical Kitchen, we've got new episodes for you every Wednesday. And Max, thank you so much for joining us. Where can our listeners hear more from you?

YouTube.com slash Tasting History is the best place to find me. What the heck is YouTube? I don't know. The kids are watching it. If you want to be featured on Opinions Are Like Casseroles, you can hit us up on Twitter at MythicalChef or nhandizadeh with the hashtag OpinionCasserole. For more Mythical Kitchen, check us out on YouTube where we launch new videos every week.

And of course, if you want to share pictures of your dishes, hit us up on Instagram at Mythical Kitchen. See you all next time. you