Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 95 - Food IQ

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

It's time to get smarter in the kitchen with Dan Holzman and Matt Rodbard, authors of Food IQ available now everywhere! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, it's time for Breaking Bread with Papa. Hey, don't you know? Hey, it's also a show. Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I am Tom Papa. Thank you for joining us at the table once again. We have a great show for you today. This is a good one because we all listen to this podcast.

We all love food and comedy. And we all make our way into the kitchen. And we start making stuff. and then we run into questions. And you're like, wait a minute. What am I supposed to do with this pasta water? How am I supposed to salt this thing? What kind of vegetable?

Yeah, I don't have a fresh vegetable. Can I use a frozen one? And you end up with all these questions. And today, our guests have put together a book, Daniel Holtzman and Matt Rodbard. And Matt, I apologize if I'm not saying it. Usually, I've got to say names just fast. Fast. Matt Robert. And they came up with a book called Food IQ 100 questions, answers, and recipes to raise

your cooking smarts. It's a really fun book and it's really informative. And we get into it in the conversation and you will definitely enjoy it. It's going to be a good one today. Today's show is sponsored by the good people at Sunday lawn care. It's hard to imagine, but spring is almost here. We're so close to feeling that soft grass under our feet. But first we need to get our lawn back. Thankfully, Sunday lawn care gets your lawn growing and helps to keep it healthy all season long. Sunday is offering our listeners 20% off.

Full season plans starting at $129. Get 20% off at checkout when you visit getsunday.com slash bread 20. That's bread. 20. Sunday.com slash bread 20. A great company. They help you get your lawn in shape without a whole bunch of nasty chemicals that will make you worry about your children. We'd also like to thank the good people at BetterHelp. This podcast is also sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. They offer video, phone, and even live chat sessions with your therapist. See why over two million people have

used BetterHelp. Listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash Papa. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P, BetterHelp.com slash Papa. It'll help you sort through your issues and your problems and just give you somebody to talk to. A good company, BetterHelp Online Therapy. Also, oh, look at this. Look at this.

We also have a sponsor, Tom Popper. Papa.com. Oh, that's amazing. What is he doing? Well, it looks like there's a big family reunion tour that's touring around the country, and there's lots of dates coming up. We've got Barrington, Massachusetts, we've got Redding, Pennsylvania, we've got Livermore, California, limited tickets in all of this, but get out there, get to the website, check out the tour dates. A big one, which I think we all should go to, is the one in Las Vegas. I, the win. That one's going to be a lot of fun at the Encore Theater. Ooh, baby. That is May 6th in Las Vegas, again at the Encore Theater. Another big one, the Netflix is a joke festival, comedy festival.

The first time that they've put together a comedy festival, Netflix is a joke. They're just taking over Los Angeles, and I have a show at the Regent Theater on April 29th. So that's going to be a lot of fun. Thanks to tompapa.com for being a sponsor of today's program as well. This world's filled with surprises. Hope you're doing well. Hope everything's going okay. We're rolling here into March. I understand that parts of the country are still frozen solid.

And I understand that parts of the West feel like springtime already. And I understand this because I've traveled to all parts of it. And I went to Fargo, North Dakota. great show, but not before I was walking to the theater and slipped in the ice and fell, and I think, I don't say I think I broke a rib, but I will say that I bruised it. Can't see it from the outside, but it's uncomfortable to sleep. And I don't know how you do it, North Dakota. I don't know how you do it. Stayed at a great hotel, made me feel all cozy and warm. That I understood.

Great restaurant in the Jasper Hotel, serving really creative stuff. That I got. I had a nice risotto. It was beautiful. Good people all making their way in there and very hip, very cool, everybody gathering around, enjoying themselves, having some laughs and having some food. And then you go outside and it feels like minus 31 degrees. And you're walking to your little comedy show over snow banks and frozen sidewalks. It's not like they could ever get ahead of it. It's never a point where the ice will go away, not until the earth gets closer to the sun and nature does its work. You can't shovel it, ice it, and be like, okay, there won't be ice. There's always ice.

So then you take a dingbat who has been living in L.A. for quite some time and not used to shuffling around in the ice. I know all my East Coast friends are like, what has happened to you? I know. I am fully aware. but just casually walking along. And when I say it wasn't even like I'm slipping and about to fall, there wasn't a, oh, whoa, whoa, I might be going down. There wasn't any of that. It just went from walking happily, thinking about the show and what I'm going to, what jokes I'm going to do.

And I'm on my back. It was that fast. There was no, I don't remember, I don't remember, I don't remember leaving. leaving my feet. I don't remember halfway down. I just remember walking and on the ground next to a brick building with my rib-herding. My wrist went out and didn't go out. I went out to break my fall. Thankfully, that didn't, that didn't snap into, which everything else I felt like should snap into because it was so dang cold. But we're all fine. I only tell this little tale to say, I understand what you're going through in those cold climates.

And then I went over to Milwaukee and I ate at Maters, which is a right of passage when you're in Milwaukee. You've got to go to this German restaurant. And every single act, whoever went through there and performed since before John F. Kennedy has been in there. Everyone from Sinatra to the foo fighters and in between and everybody rolls into this German restaurant. and I had a Bavarian platter of Bratworth and Knockwurst and Sourkraut and two types of dark brown mustards, this great potato thing on the side. I have to admit, I've been craving German food in a big way, and maybe it's because I've been in cold places.

I had just this craving for some of that sourbrotten, that sauerkraut, the beer, the atmosphere. I've been craving it all all winter. And when you roll into Milwaukee, I was doing an interview and the reporter reminded me, don't blow it this time, go to Maters. And I had time at lunch, got in early and I satisfied that craving. Kind of. Don't you find it's difficult when you go into a restaurant and you've been, you don't really know the ins and outs completely. So you just roll in, like say it's your first time in Korea town. And you're like, everybody loves Korean food. Everybody's serving it up. Everybody has a great time. And everybody's talking about how adventurous the menus are. And then you get there and you're like, yes, I did it. I parked.

I'm in a Korean restaurant and I don't know what to do. What's the rookie move? What's the pro move? Do I get a couple of different things? How do I? How do I? I do? How do I? I pronounce it, all the rest of it. All of a sudden, you really should ask the help of the people that are there, and if they're good people, they will help you. The German lady who looked beautiful and the whole Octoberfest get up was very sweet, but she was just kind of like, why are you asking me this? You should know these things.

So I didn't know, do I go Wienershnitzel? Do I go sourbrotten? do I go with the pork dish? I didn't know what to do. So in my mind, I was thinking Bratworths all slathered up with sauerkraut and mustard and that's what I did. And it did satisfy the craving. The only curveball, you're in a big German restaurant with big beer steins. I don't normally drink the day of a show just because it's all about energy, keeping your energy up after getting to Fargo falling on the ice, getting a six a him flight to the next place and being in Milwaukee and getting ready to do that show.

But the atmosphere and the food and maters won, and I got a big dine of beer, had that with the Bratworth, satisfied the craving for sure. It was a great experience. And then just walked back and had, I think, maybe a three-hour nap, which never happens, maybe 20 minutes if I'm meditating, but to go down for a full three solid hours, I have to say it was pretty good. So thank you to Maters. And thank you to the Jasper Hotel for keeping me fed along the way. All right, we have a great interview for you today. Like I said, we've got Daniel Holtzman and Matt Rodbard. Matt is a food writer, New York Times bestselling author. He actually wrote

Korea Town, a cookbook. And a really good writer who's been writing forever about food. And he hooks up with Daniel Holtzman, who is a really great chef. And Daniel, for the people on the East Coast, you will know Daniel because he created the meatball shop in New York. He opened one in the West Village where I used to live. And that caught on all around the city, the meatball shop. You just go in and get your favorite meatball and these small, modest places. and it just caught the city, it caught on fire in the city. And now he's in L.A. where he did this interview with us, he is running Danny Boy's famous original in L.A. and has promised me some pizza if I roll by. I've never had his pizza,

but just knowing what he did with the meatball shop and his knowledge of food and joy and all good things, I can only imagine that Danny Boyce, famous, is going to be a force here in Los Angeles. So you get Daniel together with his crazy inventiveness. Crazy inventiveness, and I say that in an entrepreneurial way. He says in the interview that he's pretty much a classic. He likes to perfect the classics, which the meatball definitely shows, and then you go over to pizza. And then Matt, who has tasted everything from around the world. and a really great writer and is able to put it all down and knows the ins and outs and also does

it himself. So then you have these two forces that hook up and they decided, well, let's tackle the thing that home cooks are always wrestling with. And that's all of those little answers, the little questions, questions, answers and recipes to raise your cooking smarts. That is the name of the book. And it really is great. We get into everything. We start talking about frozen foods. We talk about what kind of salt you're supposed to use, whether or not you can have frozen fish, all of these different things. And some of the answers are very surprising. So when you're in there in the kitchen and you have like those little things like, what am I supposed to do with this? If I have a pantry filled with stuff, can I make some food out of this? What the hell am I doing?

and what are the answers? And you're sometimes too even embarrassed to ask because they seem so basic. Well, Matt and Daniel answer all the questions. They pose them and it kind of gives you a safe space to ask what you may think are the obvious, but we all need the answers to. It's a great book. After the conversation, just go to wherever books are sold and pick it up. You're going to enjoy it.

Food IQ, 100 questions, answers, and recipes to raise your questions. Cooking Smarts. And now, enjoy my conversation with Daniel Holtzman and Matt Rodbarden. Congratulations about the book. This is a very cool thing. I'm excited to get into it and talk all about it. I also want to know a little bit of your backgrounds. One starting off as starting off in the chef world, starting off in the writer's world, joining forces, world domination. Daniel, why don't we start with you? When did you start your career? You were a kid, right?

My culinary career. I started 13 years old that started delivering pizza for Gino's Pizza on 83rd Street. And yeah, that was that was it. It was a downhill, downhill from there, as my mom would say. What was your family background? Jews from the Upper East Side. New York for, you know, since the 1700s generation on generation. Wow.

My mom was a painter, a really amazing creative woman. And my pop was a carpenter, like Jesus. Oh, very cool. And was food a big part of your growing up? So my mother was a real hippie from New York, and she mashed organic baby food for us and made sure that my brother and I ate. You know, and my dad was a, you know, junk food and watching TV kind of guy. So they got a divorce early on.

So we spent our, we spent our weekends eating, eating Doritos and our weekdays eating organic, organic vegetables. And it worked out. Yeah, that's good. That's good balance. It's the only way you can really do it when you're a kid. I can't believe, like, we actually, I have two daughters, and we have an unopened bag of Doritos in the house. And I was like, if there were boys in this house, there's no way that happens. There's no way a bag goes on top bag of Doritos.

No, no chance. Yeah, exactly. And Matt, when, you know, you're a writer, but was food a big part of your background when you start, when, was it always kind of something that was in your in your sites? Oh, most definitely. I am of the Ashkenazi Jew of the Midwest region of the American. Americas. And so we certainly had lots of food traditions growing up. And I think my dad's from north side of Chicago. So pizza was was ingrained into my brain at an early age that that deep dish casserole style pizza that you'll find in Chicago is the best pizza. I lived in New York. I've lived

there for 20 years. And so I've certainly seen the light. And my father was incorrect on that assumption. Yeah. I just did, uh, I just did wait, wait, don't tell me in Chicago, um, last, like two weeks ago. And I was surprised at all the Chicago people that were shitting on deep dish pizza. It's, um, I love deep dish pizza. And it's such a, people get angry at me. I'm like, it's just delicious. It's delicious. Like, what's their not? The only downside is that, you know, It's like, as Anthony Bourdain said about Nashville hot chicken, it's a three-day commitment. You know, I eat a deep dish and it's like, I'm basically feasting on tums for the rest of the weekend. Yeah, exactly.

What's your opinion on the deep dish, Matt? I'm honestly, I'll have a Piquads pizza in Chicago sometimes, but I got to say it's the New York City slice that I'm more inclined towards. Right. So I just don't think that the cheese should be on the bottom. I'm just not into that personally. Right. I'm more of a top guy. I hear you.

I hear you. So how did you guys meet? How did you guys join forces? Matt, Matt came in. I was opening a restaurant in New York City and Matt was a journalist and he was covering the opening and came in and started to ask me questions and more questions. And, you know, 15 years later, he's still asking questions.

I mean, we, we've been, you know, early on we realized we both had a real passion for Korean food. And we started traveling out to the boroughs out of Manhattan to, you know, find the best restaurants and spending some late nights together. So our relationship really was born of a work relationship and then morphed into a friendship. Right. That's very cool. And what was the inspiration for this book? Because the book is a very cool, a very cool. thing. Someone who

loves to cook and loves to explore and do stuff, it's a great book because food IQ is, it's kind of unknowable. It's kind of like looking at a giant wine list and you're like, I know wines and then all of a sudden you're like, I don't know anything in this list.

Your book kind of has that thing where you're like, yeah, I know how to cook. Oh shit. I didn't realize this part about frozen foods. It's so true. And Tom, honestly, it came out of this idea that we had these questions and we wanted to give confidence to people who needed the confidence because a lot of times looking at a recipe is like looking at that wine list.

You're like, what is brown butter? Like what, what brown the butter? Like, so that was like one of our questions, for example. Right. And we just wanted to give readers confidence to cook, but also do it in a way that we're having like a really good time, you know, bullshitting with each other during the whole process. So. Right, right. There is a, you say in the book, it's a combination of smarts and intuition. What balance for you, for both of you, do you think is needed? Because I feel like I feel like I'm always concentrating, like, furrowed brow,

trying to figure out what the meanings of things are in the cooking world and trying to, like, figure out, okay, what's this recipe, what's this thing? and that I don't give it up enough to intuition, even though I kind of have a base of knowledge, I get a little more frightened. But it seems like the greats almost rely more on intuition. I feel like that's a big piece of the puzzle for us when we were talking about writing this cookbook. You know, most recipes in most cookbooks really focus on what to cook. So we thought, well, you know, as a chef,

it's a deeper understanding that gives you the entrepreneurial authority to make choices as you go along, kind of like choices on the fly. So I feel less that folks are, you know, when you see somebody that's making on-the-go decisions and changing recipes and just kind of working by intuition, it's really that they've done it before. They know what that's going to do and the effect that that ingredient that they're adding is going to have. Like, you know, I put a little too much salt. Lemon is a great way to counterbalance, you know, salt. salt and lemon are kind of opposites and cancel each other out.

So, you know, I feel like when we wrote the cookbook, the whole goal was, let's explain the why and the how and what's really going on so that people feel confident to make those choices. And, you know, that's our whole goal. It's like, you shouldn't have to follow a recipe. And there are so many choices you can make and a few that really, you know, can scriptage. Right. Matt, would you, would you, when you're writing, did you do a lot of reviews of places of like new ventures and stuff like that?

Oh, yeah. Actually, Tom, I was a restaurant reviewer in, in like 2009, 2010 in New York. So I would go out in and visit places and do anonymous meals. And certainly, it's part of this story that we write and our enjoyment. journey comes from that reviewing process and having meals that were terrible that were just not great and under and being like why did this not actually work why like and so I took a lot of that when I was reviewing yeah yeah it's got to be kind of knowing knowing like just what what we were just talking about about intuition of being a little daring and trying something new and trying

having that entrepreneurial spirit it's like you have to take some leaps it must be hard for for you to write about somebody who took a leap and didn't make it to the other side. Well, one of the example, and I love Eddie Wong. Like, I love him, and I reviewed his restaurant Chauier. And, like, he was cooking with sparks, I think. And I felt like that was just, just comes to mind that just when you take that leap and you're, he was cooking with Cheetos and Sparks. And this was like when Sparks was an actual beverage we consumed.

And I just like stuff like that, like you encounter that. And like, did it all work? No. And like, Pete Wells gave it not a great review. I gave it maybe a little better review. But when you say, like, when you take that leap in the restaurant setting and you have that boldness, like, I, I just personally am drawn to that as a writer. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And, Daniel, when you, when you were doing it on the, on the creation side of it, is there a part of you that gets hesitant and doesn't want to go completely insane? Like what's your philosophy when you're exploring and kind of pushing? I have a pretty traditional background. I've worked in some fancy French restaurants and some classic Italian restaurants. And I'm drawn more towards the classic and simple flavor combinations and traditional flavor combinations.

You know, I've never been a super creative that way and wanting to push the boundaries. For me, I look at food as, you know, the first and foremost is, is it delicious? And then if it isn't delicious, it's like there's no point of moving forward. And my philosophy has always been, if you have to explain to somebody why it's delicious, it ain't delicious. Right, exactly. You're talking them into it. I feel that when I'm like even just cooking for my family, it's like, if you have to ask, you're in trouble. and it's like if you just see their plates are all cleaned after they plowed through the meal,

that's the only thing you really need to know. Kids and grandmas, you know, kids and grandmas, you tell a little kid to taste something and they just look to you right in the face and tell you it's disgusting. And, you know, a grandma at a certain age, you realize, like, I'm too old for this, you know, anymore. I'm just not going to eat it. I don't need to be nice. Right, exactly.

All right, let me ask you some questions. and it's a good segue into some of the meat of your book because it is stuff that I've learned and unlearned and maybe he didn't learn it at all about different aspects of when I'm screwing around and cooking. Let's start off with salt. First question of salt. Yay or nay to using iodized salt?

So, I mean, I guess if you have an iodine efficiency, iodized salt can be a real lifesaver. And so I don't have an issue necessarily with it. I don't think that once you, you know, you can smell iodine in salt. Once it dissolves, you can't really taste it. So there's no, there's no downside to it. And it works as table salt. A lot of those table salts also have weird anti-caking agents to stop them from sticking together.

Generally speaking, I use kosher salt. And in the cookbook, we advocate using kosher salt for everything. It's less expensive. the most important piece of the puzzle with salt just in general is use the same type of salt all the time because the pinch a pinch of salt the smaller the crystals the saltier a pinch becomes but you know it'll be heavier by weight it'll have more so you'll be you want to add a consistent amount every pinch so that you get a feel for it that's kind of the most important piece of puzzle right and not not the coarse kosher salt I mean, I think just traditional either Morton's or we have a whole article in the book that talks about the difference between Morton's diamond crystal by weight and volume.

Because a tablespoon of Morton's morton Morton's kosher salt has a good good bit more actual salt than a tablespoon of diamond crystal. So, you know, the very core stuff tends not to dissolve if you're seasoning a chicken that you're going to cook in the pan. So it's fine for seasoning, you know, water for pasta, but it's not ideal. No, I think just classic kosher salt is best. And then with the other piece of the puzzle that we advocate is using a scale and weighing your ingredients. We think that the number one reason that home-cooked meals are either aren't great or could be better is just either under over-seasoning. And in the book, we talk about, you know, Food IQ, the idea is it's 1% of the weight, one-to-one-and-half percent of the, of the, of the weight. So, you know, I got a, I got a whole chicken. I weighed and it weighs, you know,

450 grams. That's a very light chicken. I put four and I put five grams of salt on it and it's perfectly seasoned. It's really, really easy. And then once you've got that down, you feel confident, you know, you can do it by eye. But in the restaurant, I always use grams scale and weight. And we never, we never just, you know, weighing it. It was the smallest of game hens. It was like a Tiny game hen. Yeah, a little baby. Yeah. Worried about all the chemicals you're using to keep your lawn looking its best.

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lives, we're trying to enjoy the people around us and have the good relationships. And now that we're re-emerging, going back out into the world, it's a bit of a mind trip. It's a pretty heavy thing. And it doesn't mean that you have to have, like, monumental problems. Sometimes you just need to talk to somebody and just check in. Is this kind of, are you feeling this? Do you feel, should I be feeling this way? This is how I'm feeling.

You make time for the gym. You make time to enjoy some comedy. You make time to enjoy some good food. Make some time to take care of your mental health. That's BetterHelp, B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P, BetterHelp.com slash Papa. again, breaking bread listeners, get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash papa. And how do you, how do you advise dealing with salt snobs? Because there's a, there's a, there's a lot of people that are coming around and saying you should only use the, the salt that came

from an active volcano, uh, somewhere near Pompeii or from the Nordic flats. Is there any difference to that stuff? Does that make anything? Is it as good as it is trendy? This is an interesting. It's all salt. Like, let's get real. Like the volcanic black salt that you get in Maui, wonderful gift.

Just the best gift to give somebody. It's great. It's cheap, but it shows that you really thought of them. But is it going to season your food differently than that one tablespoon of diamond crystal kosher? No. So like the pink salts and the Himalayan salts, in terms of the flavor profile, not much of a difference. Now, granted, there's malden salt, which is crunchier salt.

So there are some salt that have a better, a different texture. Like for baking, you want a molden salt. That's a really great, you know, mouth feel and crunch to it. But really, there's a lot of like kind of, you know, I'm not a scientist or a doctor, but there's some kind of like overblown claims about like some of these salts. Right. Well, I'm a doctor and a scientist, and I am going to back my partner up. All right, good. Now, here's another question.

I remember back in the day, I was interviewing Mario Battali, and the thing that he was saying, and he would start off a lot of interviews this way, he would say, go, if you're, when you're getting into cooking, first thing, go into your cabinet and throw out all of your dried herbs. throw away all of the spices, herbs and spices, just chuck them all out. They're no good. And just start fresh. And that always seemed a little kind of like a cool thing to say, but is that really that relevant?

Like, I have a lot of spices in my spice rack. Am I cheating myself by not refreshing those constantly? I mean, look, as I and every one of us have really know, are. have too many spices and old spices. We're all guilty of this one. And it's hard to throw it away. You know, you traveled to India four years ago.

You've got that jar of, you know, of special cumin seeds. And then you think they're, but they do have a shelf life. And fresh is absolutely better. So, you know, in food IQ, we talk a lot about, you know, we have a question and when is it okay to reach for McCormick?

When are fresh herbs important? and when can I, what ingredients can I swap out? Like, you know, oregano is a good swap. And bay leaves do dry well, whereas, you know, parsley or mint, not so much at all. So I think there's some spices that maybe we don't need to have in our cabinet at all. The nice thing is a lot of time, I've seen a lot of smaller portions available. And so it's great to buy a little bit at a time. If you can, you know, better not to stop up.

So that way you don't have to feel bad when you have to buy it. throw it on. So I don't want to agree with Mary of a tautility, but I ain't going to disagree because that guy is, you know, king of beers. Yeah. All right. That's good. Yeah, I like, yeah, I like the idea of small little things because then I literally, I was like, I had some dish and I was, I need a fresh parsley and I didn't have it. I'm like, I think I have some dry parsley in the, in the cabinet. It was like tissue paper. It was just, it must have been. A little green dust. Yeah, exactly. A couple of years old and just kind of, just kind of crappy. Uh, maybe, Daniel, maybe this one's good for you. What is a, what's a cool, not a cool, or what do you think is like the most important thing that a home cook should have beyond like the regular stuff? Like, what is, what, what's something that they should, uh, what piece of equipment? This is actually Matt, Matt's digital scale. You've got like, you can, you can talk for hours about I mean, it's, I think Daniel will have his answer too, but I really do agree that the digital scale, cost $17.

You can buy a really cool one called a Scali from Italy for like $26. And it will change the way you cook. It will change the way you bake. Because if you cook with measure spoons or cups and you're using like dry ingredients, you obviously when you're scooping them in, there's different levels of scooping.

And a big reason those cookies that you make are really dense. And you're like, oh, well, thanks for making these cookies. Like, eh. And it's like, it's like really, really dense. that's because that person potentially took that cup of flour and packed it, packed it in. And, you know, that is not the best way to bake. So if you're using grams, it's a there's no doubt. And I think with coffee, too, I'll just say, like, we're pour over coffee hive over here.

And like, we are all about measuring your coffee by weight. It just makes it taste better. Right. Yeah, that's funny. I started using the digital scale when I started baking. and I use her for that all the time and I love pour over, but I never really thought of transferring over the coffee for the weight for the pourover. That's stupid.

I mean, you know, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt got me a coffee set up. I used to be an anti-coffee snob, and now I've grown into one because he's showing me the light. And my favorite thing was whenever I would make pourover, you know, I got a, I would make a single cup pourover. I would pour the water in. And then like, you know, some percentages of the time, the water, the hot coffee, starts spilling out all over my counter. And the gram scale, if you actually measure the amount you're putting in, like that was from the time he got me that got me into measuring my property and measuring my water,

I've never made that mistake again. Thank you, Matt. Yeah, good one, Matt. Matt, do you have a favorite coffee that you like to grind? I have two, actually. I love intelligence. based in Chicago, but you can get in L.A. I felt that cafe in Venice and in, you know, on Silver Lake.

Those, that's great. I also love Yes, Please. It's a great subscription. It's about 12 bucks a week. It's the best. Tom, what's your preferred coffee? I'm really liking Verve. Yeah.

Coffee? So good. They're just, a couple of them are just amazing. And then I have one that I just recently discovered. Then I was doing a show in Chicago. called 10 drops, and they're a small roaster, and I'm happy to talk about them because it was like, it was one of those where when you're getting to the end of the bag, and you're like, oh, no, no, I'm not going to have this for a couple of days. It was really, really nice,

especially their Ethiopian. It was really good. You know, Ethiopian coffee is one of, in God's greatest foods. It's truly, and I, I, I got to go to Ethiopia and write a story about an Ethiopian coffee farm. Really? It was amazing. And I feel it's, you know, a lot of times in Ethiopia, coffee is picked and, and these really small plots. I mean, it's not massive farms like you'll have in South and Central America.

But the flavor of Ethiopian coffee is, is like lemonade in some ways and has a lot of stone fruit. It's beautiful coffee. Yeah. Oh, man. Is it true that coffee came, that all coffee came from Ethiopia originally? And that that's the, that's the, that's the, the origin of the tree. Oh. Is Yemen or Ethiopia? I believe there's some debate, but I, um, that region is where

many have said if coffee, uh, was born. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. It's good being a coffee snob. I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm not going to share it at all. I'll embrace all of it. Okay. So here's another one. And I know this is a big part of your book, but frozen. vegetables. Speak to me about frozen vegetables. So, you know, Matt talked to me early on about

it really started with me trolling Matt over on Instagram about using a canned, about canned beans, and then it turned into kind of a search to, we realized you know, as a food writer, as a chef, we're a little snobby about certain food and stuff. And so let's

really explore them. Let's try cooking in the microwave. Let's try cooking with frozen fish and frozen vegetables. And we were really shocked. You know, there's been massive, there's been massive changes in the way that the manufacturing and farming systems treat these vegetables. So they're not the same vegetables you had as a kid that were mushy and roast. There are some really great products on the shelf, frozen at the height of freshness,

really, you know, quick, quick frozen and nitrogen freezer tunnels that just, you know, trap all the, all the flavor. we made an asparagus risotto and the asparagus was like snappy fresh. I would rather use frozen asparagus in in November than stuff brought in from, you know, South America. Right. I think it's and that's, that's new. So that's a new thing for me.

That is new. We try to, some, some of the frozen vegetables obviously freeze better than others. And then, and then certain things like, you know, french fries, potato french fries, they benefit from freezing. So, you know, freezing process dehydrates. So pull some of the moisture out and get a crispier, lighter french fry. Right. So there's a lot of quality involved, and I think that we should all be open to trying

to trying stuff again. Right. And giving me a second chance. Right. As they improve. I didn't even think about that. You're right. I always went even just seeing like, should I or should I not have frozen vegetables,

you go back to when you're a child having like some shitty, some shitty, like dried out wet vegetable. that came from the Jolly Green Giant. A big piece of the cookbook, you know, for Food IQ for us, was thinking about, you know, how do we use these ingredients? I wouldn't necessarily, you know, put vegetables on the center of the plate with a squeeze of lemon or just tossed in butter. But, you know, where is it appropriate?

And when we're not, we don't always have a farmer's market nearby. When most Americans aren't shopping, you know, don't have the money necessarily to shop for the most expensive. ingredients. So how, you know, how do we, and that's food IQ gives us the, hopefully the information to make the choices to say, this is what I do have. How can I make the most of it and make something delicious with, with this? Right, right. Yeah, it's, that is, that's, it's a big, that's a great point, because there's a lot of times when we don't have anything, we're having gone out to the market, and you're looking at a full pantry, a full pantry of stuff. And it's like, if we only had a little

higher IQ right now. We could actually we could make probably seven dishes out of this. And we don't. And then we just order postmates. Do you guys

feel like frozen fish is the same kind of conversation as the frozen vegetable? Because I kind of find frozen fish has been my friend as of late. Well, you know,

frozen fish is your friend. I mean, certainly when you go to Whole Foods and buy that fish, it's been frozen. You know, that's not day boat or, you know, caught off the shore. So what you're paying that $26 a pound for is like the defrosting process, right? They're taking the time to de-frost and serve it on a nice platter and give you that, that beautiful tuna. You can, of course, skip that and buy frozen fish.

You just have to know which application you want with frozen fish. And like, we recommend, you know, if we're using a. a frozen fish where sometimes the texture might be a little, possibly a little bit mushy or you can't necessarily get all that water out of there. So we suggest using, you know, thinking about the saucing of it. You're maybe not going to do that simple burst of lemon and capers with a piece of frozen fish. But you might want to put like, you know, do like a Korean style and use a gojajan and like do that and use more of a robust sauce with frozen fish. And with that, you can get the benefits of the fish. It's a beautiful.

thing that it's a lean protein. And you're not necessarily having to lean into it being like a really great texture that you might be getting from that fish counter. Right. All right. Very cool. This is good. This confirms my choice.

Good, good. Are you like a Gordon's fish sticks man? Is that you're trying to say? You know what? I haven't had in a long time, but I would not be, I would not, I'm not so snobby that I wouldn't throw down some Gordon's. Yeah, yeah. Me either.

Me either. The food chain, the technologies and the have advanced and, you know, the cold chain technologies and these these products, there's a lot of money that's gone into really making, making what you see in the supermarket great. Right. And that wasn't, you know, in the 60s, that was new technology. And, you know, these are things that are 100 years old and think about computers and things are evolving really quickly.

Yeah. It's just great frozen technology. I mean, I take a piece of cod out of the freezer and I saute it. And it's like, you would never, ever, ever do that. You would never get away with that. And it works. It works. It's great.

What about the vegetables, though? Like, the, you know, we get these perfect looking tomatoes year round. I'm in L.A. And, you know, you have these perfect looking tomatoes. But, man, they're not like when I was a kid getting a tomato in New Jersey in the height of the summer. You know, like, it seems like the, it seems like the flavors of the vegetables seem, I don't know, that just don't have, am I wrong in that?

Am I just getting? My mom's best friend, John Heyman, used to carry salt in his pocket in the summer in Jersey and Long Island, because if he ever came across a perfectly red tomato, you needed to be ready, you know, prepare to eat it like an apple, so delicious. Yeah. And those tomatoes are definitely still available. I mean, the farmer's market's out here in California, you're extraordinary, right? about and all over the country, I think there's been a return to that artisan craft of farming

and selling directly. So I do think that still exists. And no, the tomatoes that you find in the supermarket year round have been bred to look, look, look beautiful. And they've been bred to transport well. They've been bred to not bruise. So, you know, genetically modified can happen in a way that people kind of like put their nose up to, but can also happen over time. naturally. And a lot of these products, the flavor has been, have been,

we've put the flavor behind the, um, sellability of it based on the way it looks, which is a bummer. And, but the greenhouses work. I mean, the tomatoes,

those tomatoes that you get from the greenhouse in the winter are, aren't terrible, right? Like they're not, those little like vine ripe tomatoes you get, they're not terrible. No. I'm always shocked by that.

I would never use that. I would never use it. Because, you know, for me as a chef, it's like celebrating the seasons and using the best of what's available is the fun of cooking. But it's not like you're going to kill you. Right. Yeah. You need a bad tomato. Yeah, they're not terrible, but they just don't.

It's like when you go to the islands or something and you have their fruit and you're like, why don't we have this fruit when we're home in New York? And then you get back and you try and replicate it. It doesn't come close. I mean, Tom, when I come out to California in January, February. in even March, I'm eating citrus that we don't have on the East Coast. Like the Kara-Kera oranges, the sumo oranges, the sumo-mandarins. Like, you guys are on Citrus game out there. So I hope that the West Coast listeners realize this.

It's a real special thing. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, I know. It's, I mean, this is why your book is so great because you literally, we're constantly searching. We're constantly searching and having to relearn because things are changing all the time. I could see you guys doing another volume of this in five years,

and I bet that there will be some changes in just the stuff we're talking about today. I feel like we learned, you know, the fun of this was really getting to learn as we went. We have a lot of contributors that helped us because there's a ton of subjects that, you know, we weren't expert in. And a lot of cuisines out there where we had somebody that, you know, grew up cooking with food from a different country. that could help us. And we're learning along with the folks that are reading in a way that was so much fun to write this.

You know, I came away with so much. Was there one that was a surprise to you? Brown butter. Brown butter really shot. You know, there's a dish in Italy that is really popular all over these kind of like ricotta and yogi with brown butter and sage.

You see it everywhere in Italy. And we were looking at, brown butter and all over the world and it's different applications and using that as a classic example turns out brown butter didn't hit Italy until like the 90s there was no no example of that dish anywhere and then it just exploded across the country so now it's ubiquitous and it was such a perfect example of how um when people think about authenticity authenticity is not just a place but a time so it's like a moment in time and you can be authentic to that but trying to be authentic to anything else is a It's just a fleeting moment.

Right. Yeah, it's amazing how you think when things are classic that they've just been there since the beginning of time. It's like the baguette. It's like the baguette wasn't always there. It just came out, you know, at the end of the First World War. Amazing. What about for you? Was there something, was there something, Matt, that you?

I'd say, you know, you go to those restaurants, you go to restaurants and you have Brussels sprouts. And you're like, man, these are the best brussels sprouts I've ever had. And so I'm like, to Daniel, why do the restaurant Brussels sprouts taste better? And so I'm assuming it's maybe a technique. It's something that is special oven. But honestly, what it is, it's oil. It's half a cup of oil for one pound of brustle spouts or a quarter cup of oil is actually. So there's two things from this.

I learned from Daniel that, yes, you have to use oil to make those things taste really good. Like there's no really like skimping out on the oil for roasting beautiful Brussels sprouts. But also when roasting vegetables, I really love the tip that Daniel gave me because I've been doing it wrong. You really can't crowd your vegetables when you have to give them space. I think we want to like maximize oven space and smash everything into one tray. But really, we have like two racks typically. Use them and and roast on two trays, space it out. And it'll give you those beautiful restaurant quality roasted vegetables.

Very cool. Very cool. Well, this is great. You guys are great. This is an awesome book. It's called Food IQ, 100 questions, answers, and recipes to raise your cooking smarts. I think our listeners are just going to be smarter just from this conversation. Seriously. I mean, it's just these basic, I love when it's the basic things, when there's a little wrinkle in something basic, like your spices or salt or just frozen food. I mean, these are things that we're all facing all the time. And even when you do it, you get in a habit. But you're never really sure if you're doing it. it the right way. I think you guys are really on to something. I think this is going to be one of those cookbooks that we see published over and over again.

Man, I can't thank you enough for the support and the time and the time you took to do your research. Wait, wait, don't tell me this is my favorite. That's incredible. What was that experience like? Oh, it's great. I started going, it started appearing on the show maybe

five, six years ago, maybe, you know, we have to add two more years to everything when we're trying to figure out years now. It's just so much fun. I mean, I think the first one I did was with Paula Poundstone, and she's just like the queen of that show. And just to be able to riff with these guys and Peter Seagal, and the whole thing, it was really awesome.

I was just like, you know, because I was the same way. I was just a fan. I just listened to it. And then I got to be on it. And then when Peter had to skip a week, I actually got to guest host it. That was, yeah. Nice.

That was really bonkers. Yeah, it was really super. I'm a huge fan, and it's like my real guilty pleasure. I love listening to that. I laugh out loud, and I'm one of those guys that pulls up in my car and then sits there because I'm like, wait and, you know, I'm like, I don't want to go. When my wife catches me in the car, he was very annoyed. She's like, what are you doing?

I'm like, finishing the episode. Yeah, I want to hear what they say. I love it. Yeah. Well, you're at the limerring. It's so great. Well, thanks for being here sincerely. and I'm sure we'll talk again.

Thanks a lot, Tom. Really appreciate it. All right, guys. All right, good luck. See you soon. Thanks, buddy. Bye. All right, that was our conversation with Daniel and Matt.

Go out and get the book, Food IQ, 100 questions, answers, and recipes to raise your cooking smarts. You can get it wherever books are sold. Kindle is a nice way to do it. Then you have it on your iPad or your Kindle. And you just have it there in the kitchen with you all the time. It's a fun read. recipes are also involved. Very interesting.

They'd actually be a good source whenever we come up with questions and we'll definitely have them back. Thank you all for listening. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Make sure you like and subscribe as always. Spread the word. I've been running into a lot of you out on tour. It's nice to hear that you are listening to the podcast.

It's nice to know we have a great following and let's keep the conversation going. All right, everybody, enjoy your day. See you next week.