Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 29 - Jackie Kashian

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

It's time to give thanks for my spicy cranberry sauce and break bread with the hilarious Jackie Kashian who has a deep and profound love for baked chicken.  https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015348-spicy-red-pepper-cranberry-relish?action=click&module=RecipeBox&pgType=recipebox-page&region=sides&rank=24 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey! sourdough. Hey, it's time for breaking bread with Papa. Hey, don't you know? Hey, it's also a show. Hey. Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I'm Tom Papa. Thank you so much for coming along on another journey through comedy and food. It's really what it's distilled down to, isn't it? Lots of people talk about food, lots of people talk about

comedy. We're going to mush it all together. Hey, we have a great show for you today. We've got Jackie Cation coming on the show. So funny. One of my favorite comedians. I've worked with her for years. So smart, so funny. She is a podcast host as well. The Dork Forest is one of the great podcasts out there. She also does another podcast. The Jackie and Lori show with Lori Kilmartin, another equally funny person. So great. Both of those are amazing. And Jackie is really the perfect person to talk about food heading into Thanksgiving. Such an American holiday, such a great, passionate person. When I say passionate, there's a lot of things that she's excited about, but let's be real. She comes from Wisconsin, and there's a mac and cheese discussion. We have to

get into. There is also her love of baked chicken. She's so obsessed with baked chicken that she's actually working hard. I'm putting together a calendar featuring all of her favorite baked chicken dishes. She's so great. You're going to love this conversation. She's just amazing. What have I been eating? What have I been eating? What am I thinking? What am I eating? What am I drinking? Well, we're coming into Thanksgiving kids. Not only we're coming into Thanksgiving. We're coming to the holiday season. And it is a whole season where you should be eating and enjoying yourself, especially this year. I mean, come on, we've done a great job. Hey, I'm proud of you.

You're doing great. You really are. We've come this far during this crazy pandemic. We've put in a lot of time, a lot of sacrifice. So I don't want to hear any whining that we didn't get to go on a plane and go visit grandma. I don't want to hear any complaints that we're not going to have that many people over Thanksgiving this year. There is still food to be made. There is still time off to be enjoyed and you should jump on it because you deserve it more

than anything else. You deserve a break. You deserve to screw around, eat, drink, and be merry. And not just on Thanksgiving, but I want you to do this. I want this philosophy to carry you through the end of the year. Yeah. Enjoy yourself. And what are you going to be cooking?

What are you going to be doing? Here's the thing that excites me. Whenever we come into Thanksgiving week, I know that the turkey is a big thing. I know that putting together the menu is a big deal. There is this one satisfying little activity that I have that I'm going to share with you now that just, I can't tell you there's something, the final product is great, but it's actually the process of doing it. which is just so enjoyable and it's so simple. It's so easy.

This is a spicy red pepper cranberry relish. Let me say that again. Spicy red pepper cranberry relish. Everybody loves the great cranberry debate. I get it. There's the canned. There's the real stuff. There's whatever side of the argument you fall on, I'm with you. I'll go canned. I'll go fancy, whatever you want. You can't lose. But this one is the best. Hands down.

I don't care about your little canned addiction. I don't care that grandma made it that way. This is kick-ass. I'm going to read it to you. This comes from the New York Times. I got this recipe from David Tannis, and this is part of the food section, featured in Essential Thanksgiving.

I'm going to read this one little paragraph for you. kicky condiment, usually made with cranberries, can offset the neutral red bland, yet rich nature of the Thanksgiving meal. This hot red pepper cranberry relish with jalapenos and cayenne fits the bill. You can keep the seasoning somewhat tame or ramp up the heat to taste. It will keep for two weeks or so, so making it advance as soon as cranberries are available and have it on hand. in the fridge through the holiday season. Good advice. I actually make a lot of it and then eat all of it.

So I don't get to hang out and enjoy it and break relish out throughout the season and then hello Christmas and I'm still eating it. No, I make this and then go nuts and just eat nonstop. It's so simple. Sugar. I'll put this recipe link. up for you all. Sugar, two large jalapenos,

one tablespoon of lemon juice, half a teaspoon of salt, one quarter teaspoon of cayenne, one tablespoon of grated ginger, and 12 ounces of cranberries. So the heat's just coming from this quarter teaspoon of cayenne and two large jalapenos diced, deceded, or just seeded, and finally diced.

that's where your heat's going to come from. I recommend ramp up the heat because, as I found in my house, the kids, they look at it this lumpy cranberry and they're like, nah, we'll pass. Give us a slice of that can thing. I am one of the only people, it's a grown-up thing. Eat it, make it spicy, go all in. If people don't like it, then you get to just keep the heat on and eat it yourself. It's so simple.

Now, but this is with the satisfying part of it. This is the thing I was starting off to say that I really enjoy. You know, you put the sugar in the jalapenos and the lemon juice and the salt and the cayenne, all in the sauce pan, right? And you get it all cooking up. You have to put it in some water, half a cup of water, stir with a wooden spoon. I love that they say wooden spoons. Wooden spoons are my favorite.

Dissolve the sugar, let it simmer for two minutes. And then you add the ginger and the cranberries. Okay, so now when you're adding cranberries, You have this bag full of cranberries. Big, red, not big, red, pretty big, cranberries. One bag is 12 ounce, it's all you need. There's this satisfying thing about putting these cranberries into this pan and you're cooking it over low heat and these cranberries slowly start to split and not pop

open like popcorn, but they explode. Minor little explosions. You've got your wooden spoon, you're smelling the ginger, it's just the, and you're just stirring it around, and this pan filled with these red balls starts to dissolve, pop, and erupt. There's something about that process right there, that little explosion. That is incredibly satisfying. mine. You're going to have to do it just to figure it out. You've got to experience it. It's like trying to describe, you know, hitting the perfect golf shot or, or, I don't know, having sex, something. Like, you can't describe it. Just go and do it and you'll get it. You stir those cranberries, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and all of a sudden it's this relish starts to develop.

And then at the end of it, you scoop it all out, you let it cool off, and then like they said, you can be stored in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. Let it cool. I make it the night before. I make it the night before I want to use it and then just heat it up a little bit. It is so good. You will be so happy. It's got a little kick.

It's got a little cranberry. It's got a little ginger. It feels like the holidays. You are going to be delighted. So that's my little tip for you. The rest of it, figure it out on your own. You're going to go turkey. You're going to do all the rest of it.

Have at it. This is going, this makes it special. This makes it, you need a little curveball in this meal. Even if it's big, small, in between, you need a little bit of, whoa, I haven't had that. Nana didn't make that spicy red cranberry relish. Ooh, ooh, ooh, oh. All right, kids. Now, enjoy the conversation that I have with Jackie Cation.

I'll talk to you a little bit at the end and enjoy. She's so funny and you're going to learn a lot about baked chicken and mac and cheese more than you'll ever need. Enjoy Jackie Cation. Jackie. Hi. How's it going? Good. How are you?

Oh, I'm just the top of my head. Look at me. Hi. Hey. Hey, there's all of you. There's the rest of my head. Who doesn't want to see a whole head when they're talking to each other? It's one of my least favorite Zoom things is when people just have the top of their head.

I like the sideways. Oh, do you? Here's one of my favorite Zoom things is to go, hey, can I see your dog and then watch an entire gallery screen do this. And that's fun for me. That's good times. That's so funny. And then there's. doing this. Sure. And then there's the thing that can be abused, which I'm loath to tell anyone

publicly, but I like to send a private message that something supportive or funny, a private DM via the chat, and then pin their tweet or pin their image and then watch them read it. It's a desperate cry for help, is what I'm saying, Papa. Oh, it's so sad. It's so sad. What's become amusing to us. I know. Thanks for being here. This is really great. I, um, I've been trying to get on your podcast for about 10 years. It hasn't been able to happen. So I figured I'd get you one. A attainable goal.

A attainable goal, my friend, as I say every time. And then we don't book it. So allow me to book it for next week. Are you around next week? Of course I am. Okay. Where am I going? I don't know.

I feel like you were in Cleveland last week. I was. I did a good run of stand up during the pandemic. I had like once a month. I did five clubs, only places where I thought they would do it safe. Yeah. Safely. Yeah.

I did Salt Lake City. I did Denver, Portland, Connecticut, which was kind of safe. And then Cleveland was the last one. Yeah. I'm doing Denver. I'm doing the Loveland Theater that Comedy Works does in December. And then I'm supposed to be Milwaukee. because that that sounds safe, doesn't it?

When you hear the word COVID and Milwaukee, don't you think? Yeah, that's probably, they're probably doing it right. How are you going to handle Thanksgiving this year? We're going to sit in my, we have been going to my mother-in-laws every week. About three hours north of Los Angeles. She's in the Central Valley. Devin Nunez turf. And so we go, we sit in her backyard.

And she's kind of in our pod. now as we go into the third month of us, you know, we're not going anywhere else. We only go to her. So she's in our, she's in our pod now. And how old does she? She's in her mid 70s. And she's a little tippy, right? She's a little frail.

We're trying to keep it real. So we're going to have it outdoors. And he's got, my husband has some cousins and our nephew. And we're all going to be outside with masks. And we're going to, we've ordered, we're going to order Thanksgiving where they give us just plates of food. It's to go. Oh, really? Yeah, it's a weird little town.

So the Central Valley of California has, she's lived there for like 20 years. And she used to live in this town called Lindsay, which is an orange processing plant and place, oranges and olives. And then for 15 years she lived there. And then she moved. And then they bowled in a town called Porterville. And so there was the Lindsay Porterville. The food was terrible. It was, there was good Mexican food, but that was, and that's fine.

And I enjoy Mexican food. And it's delight. You go one town up, which is where they retired. One town up. And it's called Exeter. And Exeter, California, is a delightful small town with more than one espresso machine. Just one town over.

For 15 years, she could have just gone a little further. 11 miles north. And so when they moved there, I started wandering around, you know, I was yelping. I was trip advisor. I was looking for things to. And they have a French restaurant. They have some vegan places. It's closer to Visalia, which has an amazing Asian community with a bunch of different

Asian food. This is a food podcast, right? Yes, but is she interested in any of this? She is now because Kaysen keeps bringing it to her. Here we go. Have some of this. But in downtown Exeter, there's a place called the hometown Emporium. And it sounds like it should be in the music man.

Yeah. Main Street, Disney. Exactly. It's just like, young man, watch your phraseology. Great honks. He gods. And so I they have deli sandwiches and really good pastries. It's a patisserie.

And you're like, what the hell? And so I have insisted in the last three months that we eat there twice. And, and she's like, well, you know, there's a KFC advice. And I was like, stop talking. Stop talking. I'm not going to greasy, greasy KFC. And I love chicken with the power of the sun. So I don't, yeah, whatever.

There is a, there is a guilty pleasure. Same way with pizza when you bail out on like all the great places that you know of and go for a pizza hut. Yeah. And it's like, you know what? I love, there's a reason these people are in business. You know what? Pizza Hut is actually what we've discovered in quarantine. My husband and I, Andy, we're, once a month we'll order Pizza Hut.

And there's one. Over Domino's? Over dominoes? Over dominoes, over any of it. And then, and it's three blocks from our house, so it shows up piping hot, which is a delight. And I have to say, this isn't a plug by any means for Pizza Hut, but their app is one of the best apps, I think, of all apps. We don't even use, we don't even use an app. Oh, my God.

It's so easy to use. Like, when I'm on the road, if that, that's the only kind of fast food. I don't think I would even call them fast food that I'll eat on the road. It's pretty fast, though. I will say this, though. I got a weird text a couple of months ago from Kathleen Madigan, who was starting a podcast with Lewis Black. And then they both started their own, very weird. But because they had one together.

They were just like, okay, this is just drunk people sitting next to each other. Just like their relationship. Exactly. Together and then apart, but always together. But always together, but always apart. And so, but she, so she questioned me about podcasts for like an hour. And we just talked and I sent her some links for tech and stuff like this. And so she, I get a text from her saying, what's your guilty pleasure fast food?

And I was like, this seems like blackmail kind of. I mean, how are you going to use this? How are you going to use this information? What are you up to, Madigan? Right. Exactly. And so I tell her. because we're friends, right?

How can I not? And so I tell her that it is McDonald's. McDonald's is, and like maybe four times a year. I'll go to McDonald's. And my favorite thing at McDonald's, and I'll only have that like once or twice because it's so, it's just a, it's six thousand,

a sausage and egg and cheese McMuffin. Yeah, like a breakfast McMuffin with sausage and egg and cheese. Five days of, worth of calories. And so she had a T, because I helped her and because she has her own self-esteem issues, she had a T-shirt printed for me that said sausage McMuffin, sausage egg, all those words. And then with it, she mailed it to me a gift card for McDonald's for too much money. I mean, the thing is, is, yeah, $50. If you want to spend $50, I still have $10 on it.

And I've eaten at McDonald's four times since she sent it to me. Of course. Everything's $1.99. Now it's free. Because my other thing I will have there is the happy meal. And I'll have the happy meal because of the toy. You've always been into the toy. And I always get the boy.

I remember this. This is, this is, this is I. Wow, that's a good. It's a real nice Palomino. It's got a little bit. It doesn't have a lot of articulation, but it's got a little articulation. Anyway. Yeah, that is beautiful.

I always thought they would be like a crackerjack style lame plastic pinball thing. Turns out they're very powerful in the children make toys industry. And they insist that they have good articulation. I first, Taco Bell had one of the greatest, like it was a prequel Star Wars. And they had a magnetic, it was a magnetic millennium falcon. no or no it was it was a prequel so it was a different ship but it hovered using magnets so it would it was a thing that had a circle and then you put the ship here it hovered oh fancy now when you say articulation that's very important in the in the in the in the action figure world action figure world

you want to you want it to be able to move a little bit you want a little action you don't want you don't want like a statue you don't want to I mean some people do some people enjoy a tiny statue. But look at this. Look at this. This is Dr. Strange. And he has pretty good articulation. The cape comes off kind of fun. But it doesn't like the best one I've got is. Doesn't really move. Right. It's the best one I've got is a is a is a magnetic Spider-Man with magnets on it so you can put a place as any superposable. So that's what you want with an action figure. You want superposable unless you're a child and your just playing. And you're like, horsey. Yay, horsey. And then, rar. And that's not how horses talk.

Okay. Now how much, how much of the, how much of the happy meal toy, uh, toy enticement is connected to your McDonald's guilty pleasure? Like if, if, if the Burger King people were better at the toys, oh, would you change? It would not. The one time that I got that Taco Bell, I hate Taco Bell. I don't enjoy a squeezy food. And, um, It's Andy's favorite. That's his guilty pleasure is the squeezy food of Taco Bell. And it is. Everything's in a gun.

Have you been? No. It's foul. Oh, I thought you meant like the taco itself where the burrito is squeaked. Oh, no. They have a tortilla and then squeeze meat, squeeze avocado, squeeze crem fresh. Creme fresh. Seems unlikely.

Yeah. Yeah. Sour cream. Yeah. Sour cream is. Something from an exit in New Jersey, some beautiful exit in New Jersey that's creating food-like substances. Now, if I'm correct, though, so wait, so, yeah, if I'm correct, I think I see on your Instagram from time to time, you guys banging out some pretty impressive-looking meals. We like to cook.

We don't like to bake. Well, he does. Actually, he'll bake. You make bread like a madman, and I can do a drive. buy a curbside delivery at any time, Tom Papa. Oh, you're getting bread for doing this podcast. Oh, thank you. The Dork, when you do the Dork Forest, you get a T-shirt and like 20 bucks for a cup of coffee.

That's fine. You will be getting bread for sure. What kind of bread? I can tell from your... Sorry, well, I digress. Let's talk. We'll talk about it. But I can go, I can give you a straight up sourdough, like a country loaf sourdough.

That's exciting. We could do a little rye. We could do a, do you like olives? Yes. Andy's been making soda bread, savory, savory soda breads. That's good. He was talking about making a sweet soda bread, and I was like, why would you ruin it? Why would you?

I'm going to give you the straight-up sourdough. Oh, yeah, just because it's, it's straight up. Let's start with the sourdough. Yeah, it's the classic. Then we'll get to see it. We'll get to see the work. That's the beautiful thing about it. All my annoying, all my annoying post.

of showing the bread you could actually eat. Right. So here's the scoop. For probably 20 years, I've been working on a chicken calendar, a calendar of baked chicken, looking for 12, 12 recipes for baked chicken.

And I have consistently had nine. Like a new one will come in. I'm like, well, it's too much like that one. So it goes. And, you know,

there's, there's a pattern with a couple of them that are sort of a Moroccan, like a North African, you know, have a Mediterranean, like I'm Armenian and Irish. That's what this old school peasant stock is made out of. And very beautiful. And so it'll be some of those spices. And then I do like a North African spice mix, even though I also like, like there's,

if you go further south, like Togo, there's more of a, they do real good African chicken is happening a little like I I wouldn't naturally put cardamon in chicken but I think I should like I should try to figure out how to how to do it and then there's a what's a what's a North African spicy oh it's it's the it's a basic it's sort of much like Armenian and Turkish and Greek and all the it's it's cumin coriander garlic often sometimes lemon and then um Cuban and then salt pepper and then sometimes a yogurt mint. Like there's, I have a yogurt mint marinade with some Cuban and coriander. I have a rub, which is cumin coriander cinnamon.

Wow. Rub and. Wow. Now where do you get your spices? Like do you go straight up supermarket? Straight up supermarket. I understand that there's fancy spice. My sister goes to a fancy spice online and I was like, you, I believe, make three

times what I make and and I am not poor but I don't need this right I don't need this and I golden too right she also has this whole thing right it's like where do you get your saffron Jackie and I was like first of all I need to use saffron and um and I like saffron but it's mostly Ralphs and it's or Whole Foods is the fancy one right where I'm like and it's quite honestly I don't understand enough about saffron I would kind of be interested to find out there's been a couple times I don't even know what it was for where I had to get saffron and it was expensive it feels like you get it use a teaspoon of it and then it sits in your cabinet forever because nothing else calls for saffron right and you could put it in rice and because what I found is that it mostly just makes things yellow and I was like what am I missing is it old

is I'm sure that my saffron is old my sister also does this thing where she empties she throws away all of her spices in January. Yeah, well, I have had a, Maria Battali told me the same thing. He said like the first thing you can do, this is back when he was around. Oh, before he was touching people publicly or it was probably publicized that he was touching people, whatever.

Yeah, I don't know. I was focused on his advice on the spices, which was, he was saying that. It was go throw everything out that you have in there because I guarantee you with how much you're using it, it's all kind of expired at this point. Well, I do run through the cumin and coriander pretty quick. And, um,

but what I do like is that, uh, I have a Spanish, like Latina, Latino kind of Mexican-esque, um, supermarket in my neighborhood. And they sell herbs in bulk and they sell herbs in tiny packages that are 99 cents. And granted, they may not be,

organic. They may not have had a rattle shaking over them and we looked at the moon. But I'll tell you something, they taste like bay leaves. And that's what I need sometimes. I need. Bayleaf also very good with a chicken. Yeah. I mean, look, if you were to throw everything out and replenish the spice in when you're doing your regular shop, that's like throwing a bottle of wine in. That stuff is not cheap. You can't just be chucking all of it. Right. It's expensive. And then the other like, The one that you probably just saw was I made essentially the best macaroni and cheese. That's what it was. Yeah. And it's and the thing is, you can't, first of all, I will disclaimer, if you are making this around children, do not call it macaroni and cheese. They'll get angry. They'll get angry. They will refuse to like it on principle alone.

Why is that? kids are the worst with that. It really takes them until they're about 15, 16 years old to open their minds to anything other than craft macaroni and cheese. Right, but if you don't tell them it's macaroni and cheese, if you just go, well, it's noodles and cheese. And then they're like, the hell is this? This is amazing.

And you're like, stop swearing. You're seven. But the crazy, like my sister's kids, she makes chicken nuggets for them, but she doesn't call it chicken nuggets because it isn't chicken it isn't from McDonald's it isn't that that's what that's their idea of what a nugget right so she does she takes panko and she and skinless boneless chicken breast which as far as I'm concerned are an abomination before God and man and she chops them into the correct size and then breads them with with Panko and spices and stuff and then fries them and they're chicken nuggets but she's like I don't call them chicken nuggets I call them what

she called a chicken that she bees aren't nuggets mom right I'm not eating right so they're she calls them something else is like crunchy chicken or something like that she got right else and then they eat them and love them of course and they also of course like going to McDonald's and having gristle that has been formed into and then deep fried so particle board right and they're fine with that too And she's like, you've got to build a palette.

You got to build a, there's nothing I can do. They're 10 and 13. No, she's so right. There's literally that they literally, it's the phrasing of it. If you just, yeah, because I, look, I don't know, I want to, I want to hear what was in your mac and cheese. But I remember Nick DePaolo way back telling me about this mac and cheese recipe that was predominantly blue cheese. Oh. And, and this.

crumbles and it was so incredibly good. And then for 15 years, couldn't make it in my house because what am I going to do with a tray of mac and cheese that no one will eat on principle? On principle alone. So what was in yours? So your post was that you wanted, you asked for it.

Right. You wanted this big comfort mac and cheese. And he was like, because, because, you know, we've been ordering out, try to support.

And, but like once a week, we'll order out. And so I was like, so what are you, what are you, what are you interested in? He said, not tonight, but soon. I, and I'm, he's like, I'm willing to shred. I'm willing to do the shredding. And which is the biggest problem because literally this mac and cheese is two pounds of cheese.

Whoa. A stick of butter plus to oil the butter the pan. and and it makes nine by 12, right? I mean, we've been eating on it for three days and it's halfway through. So, and I'm like, I can have another plate and he just looks at me and I'm like, no, I know, Captain moderation. I should have another plate full of bag of cheese that you insist that I make. What kind of cheese?

White sharp cheddar, mostly 18 ounces of white sharp cheddar. And then eight ounces of goo-year. Oh, right? This is great. Yeah. This is grown up. This has grown up noodles and cheese. And then two and a half cups, I think, of whole milk, a stick of butter and the extra butter for the pan.

And then you make, you essentially, you hot up the milk, you shred all the cheese, you, you, you butter the pan, you put the butter in a skillet, the rest of the butter. Oh, and croutons on top that have been that you tiny, because there's not enough carbs. Match them up. So you just, you toss them in melted butter, like two tablespoons of the stick of butter. The remaining six tablespoons, you melt that, you put in half a cup of flour and make a room. And then slowly add the milk and thicken it, thicken it, thicken it, thicken it. And then you have a pot of this milk that you then put the cheese in. you cook the noodles until they're just before they're al dente or al dente, whatever you need.

What kind of noodle did you use? Just a straight up macaroni, pound of noodles. It's a pound of noodles. So this will feed 10 people if they are not monsters and four if they are me. And I'm on my own and there's no witnesses because who needs a witness when it comes to food? God is. Oh my God. I, yeah, so I pour the, you put the noodles and the cheese, you mix it all up, and you make sure

everything's coated and everything's good. You pour it into the big pan, you put the croutons on top, and then you sprinkle what's, you reserve a little bit of the cheese to sprinkle on top, like you put most of it into the cheese sauce and mix the noodles in it. And then you sprinkle it on top, the what's left, just a little bit of goyer, a little bit of cheddar. And then you put the croutons, and then you bake it 30, minutes. So the whole thing, like if you do it as a team and someone is willing to shred,

because the shredding is genuinely the most irritating thing in the world. Yeah. That's a lot of work for sure. Now, this is high class because you could have just gone the Kroger's big bag of cheese. Oh, right. We could have already pre-sread. Weirdly enough, bought Kroger's cheese and then, but bought it in a block. But that's because I think it's fresher if you buy it in a block and shred it. I don't know that there's any proof of this. But I also believe that if you buy a whole chicken and cut it yourself, it's fresher. Yeah. I do too. I do. Because it hasn't tossed like nine knives. Right? There's just there's. Well, here's the thing too. Yeah. And I found this out with tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, whole tomatoes, tomato puree. Can tomatoes? The best to me. Yeah.

The best tomatoes are left for the ones that are whole. whole. And then the ones that are a little damage, whatever, of course, you chop those up and make them into the thing. So you could only think if you're chopping up the cheese or the chicken, whatever. This is a fun fact about canned tomatoes that I will now go forth with. Thank you very much. Okay. I also put the recipe in the chat. Oh, yeah, I just saw that. That's perfect. Thank you. Sure. So that's an amazing. So now after three days, do you feel like you're back in cheese hankering is pretty good for the year?

Yeah. Like literally, this is a special occasion mac and cheese. I make it probably every three years. Is it weird that it matches up during, that it always matches up during stressful presidential elections? Makes perfect sense. Makes perfect sense. There's nothing to be done.

Mommy, help me. Exactly. I would like to be comatose. Because here's the other thing I did. Andy's family, they have turkey at Thanksgiving, but they don't love turkey. Guess who love? I know. I'm bird people.

I'm poultry. I'm with you. So I've made a turkey. But the thing is, is I'm having groceries delivered, like the Rockefeller that I am, feels very fancy. But when you allow someone else to shop for you and you're like, no, I just want. And you can't really get a whole turkey that's less than probably five or six pounds. And so I ordered a turkey. And I was like five or six pounds.

They brought me a 10 pound turkey. So I have baked a 10 pound turkey in the last three days too. But it's great for stock. And then I, then I'm going to make stock and, you know, and this wasn't for Thanksgiving. This was just to make a turkey. Right. Because we're going to go sit in my mother-in-law's backyard, Mama Foley's backyard. But I'm just going to.

With delivery. How much turkey am I going to get? Is there going to be enough turkey? Is there going to be turkey sandwiches? What's going to? What happens the next three days? That's what I've been thinking. I got issues.

I got issues. This is my shooting hand. I'm the same way. But you seem kind of early. Oh, it's early. We're a week. We're two weeks early for this thing. But the thing is, is if I eat all the turkey dough, I will want more turkey in two weeks.

Andy will be like, this is fun. But he likes. What's his background? is he literally this is weird when i met him it was a weird thing he considers like his family's been here long enough like my family just got here and uh uh probably 100 years ago so his family got here he considers himself southern as like almost a nationality like he's he's we did the 23 and me dude is 99 percent whitey magoo he is he is He is like Welsh, English, Irish, Scottish, it's all British Isles.

Wow. And that is white. That is super pale, super white. And so he's all that. And then, um, and so it is, it is great, great, great, whatever showed up in Louisiana in 1861 or two, which means that he was drafted into the Confederate army. If he would have landed in New York at 1862, he would have been drafted into the union army. but so his both sides of his family both his mom and dad grew up in this small town in

mississippi about an hour 15 south of memphis and so as you can imagine the end of this sentence is they love pork yeah he's a big he's a pork guy big barbecue yeah and he'll do weird things with meat and fruit which i'm not a fan of but that i think crosses all kinds of geographic boundaries. Yeah, that's completely insane. I think, but what, but he could have in the same way that fate took him from, took his heritage from the north to the south, he could have easily been full on chicken. Could have, but he loves chicken, but no, quite honestly, I've never met anyone who's as

obsessed with chicken as I am. I freaking, I, that rhymes. I love chicken. I love, and, but it very, I freaking love chicken. Very specific though, baked chicken. Fried chicken is not my jam. No. It's okay.

I don't mind it. Like there is a restaurant right by us. And get this, it was a check cashing place. And the guy put a grill outside. And now he has half a block. It's awesome. He is, it's his family, I think, is they are all kinds of Latino. He's Cuban, Guatemalan.

and Puerto Rican all mixed up together. And so they have some, they have grills and you can get two chickens, two full chickens with two rice and two beans, black beans, the other kind of beans, the Pinto's, and then yellow rice and white rice, and two full chickens and tortillas for like 35 bucks. Oh my God.

That's amazing. I mean, you don't have like rotissory chicken at the store, is like $6. These are like amazing grilled chickens. These things are popping up. There is a place. My daughter goes to dance and I pass it. It's a no-ho fried chicken.

And it's like it's the same thing. Like this guy, it literally looks like an RV. Yeah. And then they added a grill to it. And then they, and like this amazing heritage is just cranking out this fried chicken that just beats everything else you can find. an amazing pop-up that we've gone twice. They're only open Saturday and Sunday mornings from 7 a.m. to 10.30.

They pop up in circus liquor parking lot. Uh-huh. Three big clown. Yeah. Three Armenian guys. And they make Bostroma and Sojuk tortillas burritos and tacos. So it's like this. Bostroma is essentially an Armenian prosciutto or if it's dried an Armenian jerky.

Oh, my God. This stuff isn't dried. It's, it's fresh. And Sojuke is a sausage. It's, it's an Armenian sausage. And so a burrito, a cassidia, a taco. And it's called something like bread and breakfast.

That's the, because I follow them on Instagram, because you got to follow them on Instagram to figure out where the hell they're, what pop. Because they, for a long time, they're going to work. Yeah,

because for a long time, they were over on Magnolia near Lankert, the Shim, over their Lankersham. And now they're in circus, or the last time I went, was in circus, uh, liquors parking lot. And I and they're just, it amazing. It's amazing. The burritos. Yeah. The Bostermont burrito is. Oh my God. It's a, I got it's delightful. Wow.

I don't know from Basterman. Yeah, Bosterma. It's, it's fun. Um, in Wisconsin, because I'm from Wisconsin and Wisconsin Armenians, we only got it dried. And so when I moved to Los Angeles, I was like, what are you doing to it? And they're, this is a prosciutto like delight and it's super garlicky it's like the flavor is this very black pepper garlic kind of spice it's so if you're going to make out with somebody they got to eat it you got to eat it yeah they both you both have to eat it i didn't know there was a huge Armenian Wisconsin I always think when I think Wisconsin I always think more like Germanic oh yeah yeah it's Germans Polish Italian Italian uh, northern more Swedes and, um, Norwegians. South is more German and Polish. Uh, but there's, yeah, there's, there's a lot of Armenians sort of Chicago, Milwaukee area in between that, that, that came from Boston.

So there's like waves, like there are with every single country that's ever come to the United States. There are waves of people that came. So my grandparents came after World War I from the genocide. And so they land first to New York. Some of them go to Boston, pile of Albanians in Boston. And then some of them, Chicago and then work their way up to Milwaukee and then Minneapolis. And then a lot of them, New York fly over, just go right to Fresno by land and then bleed down into Los Angeles because they want to be famous. And who doesn't want to wear a sweatsuit that matches your pants?

and just like, I don't know if it was a comic. Oh, I'm facing his name. Oh, well. But he used to do this character of his uncle, his Armenian uncle, a stand-up comic. And he had a ripaway Adidas, a sweatsuit. That was adorable. Yeah. It was pretty great.

So back to your calendar. Yeah. You have a love of baked chicken. and you've got only nine months. Right. And you've got, so you need three more and they're tough to find. They're tough to find.

I'm not able to crack this. I wonder, like I, I wonder if, because there's, there's, the basic chicken, which is what my stepmother,

it was literally one of the only things she was good at cooking. She didn't like to cook. Yeah. She didn't care. And she knew we had to eat. Yeah, but kids have to be fed.

Here, there are six of you. Here's a pile of food. Eat it. Don't eat it. But this is all there is. But I mean. And I made it. And so my job is done.

My task is done. One of you is going to be doing dishes. One of you is going to be drying the dishes, washing dry. We had like a schedule set up, set up. It was very much like a restaurant. And, but the, the chicken that heard basic chicken was just this. It was cut up chicken. I almost always cut up chicken because it cooks,

more evenly. And she would, you know, do the thing. It's called chicken. I call it chicken of the gods because it is the perfect, basic chicken, salt,

pepper, garlic, maybe a little dab of butter on each of the, the things if you want to crisp up the skin for sure. And then you bake it at a, somewhere between 350 and 400 for 45 minutes. And then you try not to eat at all. That's the,

I mean, literally it's just salt, pepper and chopped fresh garlic. sprinkle it over it, make sure, and you can, it's all it takes. Right, and you can do the things that we've learned from the food network for the last 20 years, which is start cooking it at room temperature, salt it before, to draw out the moisture, make sure that, you know, who cares?

It is almost idiot proof, a basic chicken of the gods. You could make it, and it's delicious. And so that's the basic recipe. That's good. Is that your, is that your go-to? Yeah. Like if you're just going to make it, do you do any, do you do any of the baked chickens that are coated, breaded? No, no, I actually don't, I don't like sort of a fry bake, like what looks like kind of a, like a sheet pan.

Yeah. Kind of chicken, you know, like rolling in breadcrumbs and butter, that kind of. No, people, what you're doing there is you're taking the flavor of the chicken and you're hiding it. That's not what I'm interested in. But the weird thing is, that's why like a boneless, skinless situation irritates me so much. I was like, I get it. You don't want the fat that is the skin and you don't want, but a lot of the flavor is in the bone and skin. So if you cook it normal and then take the skin off and give it to someone who doesn't care,

who's just going to eat it. And you, exactly. The best part. Right. And if you want to debone it then and make sandwiches or a chicken salad or something like that, it still has that flavor because it was cooked in those things. Jackie, I literally today was every once in a while, you know, you look in your freezer and it's just chaos. You can't fit. Everyone's just jamming things in. It's like, let me go through and see what's holding up the works in here. I took out a pack of boneless, skinless chicken breast from 2017. That was. Oh, that was a good year.

That was a good year. Because obviously I was, I don't know why I bought it, but I never wanted to make it. And I left it in there for three years. Exactly. Mary Mac, you know Mary Mac, right? Yeah, yeah. Her mom has a freezer and she's preparing for the apocalypse, not realizing that the apocalypse, there won't be any electricity. But she's got really old meat.

And so sometimes Mick will go to her mom's house. And like, she's like, 2017 was a good year for poker. pork roast and she'll take some of the older meat and just cook it just because she doesn't want it to go bad. That's hilarious. Oh, here's it. How many years can you keep it? I don't know, but she eats it and she lives.

So I don't know that that's the best. Andy has one of the greatest chicken recipes that's on the calendar. And it's bone in, skin on chicken thighs. Oh. In a terror. I like a good thigh. In a tarragon popover. What?

That's the correct response. A tarragon popover is sort of the Yorkshire pudding of the world, right? You make a popover mix. Uh-huh. All he does is salt pepper tarragon. Uh-huh. Pan fry the skin and sort of brown it. You brown the four.

He makes it in thighs. Thighs. He makes it in one of the big cast iron skillets. So he browns it in oil. I believe vegetable oil. And after doing salt pepper and tarragon, brown, brown, brown, brown. And then he mixes up the popover mix,

which also has tarragon in it and a little bit of salt and pepper, pours that over it, bakes that for 40 minutes or so. Wow. Yeah. Pours it on top. Pores it on top and bakes it for like 40, 45 minutes.

And I think it's in his Betty, Crocker? Yeah, what are the old? Yeah, the old school. Better homes and gardens, maybe. I think better homes and gardens. Popular mechanic. Wow, that is amazing.

And it is, and that has been our go. That's been my sort of comfort food in quarantine, quite honestly. Like once every two weeks, I'm like, will you make the tarragon pop over? And he's like, I will. Yeah. Oh, man. No, when you say you pour it over, so he, and then, it in that same skillet just in that giant that he fried with poured on top put that in the

yeah and then sort of shake it up to sort of make sure that the the chicken isn't sticking it kind gets under it a little but this sounds like something that you're not into where you're covering up that's like breading the I you would think you would think that is the only you are right that is the only I full of hypocrisy this one what's happening you love him you love him right I'm just willing to making it for you you're not having to cook at that He keeps wanting to add cherries to things. And I'm like, stop. Just eat cherries.

Why would you want to put pineapples on ham, cherries or prunes or apricots? I actually, again, hypocrisy, there is in the list an apricot chicken. It's more of a Moroccan. It's a North African chicken. But the apricot, it's an apricot cusscus that goes with that chicken. Oh, that sounds interesting. Apricot cuscus good times. Yeah.

I don't really understand it completely, but I'm in true. Right, because I usually don't like my sweet and savory mixed much at all. But for some reason, apricots aren't super sweet. They're just a little tangy. So like in a lemon. A little something. I'll have citrus on stuff, you know? I know, but it is kind of a thing like all of those.

It's like, yeah, it could be interesting. It could be a fun little tang, but do you need it? But do you really need it? All right. So you're going to go up to Thanksgiving. You're going to go up to the Central Valley. And then someone will bring you some stuff. Right.

We'll pick it up over at the Emporium. The Emporium is doing some sort of turkey thing. You could either get. And it's a nickel because once you get out of a major city, yeah, everything is free. They're just handing you things. And it literally feels like that. Have you ever eaten in Milwaukee? have you ever eaten at a restaurant in Milwaukee?

Here's one of the, several of the restaurants my father likes to eat breakfast at. If you order two eggs, you get a third just in case they break an egg. And they've never broken an egg. So he's like, just order one egg. You save money. And I was like, you're killing me. And I don't want three eggs, though.

So yes, I guess I'm eating two eggs. And then the other thing is, and they're all Greek family restaurants. He loves a Greek family restaurant. And so that's one, that's the. Extra egg is a weird thing in Milwaukee. Here's the other thing. So I go to this place in Cade, Wisconsin, which is the next town up. My town is called South Milwaukee.

The next town up is called Cadeh. And then it goes, Bayview, whatever. It's a great story. So we're at the restaurant. I think I'm getting the lunch special with, I'm there with my last friend for my school that I kept in touch with for the last 30 odd years. And he is a good egg. We sit down.

I get the chicken. I get the chicken. And it's a baked chicken. It's lovely. And I think it's called broasted, which I don't know what the hell that means. Do you? Baked and roasted? Maybe, maybe.

And so anyway, but it comes, and I am happy because it comes with a little bit of rice peel off, a little bit of veg. And then, but it also comes with super salad and dessert and coffee. Oh, eight bucks. Eight dollars. Right. So she. Oh my God. We come for the bill and I get the pie. And I'm like, this is insane for $8.

And she, the panic in her eyeballs, Tom. She goes, no, no, no, no, you didn't. Wait, that's, that's the lunch special. I thought you ordered the entree, which comes with the soup salad and, because soup and salad, that's right. And, uh, and pie and coffee. That one's $9.99. And I was like, I got two bucks over here. It's all going to work out.

It's all going to be okay. Oh, my God. We live in the wrong place. Oh, it's so delicious. It is literally the thing I hate the most of, well, I mean, besides the rampant death about COVID is that I need, I love to go to a coffee shop. I love to go to a restaurant and have them fill my coffee cup over and I drink too much coffee. I know. And you, I can, like I go on Ventura Boulevard and I see the outside.

dieting and Andy calls them the brunch COVIDians, which I don't think he made up. He said he read it somewhere. That's really great. But Branch COVIDians is awesome. That's awesome. I was like, can we be brunch convidians? He said, it's not our religion, honey. And so I'm like, we're not allowed.

I know, I know. I really do miss just that smallness of just being sitting for a good couple hours. A good couple hours. 45 to an hour. With someone you like. Oh, my God. I used to do. Oh, the best.

I would host these comedy brunches over at the Magnolia Grill on Magnolia. And I'd just be like 12 comics who, and I would have it at like 1130. Comics are up by 1130. So they would come. And for like an hour and a half or two hours, we'd sit around. And it was a great way to hear about gigs. It was a great way to sort of exchange the hilarious stories of terrible. rooms and yeah just green room and it all just leads to you feeling less alone yes which is

what is the biggest thing of all of this is we are all now in semi-retirement and it's and we're too young to be living that way i know and i you know i'm in my garage because we right before we went in a lockdown we were going to do a fancy thing with the garage but it was too expensive and so we did what is kind of a fancy thing we have a tiny room attached to our garage now this uh this this this this that that door right there we're in it right now we're in it right now oh that goes that door used to just be a shed where we stored spiders and now it's a closet where we store spiders and uh and then there's this little room that i can use for podcasting and and all the things awesome that's brilliant yeah and uh andy has he teaches and so he's teaching remotely as well and we have a little we have a

little house but has two bedrooms so he teaches in the extra bedroom and so there's three rooms which is two more than people have, so I'm very grateful. But three rooms where we can do things. And so he was like, he's got to run actually to the farmers. There's a farm stand up to, because my mother-in-law wants to make a butternut squash soup, which is delightful. He wants to add a spaghetti squash to it for texture. I would like to.

I'm with you. I'd like to veto that. I'd like to veto that. That's a little wormy. A little wormy. That's exactly what it is. But he's got to, so anyway, so he's coming to the garage and I was like, oh, you could visit me at work.

Because I'm in the garage. He's like, yeah, bring your husband to work day. Anyway. Well, Jackie, thank you so much for spending time with me. This is amazing. I have to say, we've been, you know, we're doing a bunch of these. And these are, and, you know, we've talked to some fancy, schmancy people who make some things in restaurants and things.

I am more excited about these recipes. Yeah, hearing about that mac and cheese and the different versions of baked chicken, I am, man. I can email you the working document. And then you can look at the nine recipes that I have. Oh, man. I promise not to steal it. But I would like to see it because I now want to go on the hunt and see if I can't turn

you on to some others that will make the calendar, because this calendar has to come out. Oh, it'd be so good. I have to also tell you that, because I buy, for for some time, I've liked to, there's fancy butchers you can go to to get fancy meat. But I have always, I was like, well, I'm just going to get the chicken, the good chicken at Whole Foods, because that's fancy enough. And they have different steps at Whole Foods. This is my last story. But there's Step one sort of chicken that is raised in a cage and has been fed vegetable. It's vegetarian, but it's just, you know, it's just a chicken.

And step two, step three, step three is sort of cage free, which just means that the gauge door is open. Chickens aren't, they don't want to see the world. They mostly don't leave. They're a cage. But they do like the option. And so, but step five is, I did not know this because I bought a step five because I thought, oh, that's a nice chicken that's had a good life.

Well, it turns out it's a chicken that you should only use. for stock because it mostly died of old age. It's a pretty stringy chicken. And I come home and I baked it. And Andy was like, is this a stage five chicken? Does it have stage five cancer? And I was like, they're called Steps. And if you ever say it again, I'm going to be creeped out.

And he, of course, has said it every time. And it is creepy. It's just they just live, live their life to the end. I think there's more to it. I think it's just an old freaking chicken. That's a bad idea. Yeah. Just don't get step five is what I'm saying.

Just don't bring it into the supermarket. Just let it know. Just let it know. That's a different kind of chicken. Oh, that's terrible. Well, you're the best, Jackie. Is there anything we can tell the people about? Oh, well, here's the thing.

Jackiecation.com is my website. And if you sign up for my email list, which is harder to get on than it is to get off, quite honestly because you have to find jackycation.com and look in the lower right and sign up. That is three clicks, three steps. And, but to get off, you'll get a, you get an email right now in quarantine. I'm sending an email out every week, which feels excessive, except for that. It's the only way I can tell people about the Zoom shows, because I'm working on a new album. I'm recording that album in December in Minneapolis, if allowed.

So I'm doing the Loveland, Colorado, the Milwaukee club if they're open, and the Minneapolis. If all of these clubs are open, these are the road gigs I'm doing. Loveland, Colorado, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Minnesota. And I'm recording a new album. So I work on them every week on Zoom. Jackie Kasher.com to sign up for it. And I have two podcasts. I have the Doric Forest, which I'm going to email you about to set up sometime next week,

if you want to talk for an hour. and all the next two episodes hilariously are about Hallmark Christmas movies Oh boy That is a big subject in my house One with my brother Russ Who's an Econ professor

And loves Hallmark Christmas movies And has made a spreadsheet With 149 Hallmark Christmas movies And the next episode is with Jen Kirkman Who has a more visceral response To the Hallmark Christmas movie I don't understand

Why Jen Kirkman wouldn't like that narrative of the girl giving up her future and moving to a small town. She loves it. She loves she, and matter of fact, that episode was so funny. It comes out in like two weeks, but she,

that's great. She talks about, because I asked Russ and Jen Kirkman both to tell me their five favorite movies. And Russ was like, that's like asking me to tell you my five favorite Pringles. They are cookie cutter, and I like them,

but I can't tell you. But they're all the same. Right. And Kirkman was like, what I like about them is that none of these women, they're all professional women. who learn how to work from home by the end of the movie. Exactly.

Anyway, so that's the Dork Forest, and then the other one is the Jackie and Laurie show. I have two podcasts. You're great. Thank you for having. You're the greatest. I love you so much. You're the best.

Thanks for spending time, and I'll see you when you get back from Thanksgiving. Well, that's it, everybody. I hope you enjoy Jackie Cation. I hope you make that spicy cranberry relish. I hope you enjoy your holiday. Like I said, it really is a good time to celebrate. I don't care what.

the noise is, turn the news off, and enjoy your life. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure you subscribe. Make sure you rate us. Give us stars if you like it. Pass it on to your friends. It's what makes the community grow and makes us all happier. Enjoy and happy holidays.