Judge John Hodgman - Licorice Adjacent Flavor

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

KLAXON! The Judge John Hodgman podcast has been nominated for a Webby and we need your help to win! You can vote at bit.ly/JJHOWEBBY!VOTING ENDS TOMORROW MAY 7 AT 11:59PM PT!Judge John Hodgman is in chambers this week with Bailiff Jesse Thorn to clear the docket! It's a docket full of culinary disputes, with guest expert J. Kenji López-Alt (Serious Eats, New York Times)! They talk about the opposite of savory, coffee diluting, root vegetables, recipe modifications, Polish street pizza, potatoes, cookies and more! PLUS we have a dispute from a listener against Kenji himself!Kenji's Bay Area restaurant WURSTHALL is currently preparing and delivering free meals to hospitals and community centers on the front lines of the COVID-19 outbreak. If you would like to donate towards these meals, visit toasttab.com/wursthall. Kenji also has a children's book coming out September 1. EVERY NIGHT IS PIZZA NIGHT is available for pre-order now!

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket. With me, as always, is the king of all chefs. Sorry, Raekwon. Judge John Hodgman.

I'm the king of all chefs now? I don't deserve this. Because we're going to do food stuff on this episode. I made you the king of all chefs. If anything, I am the prince regent. If anything, I am the dowager countess. If anything, I am the... I mean, because we have a special guest. We have an

expert of all experts with us right now. We have a man with us who is both a great cook and a great chef. He's the author of the James Beard award-winning cookbook, The Food Lab, Better Home Cooking Through Science, which I have at my home because I paid actual money to buy it. And it's my favorite cookbook. He also has a children's book coming out restaurant Worst Hall, which is currently preparing and delivering meals to hospitals and community centers.

Friend of the court, Kenji Lopez-Alt. Hi, Kenji. How are you, friend? Good. How are you doing? Good. I just watched a video of you making a steak using a GoPro camera. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's like my new, I'm apparently a YouTube creator now. So that's what I've transitioned into now that I'm stuck mostly at home is I strap a camera to my head and I cook every day. I learned a lot about steak cooking.

I thought it was some kind of like intense sous vide technique where it's like, all you do is you fill this baggie up with water, throw a steak in there, throw a GoPro in there. No, it's kind of the opposite. You know, it's opposite. It's like my book is very much about sort of precision, and you do this for this reason, you do this for that reason. And my actual home cooking is just like, it doesn't really matter. That's kind of the catchphrase of the show is, it doesn't really matter. You can do this if you want. It doesn't really matter. I think my favorite part of J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's steak cooking head video, which I watched all of, is like a 20-minute long video with Kenji just narrating cooking his family lunch. And Kenji is like one of his greatest contributions to world cookery is something called the reverse sear, a method of cooking a steak that he developed for, I think for, what was it, for Cooks Illustrated? Just for Cooks Illustrated, yeah.

Yeah, like 15 years ago. And it's something that has changed many a steak cooker's life. And Kenji was like, yeah, well, I know I invented that one, but I'm just going to cook it in the pan today. It was great. Although I don't claim to have invented it because i'm i'm sure there were people do if you go to meatheads um amazing ribs.com i think there's like a full history of all the people who were doing that in various ways um before i came and developed it in a different slightly different way and publishing cooks illustrated but uh but you road tested it you stress tested it if people don't understand the reverse sear method is a method of cooking a steak or it could be a pork chop right or even anything really yeah any kind of any kind of big

slab of protein yes and and in it and what you do is you cook it in a very what they call slow oven in a very low temperature using a meat thermometer to get it precisely to the temperature that you want it to be, or maybe just below, and then finishing it over a hot fire or in a hot cast iron pan. We call the reverse sear because normally you would start by searing, right? And then you might finish it in an oven. But this way, it's almost like a modified sous vide technique where you are cooking for temperature first and then finishing it. Yeah, that's actually how I came up with the technique because I had been working in restaurants where we were doing sous vide.

But sous vide devices at the time were still like $1,500, $2,000. You know, the home devices didn't exist. So I was just thinking, well, like, what's a way we can sort of mimic this approach for home cook? And that's how we landed on reverse sear. Although we didn't even call it reverse sear at the time. Someone came up with that name on the internet later. Right. So, and also that's how they, you know, the big,

like the house of prime rib in San Francisco, all those big prime rib places, they are slow roasting those prime ribs. Oh yeah, yeah, low and slow. It's like low and slow even though it's not i don't know i could i could talk about cooking all day long but i don't want to because i'm not the king of oh i do have to say this kenji so happy you're here because it's just it's totally coincidental that uh i just made this weekend your quote the best chili ever recipe

oh okay that you can find over at seriouseats.com. That's a recipe I haven't made since I wrote it down because it's very involved. It is very involved. And you approach cooking with a scientist's curiosity. And I know that everything is happening for a reason, but as I was going through this recipe i was like okay then i gotta yeah i gotta i gotta roast these cloves and grind them and then get the soy sauce and two not one not three but two anchovy fillets are going into this and all this i'm like this guy is overthinking this quite a bit but then i got to the part where it says one teaspoon marmite right and i was like well i'm making this this guy's putting the marmite in his chili i know he's on to something because marmite

is is one of the most intensely beloved flavors on earth by me oh really i completely saw where well for people who don't know i mean marite is this, it's like this fermented yeast product that British people put on toast. Yeah. Right. And it's very funky and umami-ish. Right. And I was like, oh, this is going to add a ton of depth of flavor that I never thought. I got to give this a try.

And I made it and I served it to my family. And my wife said, don't ever make chili any other way again. Oh, that's good. I was going to say, you know, the secret to that recipe, really, the secret to that recipe success is to make it so difficult that no matter how good it is at the end, people feel like they have to like it because they put so much work into it. No, no. And I can tell you that's not true because my wife put zero work into it.

Well, that's good to know. You know, we're all at home right now. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I spent the afternoon, actually the morning and the afternoon getting this thing together, having a great time. But by the end of it, I kind of said to my wife, look at me cooking over here. Why aren't you helping? Right.

She's like, you wanted to do this. And I'm like, you're right. I did. And she liked it, which I'm sorry. I feel like I've now sentenced you to a life of overly fussy chili making. No, it's not. I mean, because the basics are there. I mean, and the way you lay out.

I mean, one of the things about making really good chili is you want to use actual dried chilies yeah that's the most intimidating for a lot of people right yeah like lose the powder use real dried chilies like that's that's by far the most important thing you know if you're not from any sort of mexican american heritage working with dried chilies is intimidating because in fresh form they have a certain name and then dried form they have a certain name and different kinds of names and you got to go get them. But once you get used to using them and this recipe really lays out a really great sort of sequence of events for seeding the chilies

and then cooking them up in that chicken stock after you've browned off the meat, it's perfect. The best chili ever recipe. Go get it, everyone. And that's our podcast. Thanks very much. We have more? Look, we're going to have plenty of time with Kenji for me to address roast potatoes and to ask him what's wrong with my chocolate chip cookies.

But first, how about a question from a listener? Anna says, my boyfriend uses the word savory as an antonym to spicy, as in the question, do you want something spicy or savory for dinner? The first couple times he said this, I was confused because any meal we would make for dinner would probably be savory, but it might or might not be spicy. I'd argue almost all spicy foods are also savory. I ask you order him to find a better word to describe comfort foods that are not spicy. Yeah. Kenji, what do you think? I mean, that reminds me of the kinds of things like my daughter would say. It's like, should we have a bubble bath or a warm bath? It's like, it doesn't have to be either or.

say it's like should we have a bubble bath or or a warm bath it's like it doesn't have to be either or it could be it could be both or or one or the other you know um yeah i would say savory savory and spicy are are sort of orthogonal they don't affect each other you can you can have spicy foods that are not savory um like if you go to mexico they they eat a lot of sweet foods the candies are like tamarind candy with chili in it. Really tasty. Yeah, they're definitely parts of the world where they eat spicy and sweet at the same time. I would say sweet is the is the antonym to savory. But yeah, I think in the US, most of us are familiar with spicy foods that are always savory. So it does seem weird to admit where I wonder I would wonder where her boyfriend is from or who raised him. Yeah, I'd say spicy and savory, that's a very strange dichotomy.

Whoever raised Anna's boyfriend raised him wrong. Sorry, because I hate to do this. Kenji, I hate to go to the dictionary for a couple of reasons. One, it's the worst way to open a school paper. The dictionary definition of savory is blah, blah, blah. Two, because a dictionary is sort of an arbitrary, frozen in time picture of language rather than truly a, I mean, ironically, it is not definitive.

It is constantly evolving. And three, because the dictionary of choice of the Judge Chan-Hajim podcast is of course Merri webster because we have our friend emily brewster come on from time to time and she was she's an editor there and just and discovered in a previously undocumented use of the word a that got in the dictionary but marion webster is also my mortal enemy because they marion webster claims that a hot dog is a sandwich. Yes. I was going to bring that up. I was going to say, you know, as soon as,

as soon as you bring in the dictionary, you know that you've already lost the hot dog debate. Yeah. How do you feel just before we go on with this podcast? Yeah. Well, actually save, save your response until we get through this question. But I did go to Merriam-Webster and it says definition of savory. A, B, C, D, E, five definitions. One,

piquantly pleasant to the mind, a savory triumph, morally exemplary, pleasing to the sense of taste or smell, especially by reason of effective seasoning. It's a hard sentence to say. Maybe punch that one up, Merriam-Webster. And D, having a spicy or salty quality without sweetness, specifically defined without sweetness. So yeah, I would say savory and spicy, I loved your term for it, Kenji. They are orthogonal. There's more of then overlap between spicy and savory.

They are not opposites by any means. Now, I have these questions for you. One, tell me more about the Mexican sweet, spicy candy. Okay. And two, is a hot dog a sandwich? I'll take the answers in whatever order you prefer. Well, the first one, so, you know, in Mexico, also in parts of Southeast Asia,

so it's common to have like fruit with chili. So tajin is the name of the chili powder stuff. So I think it has like powdered lime and chilies in it. It comes in a little jar with a white top and you shake it on. And you sprinkle that onto like mango slices or pineapple slices. Green mango also really tasty. So at the Mexican market, actually it's a Salvadoran market near me, but they sell a lot of Mexican products,

um, uh, around the corner from my house. They have these tamarind candies that are, I don't know. They're kind of like chewy and sweet and really sour, but then they're coated in, um,

in chili. Um, and yeah, so it's really good. Yeah. Yeah. Spicy, spicy chili.

Yeah. And as a hot dog, yeah. Well, so I mean, I think a hot dog is a sandwich in the way that like a potato salad is a salad. You know, it's like if there was no other section on the menu, if there's no specific sauce. So at my restaurant, we have a sausage section on the menu and we have a sandwich section on the menu. And the hot dogs go in the sausage section, not in the sandwich section, even though they're served in a bun.

But if there's no other place on the menu to put a hot dog, I would put it in the sandwich section. You know, same as like if there's only one burger. You should have just left it there, Kenji. You should have left it with the menu. My argument has always been if I ask, if a friend says to me, hey, I'm going down to the corner to the deli. Can I get you a sandwich? And I say yes. And then they bring me back a hot dog.

I would think, wait a second. What's wrong with it? it yeah that's yeah that's not what's the name of your restaurant again worst hall worst hall yeah let me rst right let me let me say this even though listeners even though kenji seems to be uh waffling a little bit on this. That worst-all gets it right. Worst-all menu gets it right. Jesse Thorne, I have this question for you. Have you ever put sriracha on a satsuma? That's a lot to ask of me, John. This is the Judge John Hodgman Challenge.

Listeners, is it satsuma season yet? It's satsuma ask of me, John. This is the Judge Sean Hodgman Challenge. Listeners, is it Satsuma season yet? It's Satsuma season's over, baby. We ended a few weeks ago. Yeah, we'll be back for a while. I'm eating the dregs of the golden nuggets right now. Is that a type of orange also? A golden nugget? Yeah, that's a golden nugget.

It's like a tangerine. It's sort of, it's a big and lumpy one. Oh, right, right. It's like a slightly bigger satsuma i think ours are we have a satsuma tree in our backyard and i think it gave its last one like probably a week ago maybe two weeks ago hmm now i want to try a sriracha satsuma listeners go over to the maximum fun reddit on the discussion board for this episode give us your suggestions for fruits and hot sauce pairings i'll try them watermelon with jalapeno good oh i like that that's and feta cheese watermelon feta cheese and jalapeno there we go i could imagine putting a hot sauce on a on a sort of simply sweet uh fruit like a cherimoya or something. You just made that word up.

No, that's a... No, I know what a cherimoya is. What's that goofy apple you're always trying to get me to eat? What is it called? Yeah, that's what it is. Custard apple, they call it, right? Custard apple. Custard apple.

Now, the cherimoyas have just started showing up at my farmer's market. All right. They come down from, I think, from the Santa Barbara area. Anyway, here's something from Andrew. When my friends and I rent a cabin for a long weekend, I'm usually the one that wakes up first in the morning to make a pot of coffee for everyone. I like to pour a cup for myself before the pot is finished brewing. Most modern coffee makers automatically pause the brewing when you remove the pot to pour a cup for myself before the pot is finished brewing. Most modern coffee makers automatically pause the brewing when you remove the pot to pour a cup.

My friend John argues I'm diluting the coffee for the rest of the group, and I should wait until the full pot is complete. Please order that I am permitted to continue pouring my coffee regardless of whether the coffee maker has finished making a full pot. Kenji, what do you think? Well, I think given that he's the one who wakes up to make coffee for everyone else, he's allowed to do whatever he wants. I think that that's the basic rule. Wow. But if his friend John is saying that it's diluting,

you know, I'm like pretty famously not a coffee drinker, but that's knowing how my parents, you know, how my parents coffee machine works. I would say you probably are diluting it because I don't know that water at the beginning is dripping through all the fresh grounds. Right. Assuming it's a drip machine. And even if it shuts off, even if it doesn't let it drip through, you're still getting the most extraction out of those first few drips. So I would say John is correct in that it is diluting the coffee for everyone else, but he's the one making the coffee. He gets to choose.

Kenji, I'm glad that you're not a coffee drinker because you need to leave one type of food nerd-ery alone. You already have the responsibility on your shoulders of leading all the cast iron nerds and all the sous vide nerds and then all the umami nerds. I made coffee Twitter angry once because I, I, I suggested, Oh, there, there's somebody, I'm not going to say his name, but somebody who was writing an article, serious eats who, um, who casually, casually mentioned that mentioned that blade grinders are worse than burr grinders because they give you uneven grind sizes. And on Twitter, I think I just asked, like, okay, that clearly makes sense, but are we sure that uneven grind size is necessarily

a bad thing in coffee? It's like, I don't know. Can someone explain it to me? And then Coffee Twitter got very mad that I would dare question that. I'm going to say this. This episode, we have not even finished recording this episode, never mind sending it out into the world, and I am already getting angry emails from coffee people about Andrew. I'm getting letters shoved underneath the door of my office right now.

Because, look, I am pretty ecumenical about coffee. I like good coffee. I like bad coffee. I like hot coffee. I like cold coffee. I will drink the coffee that was sitting on my desk yesterday. I do not really care a lot. But I do know that there is a science

to the extraction of coffee in terms of water temperature, grind, et cetera, et cetera. More science than I care to know about. And I do know that if you grab out that pot and grab a cup, that the cup you're having is going to be different than what it would have been if you had let

the entire brewing process complete. That's why you measure the amount of grounds. That's why you measure the amount of water. Andrew, modern coffee makers don't pause the brewing when you pull the carafe out

because it makes no difference to the brewing. They pause it so that it doesn't affect the counter and your dumb pants and shirt with coffee splattering everywhere when you do this thing now look i'll abide by the king of chefs j kenji lopez alt and say that it is it is royal privilege apparently it is your it is

your royal privilege to mess up the coffee for everyone else if you get up and make it. You could be messing it up just by making it wrong anyway. So I guess he's right. John, you got to wake up early in the morning when you're out in a cabin with Andrew. But frankly, Andrew, frankly, I'm sorry that we're all having to stay at home these days. But I'm glad you can't rent a cabin anymore because, boy, oh, boy, you're messing it up. I want an injunction against my wife, who's a Judge John Hodgman listener. I want her to make her coffee before she makes breakfast and breakfast drinks for our children.

I have no standing in this because I tend to get up after she and they have been up for 45 minutes. But I would love her to kind of like in the spirit of put your own oxygen mask on first before putting them on your children. I would like my wife to take care of her own caffeine needs before she addresses the breakfast drink needs of our little ones. So ordered. Thank you. You're welcome. Let's take a quick break. More items on the docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast always brought to you by you, the members of MaximumFun.org. Thanks to everybody who's gone to MaximumFun.org slash join, and you can join them by going to MaximumFun.org slash join. The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by the folks over there at Babbel. Did you know that learning, the experience of learning causes a sound to happen? Let's hear the sound. Yep. That's the sound of you learning a new language with Babbel. We're talking about quick 10-minute lessons crafted by over 200 language experts that can help you start speaking a new

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They're made in, made in. Save up to 25% this Memorial Day from the 18th until the 27th. Visit madeincookware.com. That's M-A-D-E-I-N cookware.com. Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket with our guest, Jay Kenji Lopez-Alt. Kenji is a cookbook author. You've seen him in the New York Times. You've seen him in Serious Eats. If you don't have a copy of his book, The Food Lab, you should have a copy of his book, The Food Lab.

He's got a kid's book coming out called Every Night is Pizza Night. He's got a kid's book coming out called Every Night is Pizza Night. And Kenji, your restaurant, Worst Hall, which is just south of San Francisco. Where is it? San Mateo or something like that? San Mateo, yeah. Wow, I nailed it. I haven't been there.

I'd love to go. Your restaurant has been making food for hospitals and so on and so forth during the COVID crisis. And you've been helped out in doing so by donations from people who love the restaurant and people who know you from your work elsewhere and so on and so forth, right? Yeah, both direct donations. So like on our website or on our online order can, you can buy boxes, meal boxes directly, or you can donate to world central kitchen or off their plate who work with a number of restaurants, but we're we, we, we do some stuff with some work with them as well. Yeah. That that's actually like, you know, that's, that's sort of the idea was that we could help the community while also

helping to keep as many of our employees employed as possible. So that's how we're dealing with the COVID crisis right now. Now, Kenji, I mentioned earlier on the program the issue of potatoes. from the Doughboys podcast mentioned that because he had been cooking at home more, he was looking for everyone's like special recipe that was not special by virtue of super fanciness, but by virtue of utility. And what I told him to cook for his family, his wife, Natalie, was your recipe for crispy roasted potatoes. What is the central thing that separates your roasted potatoes from roast is the central thing that separates your roasted potatoes from roasties the world over? Well, it's adding baking soda to the water when you boil it.

Wow. So baking soda, I mean, it raises the pH of the water. And so the pectin, which is the carbohydrate glue that kind of holds plant cells together, it breaks down more rapidly under higher pHs. So you cut your potatoes up, you put a little baking soda in the water, you boil the potatoes in there, and then the outside of them get really kind of rough. And then after that, you follow the same sort of typical British

roasty thing where you toss the potatoes, kind of rough up the surfaces as much as you can, and then toss them with oil or butter or duck fat or beef fat, whatever you want, and then roast them in the oven. But the baking soda is what really makes those outside sort of super, you know, gives them those kind of micro blisters. I think I call them micro blisters in that thing. But, you know, like the little micro blisters that you get on like a good French fry or a good bagel, like the thing that adds surface area and extra crunch. That's the trick. Would this be with peeled potatoes or could you do it with unpeeled fingerling potatoes? Well, if you're using fingerling, so you do want to expose the flesh.

Got it. So if you're using fingerling potatoes, yeah, you do want to either split them or use larger. But it works best with russet potatoes. Peeled russet potatoes. Russet potatoes that are cut into pieces. Gotcha. Yeah. So, so like, even if you, if you cut the potatoes up and you boil them, then there's enough of this like sort of mashed potatoes paste that kind of sloughs off the cut surfaces that it ends up coating the peeled side, you know, the side with the peel as well. So that, that side gets enough

surface area and crisp as well. I've always been a waxy potato man. I'm not even, honestly, like, I'm not even a potato guy. I'm not a lover of potatoes the way that many people are. I'm fine with potatoes, but, you know, French fries, I'll take onion rings. Thank you. But I've always been a waxy potato guy because I hate that. I don't like the texture of the inside of a potato all that much. Like if I eat a baked potato often, I just add a lot of dairy to it.

Oh, yeah, sure. To make it smoother and so on and so forth. So I had started making this recipe of yours, Kenji, with waxy potatoes, and it works great. I mean, it was revelatory. I was like, wow, this is fantastic. And then one day, I had only been to like a small regular grocery store, and all they had was russets. And I said, well, I'll just grab a few russet potatoes. And it said you could use waxy or russet in that roast potato recipe. I'll try these. was spectacular. And the crust that they develop when they're banging around because of the way the altered pH in the boiling gets them is so delightful. And then you get that wonderful, you know, with russet potatoes, if you get it right, the inside is like a total dream. Yeah, yeah, kind of moist and fluffy.

So I have two questions. One, Kenji, where can I get this recipe? You can get the recipe on Serious Eats. I think it's called the best roast potatoes ever, or on my YouTube channel where it's also called the best roast potatoes ever. I tend to Google Kenji potatoes. Yeah, that's a good one too. And the second question is, since Jesse Thorne, you asked this and recommended this recipe to our friend Nick Weiger, co-host of the Doughboys, I'll ask you, Kenji, now, what is your favorite hot salad? Let me put it this way. What's the best way to heat up a garden salad so that Nick Weiger can enjoy it?

I like a grilled potato salad. So like grilled potatoes and grilled spring onions so like like uh fingerling potatoes that you boil split and then and then toss with olive oil and then uh throw in the grill and then grill some some spring onions or scallions next to that and then also grill a lemon um and you toss that all together and you squeeze the lemon over it and add some like really good olive oil i'd say that is my favorite hot salad. That one goes out to Nick Weiger because that was an in-joke pertaining to another podcast

in which Nick Weiger is constantly being teased that he likes hot salad as though he microwaves his garden salads. But you actually, and I apologize for roping you into this in-joke that you didn't know was an in-joke, but you answered it perfectly. That is a hot salad. That's a beautiful hot salad for you, Nick Weiger,

my friend. Now let's, speaking of potatoes, I think we do have a potatoes themed case. Jeffrey says, is it permissible to serve turnips alongside potatoes as a side dish? I say yes. Although they're both root vegetables, a turnip provides a greater range of nutrients and fiber. The potato is merely starch and calories. Well, it also has the amino acids that kept the entire nation of Ireland alive until they stopped having potatoes. My wife argues they are too similar to share space on the same plate. Hogwash. You could have a rutabaga and a potato on the same plate.

Carrots, beets, any other root vegetable. I argue her conflict simply boils down to color, nothing else. Yeah, so I would say that definitely the most important consideration that I have, Kenji, when planning a menu and thinking of what the plate is going to look like, my first thought is, am I serving enough range of fiber?

No, seriously, Kenji, what do you think about this? I'd say they're quite different. I don't know. I mean, I think it's totally permissible. You know, although, like, I generally tend to keep my meals at home simple. So it's like, you know, like I probably wouldn't. Yeah, nothing so fancy as a turnip and a potato. I mean, like if I am going to grab one root vegetable, I probably just grab one.

But, you know, sometimes like at holidays, like I'll roast a whole bunch of different root vegetables together. And I think that's fine. If I'm making, you know know like mashed turnips or mashed rutabaga adding a potato to that is great because the potato brings texture whereas like the rutabaga or the turnip bring flavor um yeah i'd say they're i'd say they're definitely different enough how would you describe the the flavor of a turnip because i've had them but i'm having a hard time uh i would say they are like picturing are vaguely – so they're a little sweet and a little spicy, and the aroma is vaguely of like feet, but good feet, you know?

Feet that have grown up and have been marinated in nice soil. Yeah. Yeah, they're a little footy. And we do a lot of pickling at my restaurant. We ferment a lot of things. If you ferment radishes or turnips or rutabagas, those kind of watery root vegetables, that kind of amplifies the footiness of them. Also in a good way, I think. But people might disagree on that.

What would you do, Kenji, if if you had to say this was some kind of cooking game show and you were forced to serve a meal that includes potatoes and turnips and a third item what would be the balancing item for those three potatoes and turnips um it really does feel like we're like we're eating in the Middle Ages all of a sudden. A chicken, I guess? I think it would be a blackbird pie. I would roast some kind of meat with them. Unless you're talking about like, Jess, this is just going to be a side dish.

In which case, you know, honestly, it would be butter. You know, actually, thinking back on this, i think the main the main thing that that differentiates a roasted potato and a roasted turnip is the texture you know where a potato is kind of dense and starchy a turnip has you know like those turnips and radishes when you roast them they get that kind of sort of like it's almost like mini water balloons like they have like kind of a watery texture but and again like watery sounds bad in the same way that like foot smelling sounds bad but watery in a good way for a vegetable water and foot smelling in a good way i would say jeffrey that turnips and potatoes are different enough flavor profiles to be served together but i would agree with you, Jeffrey, that putting a turnip and a potato on a plate demands other foods that offer textural and flavor contrast.

Lest you invite your guest to think that this is actually the 14th century. So. I mean, that's my whole thing. That's right. There were no forks in medieval times, thus there are no forks at medieval times. That's the watchword of my dining table. But if you wish to dine as does the king of chefs, potato, turnip, butter, that's all you need. Here's something from Greg.

Here's something from Greg. Dear Judge Hodgman, When cooking an already written recipe for the first time, I believe it's important to experience the recipe as the creator intended. My partner Erin, on the other hand, alters published recipes to better suit our tastes without ever having made them as written. I'll concede, Erin's an excellent cook, her modified recipes rarely, if ever, turn out badly.

However, I feel her insistence on modifications strips us of the opportunity to learn new things from the experts. I ask you forbid Erin from recipe modifications except where necessary in the middle of the cooking process and allow that changes be planned and agreed upon only before we begin cooking. Kenji, this is confession time for me. Remember I was talking about that chili recipe that you wrote and how good it was? I didn't grind my own coriander. I'm sorry. Oh my goodness. I used pre-ground coriander and cumin seed, and I didn't even put in the star anise. Look, we're not supposed to go outside. I didn't have those things.

Any Texan will tell you without star anise, it's not chili. So I can't actually say that I have actually had your recipe, even though the overall direction steered me to something really, really good. What do you think about Aaron's recipe meddling and Greg's dislike of it? I am 100% on Aaron's side here. So, so first of all, I don't think you learn things from recipes in the same way that you don't learn about a neighborhood by, by sort of following the term by term directions on your phone. It's like a recipe is there to get you from point A to point B, but if you want to actually

learn about the food, you need to pull back and look at the bigger picture, do a little more research about where it's from, read the accompanying story, unless it's about some individual person's grandmother. But a recipe is there to just steer you from one place to another it's not there to sort of teach you about the food or teach you about the technique involved at all so i i say i'm totally on erin's side on this like if she looks at a recipe um and then pulls back and says hey wait a minute like this is something that i don't particularly like um i'm gonna do do it this other way. Or like, I understand how chicken cooks well enough to know that I can do it this way, instead of that way to fit my own personal tastes and parameters,

then I think she's taking everything that she should be taking from the recipe. So that would be my take, you know, like, I write very sort of what people would describe as sort of very prescriptive recipes, because they're very precise and they're precise because I know there are people people out there like Greg who who don't really care so much to learn about the the externalities and to learn about the the context and just want to be able to get into the kitchen and and follow a process and get to a good end result and and then that's fine you know like I'm, I'm not judging Greg for that. I am. And you know, that that's why I write my recipes that way, because I want to guarantee that if someone follows it, they're going to get to the right end result. But I don't think that's necessarily the best way to learn. You know,

and people of course learn in different ways. So, so maybe that is the best way to learn for Greg. I obviously, I, I agree with you. I mean, the only exception that I would point out on Greg's behalf is that I am not a baker. And baking, perhaps it's my lack of experience. I'd be a little bit more comfortable with freestyle baking. But baking recipes, I think you need to follow, especially if you're not an experienced baker, you need to follow pretty closely

to get the desired result. But everything else, I mean, that's the fun is getting in there, experimenting, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't work, figuring out how the food

acts and reacts against the different ingredients. And then every time you make a little adjustment and see a little difference, you take new information to the next time you cook. And that's the enjoyment of it to a great degree. You know, the one thing I would say is that if Erin strays from a recipe and then goes and complains about how it didn't work, she is clearly in the wrong.

Right. Yeah. If you're going to post a comment about a recipe online and complain that it didn't work, you had better have actually followed the recipe instead of just like taking whatever route you wanted to. But in all other cases, I think it's fine. Remind me, Jesse Thorne, before we wrap this session,

to go back onto Serious Eats and delete my one-star review of Kenji's chili recipe for it not being star anise-y enough. I guess now I realize that's on me. It was missing a certain licorice-adjacent flavor, in my opinion. Okay, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll hear a case against our guest, Kenji. We'll be back in a moment on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney,

is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try S-T-O-P-P-O-D-C-A-S-T-I.

Were you trying to put the name of the podcast there? Yeah, I'm trying to spell it, but it's tricky. If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try S-T-O-P-P-O-D-C-A-S-T-I. Hmm. Are you trying to put the name of the podcast there? Yeah, I'm trying to spell it, but it's tricky. Let me give it a try. Okay. If you need a laugh and you're on the go, call S-T-O-P-P-P-A-D-I. It'll never fit. No, it will.

Let me try. If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try S-T-O-P-P-P-D-C-O-O. We are so close. Stop podcasting yourself. A podcast from MaximumFun.org. If you need a laugh and you're on the go. Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket this week, and we've got something from Jay. Jay says, my dispute is with Jay Kenji Lopez-Alt, at Kenji Lopez-Alt, who, full disclosure, I do not know in person. I seek an order to have him unblock me on Twitter. On Twitter. The inciting incident came on December 18th when I lightly admonished him on Twitter for amplifying a major spoiler for the latest Star Wars movie.

In retrospect, perhaps the tone in my tweet was not as polite as it could have been. But I don't feel that it matches the harshness of other people that he justifiably blocks. of other people that he justifiably blocks. I'm a huge fan of Kenji's and have had some positive interactions with him previously on Twitter, and I miss one of my favorite follows. So, Kenji, we're not going to reveal Jay's Twitter name on this episode. Okay.

We're not going to put Jay on blast. And I don't know how to evaluate Jay's complaint because I, Jay has deleted the tweet. I think I'm pretty sure I know it. If it was about Star Wars, I'm pretty sure I know what the tweet is. Do you remember this

incident? Well, okay, I think we're past spoiler territory now because, you know, whatever, the movie's been out for a long time and nobody's watching it anymore anyway. This is Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker. Correct. Yes. So, all right.

So I'm going to talk about this because this is actually one of the things I'm most proud of in my life. Blocking this one person? No, no, no, no, no, no. The context. So when The Force Awakens, so i'm a huge star wars fan um when the force awakens came out um i remember when it when it first came out on on you know i saw it in theaters a bunch of times and then i saw it in an airplane like a few months later you know it always comes out on airplanes before it comes out at home um and so i was watching it on air on an airplane and i was

watching it was like hey you know what i think ray is Rey is a descendant of Palpatine. And I wrote an essay on Medium. It's published on Medium. It's still there, called Rey is a Palpatine, where I sort of delineated all of my arguments for why Rey is a Palpatine. Wait, you wrote this back when The Force Awakens came out? Yes, yes.

And then the last, not the last Jedi, the Rise of Skywalker came out. And I was like, and then the last, not the last, the Rise of Skywalker came out and I was like, and you know, and then the last time I was like, God, like, you know, I kind of wrote it as a joke. And I was like, this is so stupid. Like, of course she's not. And then it turns out that that actually was the plot of the movie. Star Wars came out, I guess, when I saw it. I think I sent out a tweet that just said, called it. I don't think I even mentioned it was in reference to Star Wars, although people who follow me probably knew what I was talking about. I mean, people definitely knew what I was talking about. You subtweeted The Rise of Skywalker. When it came out and it was revealed that Rey was a Palpatine,

you said, called it, referring back to your Medium post, which clearly gave J.J. Abrs the idea to write the movie that way now we're going to get into a time travel paradox that i don't want to get into anyway i wrote called it and um and and i and in the tweet i didn't even mention the rise of sky like i didn't mention star wars i didn't mention anything right pretty sure i don't know maybe maybe i did but anyhow um i think that's what he got angry about, saying I spoiled something. And I was like, you have to be in this very, very small, tiny subsection of the Star Wars audience that also follows me and also remembers this Medium post I wrote in 2017 or whenever it was to be able to claim that that was a spoiler. And then I said, this movie is not even out yet

or, oh, I guess it was before the movie came out that I said it, maybe, maybe I saw somewhere. I don't, I don't remember. Um, so I guess I must be wrong about telling this whole thing, but anyhow, I'm sure that's what the spoiler was. I'm looking at it here. You said WTF spoilers. This movie is not even out yet. And then Jay said, then why are you replying to this person with 300 followers to spread to your 60,000 ones like me?

I don't understand what Jay is saying. Jay's concern there is that Kenji, by responding to Jay, is calling attention to Jay's tweet for people who follow Kenji, but not Jay. They might see that post because kenji replied yeah that's that's what it was oh yeah and i think it was when the trailer maybe when the trailer came out and and the trailers kind of made it clear that palpatine was in it it was something like that it had something to do with ray and palpatine and uh and uh i apparently spoiled it by saying something about the trailer um you know i have a very like sort of itchy trigger finger on the block button on Twitter

because it's like I have so many, you know, it's such a negative space. It's like if anyone gives me any kind of grief at all, I just block them because it's like it's just not it's not worth it, you know. And I'm also one of those people that kind of lets it get to me more than I know I should, you know. So it's like I kind of try and self-regulate on that by just if someone's giving me any trouble, I just block them and that's it. But you know what I'll do right? What I'll do right this second is I will unblock.

I will unblock Jay. Oh, oh, that's very gracious of you. It is done. Wow. I was going to rule in your favor. I was going to say, you know, rules of the road. Like all we're left with right now is talking on phones and Zooms and Twitters and everything else. We've got to remember there are other humans on the other side.

And we've got to remember everyone's different and they have their own boundaries. And you've got to respect those boundaries. But that's very gracious of you to unblock Jay. And I can now reveal, since you have done so, that the J in this case is Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state. Wow. No, it's not. I am following Jay now and I'm going to, I'll keep an eye on this situation. Let me know. Let me know if Jay gets out of hand. We heard recently from a listener named Mary about a list of pizza types that we discussed in the episode The Hammer of Distraction. Do you remember this pizza type list, John?

I do. And it came from Serious Eats. It was a big, fascinating list of regional pizza styles compiled by Adam Kuban. Many, many styles that I had never heard of, including the apparently very controversial St. Louis-style pizza, which is on an unleavened matzo-like crust with a weird processed cheese called Prevel. And we spent a lot of time enjoying this list of pizza on the podcast earlier, Kenji,

just to give you some context. All right. I like St. Louis-style pizza, by the way. Really? The secret is to not think of it as pizza and just think of it as pizza flavored nachos. And then it's actually quite good. Bailiff Jesse, I can't hear what he's saying anymore because I blocked him.

Well, what does Mary have to say? She wrote about Polish street pizza. She says, I grew up in Warsaw from 1987 to 1991. My dad was an American diplomat there. One of the culinary delights of the period was a street food called zapikanka, which is French bread sliced lengthwise, topped with, in order, mushrooms, cheese, and ketchup. Does it sound gross? Maybe. But I still make it at home,

though nothing can recreate whatever ersatz cheese the Polish government sold at that time. Mushrooms and mushroom foraging also play a huge role in Polish culture, so those were always good. Wow. Does she give a recipe for her home zapikanka? Yeah, well, here's the instruction.

She says, I make it by topping the bread with sauteed, sliced cremini mushrooms, then emmentaler cheese, broil until the cheese is just starting to brown, drizzle on a good spicy sweet ketchup, and if you still have it dill fresh or dried another quintessential Polish ingredient something about the ketchup the dill and the cheese is unbelievably tasty your friends at Serious Eats

have no data related to zapikanka but I am sure you will find the Wikipedia article interesting especially the economic changes it heralded. I'll leave it to the listeners and our guest, Kenji LeBesalt, to check out that Wikipedia article because it genuinely is interesting. It was a poverty food that has been brought back. I actually did some homework and I read this. I read that article.

Good job. Have you ever had this before? No, I haven't. I've never heard of it, you know, but it's, it sounds good to me. I can't imagine that the ketchup is like Heinz, you know, and from looking at the Wikipedia article, the photos of the stuff in Poland doesn't look like it's what we would think of as ketchup per se. But it's a spicy sweet that we're coming full circle here mary specifically recommends a spicy sweet ketchup yeah so yeah european ketchups are different for sure so can i tell you something and this is maybe an embarrassing embarrassing quarantine story

something that i did um the night that i read this article please okay i wanted to make some pizza this is like at one in the morning i think i just gotten done editing some videos saying i wanted to make some pizza and normally what i do if it's 1 a.m and i want to make pizza is i is i use a tortilla um and i crisp it up in a skillet and i put tomato sauce and whatever on it um i did not have a tortilla and i did not have tomato sauce but before the quarantine i did go and buy a bunch of cans of Campbell's tomato soup. The condensed kind. And so I made a dough with baking powder.

And just that day, actually, I'd posted a video about how to make no-knead bread. And somebody in the comments on YouTube asked me, can you do this with baking powder? I was like, no, you cannot make this with baking powder. And then I was like, wait a minute, did I jump too fast on that guy for suggesting, can you do this with baking powder? I was like, no, you cannot make this with baking powder. And then I was like, wait a minute. Did I jump too fast on that guy for suggesting that you can make this with baking powder? And so I was like, you know what? I'm going to try and make pizza tonight. It's 1 a.m.

I want to make pizza. I don't have a tortilla. So I'm going to make it with baking powder. So I made a dough with flour, all-purpose flour, salt, baking powder, and some milk. And then I rolled it out. And it took like all of 10 minutes and then I spread it and I didn't have any tomatoes so I put some Campbell's canned tomato soup on it yeah condensed I didn't dilute it first and then I had a bunch of pickled chilies spicy so I was

like all right so this spiciness will will will balance out the the like overt sweetness of this canned tomato soup. And then I used pepper jack cheese and I baked it in a toaster oven and it was delicious. It was also 1 a.m. and I was like super hungry and I just had a Pliny, like a little, a very strong beer. So, you know, I would say my taste buds might have been tempered by a few things but um but i can definitely see the appeal of like sweet and spicy tomatoey processed tomatoey stuff with cheese on top of a bread like product yeah i think well listen i i want to try this zappi conca myself i do think that's an interesting blend of sweet and spicy and I'm very fascinated by the Wikipedia article as far as what you made your pizza

Kenji your 1am quarantine pizza this might earn me a block but I'm going to say it reminds me of that bread you described no need I no need it no you know what's interesting though is that the history of the zapikanka, that it was a poor person's food.

It mirrors the history of the French bread pizza, which was invented in Cornell. Really? Yeah, yeah. Cornell in the 60s. In fact, I know that there's an article up on series seats by adam kuban adam kuban by the way he was the founder of both a hamburger today and slice which were the the respectively the hamburger blog and the pizza blog that both got incorporated into series he's like very very early in his days and he was the managing editor

of series seats for a while but he's like he's like one of the foremost authorities on pizza in the world i would say but uh i know he wrote an article about when the guy who invented French bread pizza died, I think it was like 2007 or eight or so, something like that. But yeah, it was known as poor man's pizza. And it was sold to students at Cornell University. Well, Kenji Lopez, thank you so much for joining us and bringing so much good humor, information, strange confessions. And plain spicy, sweet, good fun to the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast. I leave you with this final question. All right.

John Hodgman podcast. I leave you with this final question. All right. You say you like St. Louis style pizza made with Provel cheese, a processed cheese that is a, claims to be a combination of Provolone, Swiss and something else.

Okay. Would you order 10 pounds of Provel off Gold Belly for $80? Is that a good deal or a bad deal? So I would only order, well, I would only order it knowing that I probably could resell it or give it away to friends. Like I have these food connections, so it's like I could order it and split it with people, which I don't know that everyone could do,

or I could order it and serve it on some kind of ironic dish at my restaurant. You're saying that you're a wholesaler. You've got street dealers. You're going to cut it. You're going to chop the brick. You're going to chop it up, combine it with some Kraft singles, and make it go. Now we're getting back to Raekwon style of chefery. Well, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, as a parting gift

for playing the Judge John Hodgman game, get ready to get 10 pounds of Prevel on the mail from me. Thank you so much. I can't wait. Thank you. Wait, hold on. We can't let Kenji go.

I put a gun on the counter in the first act and we have to shoot it in the final act. Kenji, how come when i make your amazing recipe for chocolate chip cookies they turn out too tall and smooth and cakey like almost like a muffin because i see the pictures of people who've made your recipe on the serious eats subreddit which maybe i subscribe to maybe i'm that dark it's possible uh and they could

they look like beautiful chocolate chip cookies. So I know it's something that I'm doing. What makes chocolate chip cookies turn? I know that aging the dough in the refrigerator overnight or even for 48 hours helps the enzymes develop the flavors and all these other things that are great about your recipe. Your recipe is really good. How come they turn out cakey though? I'll give you three avenues to explore. One of them could be that your oven is not calibrated. So if you have it, get an oven thermometer in there, make sure that it's at the right temperature. Another could be that you're using, potentially you're using

a baking sheet that's not an aluminum rimmed baking sheet. And maybe you're using one of those insulated baking sheets, which people sometimes use, or you're using some other metals. So the conductive qualities are different. So if that's the case, get an aluminum rimmed baking sheet or an aluminum flat baking sheet. The third thing I can think of is that potentially you are, sorry, there's going to be four things. The third thing is that potentially you're using a unbleached flour, something like King Arthur or some fancy flour, as opposed to regular gold metal Pillsbury flour. The bleaching process changes the way it behaves. And finally, the last thing I could think of is that you're maybe letting your dough get too warm before you bake it. So there's like craggy tops. You make the dough balls and then you rip them in half and you

stick the smooth ends back together. And if your dough is too warm, then that process like doesn't really work because it all kind of melts before it starts to set in the oven. So you want your dough to be kind of cold as it goes into the oven. I think it's going to be my oven's fault. Jesse, I'm no king of chefs, right? I'm no Kenji Lopez Alt, but may I ask a question? It might help you understand. How much star anise are you putting in? Enough? That was the other thing.

When I reviewed the recipe, which I did, I had a comment and I said, I did one star, not enough licorice adjacent flavors. P.S. I omitted the star anise. The docket is clear. Kenji Lopez-Alt, his restaurant is called Worst Hall in San Mateo, California. You can buy meal boxes for hospitals and community centers at toasttab.com slash worst hall or on the worst hall website. Uh, his children's book every night is pizza night comes out September 1st and you can find his writing on the internet,

uh, on serious eats and in the New York times. Kenji, I'm such a fan of yours. I'm so grateful you came on the show. Thank you very much. Thanks so much for having me. Don't forget to follow him on Twitter at kenji lopez alt and see how little

it takes to get him to block you our brilliant producer is jennifer marmer safer at home with baby ezra and husband shane right now uh you can find kenji on Twitter at Kenji Lopez Alt. You can find us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman. We're on Instagram at Judge John Hodgman. John is on Instagram at John Hodgman, where he has been interviewing pets for his daily weekday talk show. Make sure to hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJHO, and check out the Maximum Fun subreddit at MaximumFun.reddit.com to discuss this episode. Submit your cases to Judge John Hodgman at MaximumFun.org slash JJHO or email Hodgman at MaximumFun.org. We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.