Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Cook Quitchen with Soupren and Pan

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

An episode filled with food! And other stuff obviously because we definitely immediately get sidetracked.  As always big thanks to our sponsors. Shop with confidence — get Honey for FREE at JoinHoney.com/qq

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it up with? Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien When will I be remembered? Was it out there? Where did all the guys go? Oh, forget it.

Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien. Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here. author of How to Fight Presidents, and bee enthusiast Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, what's the buzz? Tell me what's happening. Oh, man. I do like bees a lot. Hi, everybody. I'm Soren Bui. I work for American Dad.

It really threw me at the end there because all of a sudden it became a Jesus Christ superstar. I did an on-brand pivot for sure. Yeah, that I didn't also know how to address. But we don't have to talk about Jesus Christ superstar. I did an on-brand pivot for sure. Yeah, that I didn't also know how to address. But we don't have to talk about Jesus Christ superstar. I'm happy to talk about bees all the live long day. Today's episode is sponsored by Honey, the easy way to save when shopping on your iPhone or computer. Honey is the free shopping tool that scours the internet for promo codes

and applies the best one it finds to your cart. Get Honey for free at joinhoney.com slash qq yeah there's an article that that just came out yesterday uh in science.org uh that asks the question are bumblebees playing with toys because they they they might be these bumblebees might be capable of having fun and enjoying these like wooden balls they gave them to play with. The best news I ever got about insects was that colony animals like bees and ants and stuff that within those colonies, we think of them as like these diligent workers. And every single day they sort of, they just clock in, clock out. It's like they're doing it for the good of the colony. That's not true at all.

There's a lot of fuck off bees like there's a lot of bees that just like go off into the world and they're like no one's watching yeah what am i working so hard for and they'll like do a little bit of work out there they'll gather some pollen on their legs but then they're also just sort of exploring too and like hanging out and not doing anything and then they come back to the colony like oh tough day out there huh i put in the grind such a fascination with bees ever since uh you either took me to this place or you told me about it but there's this place that uh was in culver city california uh called the museum of jurassic technology which is um somewhere between an actual museum and a very strange like art piece itself. It's not really clear, like the way it's divided, it's not strictly art where you think you're looking at paintings and statues. And it's definitely not like fully a historical museum where you're like learning about this period in this place. There's no order to anything.

And some of the stations in this museum, it's just like you can this has headphones and you put it on and you listen to like some opera or you listen to a phone call in a different language. And some of it is just like like here is the tea room of the museum. it is just like uh like here is the tea room of the museum and some of it is just here is this diorama of uh a town that storms go through and they have like a little effect where it looks like a tornado is going through this town and the first time i went there i was walking around trying to find a theme and there's just nothing and they don't give you any kind of guidance as to how to go through this museum. And I was so mad at it that I think I talked to, yeah, you must not have gone with me.

You must have just like sent me there wordlessly. Yeah. And I remember afterwards being like, what the fuck was that? And that was part of the experience was going in not knowing, trying to figure out, trying to see it as a museum

and then trying to see it as a puzzle that you can crack and as far as i know there is not a way to solve it but uh and and since then i've i uh warmed up to it and brought uh everybody i knew who came to visit me i was taking them to the jurassic tech now museum of jurassic technology and watching them try to figure it out the same way i did and watch them get frustrated and just have a nice little time with that. And one time I went there with a friend of the show, Elise, there was this exhibit that we both became very fascinated by, which was called the Telling of the Bees, which is based on a real Appalachian folklore tradition where you tell the bees in your community any

important news births deaths marriage divorce you tell the bees you like go and tell them all the news and then the bees uh take that news back to the colony and it's supposed to make sure that the the honey they produce is good obviously it's it's it's it's folklore there's no real science to it but elise and i like read this description and we're like and like bees as a concept are inherently funny before this so i just like saying bees and then i liked learning this thing about like oh you got to tell the bees your news and then i was extra happy to find out that it wasn't just an invention of the museum that it is like a tradition and a lot of uh places in appalachia and uh southern united states have these bees that don't sting and don't bite but

they do like hover in front of you for a while that's like their thing is just like hang out and look at you and i don't know their real name but their their shorthand is News Bees. And you just tell them the news. And I just love it. And I have a lot of bee art and iconography in my house and my life now. Elise and I are just constantly getting each other bee-themed gifts. And I tell bees when I have news, I was, when I was shopping for my tux for the Emmy Awards, I came across like a bunch of bees that were like, like scaring people away. And as I was walking, I saw the bees were like, I'm tux shopping to go to the Emmys. Just like, like very, very briefly, let them know what, like, oh, I forgot to tell the

bees. I got to get this tux. Oh, and my friend Chelsea, she's getting married. I forgot to tell you. She Uh, I gotta get this text. Oh, and uh, my friend Chelsea She's getting married. I forgot to tell you she's getting married in October. All right, so long bees good And it's it's a it's a sweet little tradition that I've adopted They're just yeah bees in general just these like charming creatures They're they're like they're fuzzy and they're just like they're kind of like drunk a little bit Yeah, you watch them bumble around.

They're like running into stuff like, oh, sorry. Yeah. Sorry. And I think there's, I don't know if this is real or just one of those movie quotes that I've absorbed uncritically, but in some movie, maybe The Happening, there's a quote that was like, if the bees start dying, then you really know the world is in trouble. That's the first sign. And like, obviously our bees have been dying for a very long time so i'm like we gotta we gotta do something to to protect the bees everybody we need we need more bees and i'm just

like always on the lookout for ways that we can help and protect bees even if i don't know if that's true or not no i think it probably is they are they're super important to our entire agricultural process like that's the biggest concern as selfishly as humans we're like the bees are going away and here's why it matters to you is that we we can't do we can't make almonds anymore if we don't have bees right it's not like once the bees are gone then the world will get one degree warmer it's like no no once the bees are gone then it'll be harder for you to get to work or whatever degree warm where it's like no no once the bees are gone then it'll be harder for you to get to work or whatever yeah uh and so yeah these are these are super important and and they're like i'm very i'm very on board with the altruistic nature of bees where they're like if i'm gonna

use my one weapon like if i use my one bullet i also will die yeah like i have this really good weapon but if i use it that's yeah it's only because I'm trying to protect somebody else. It's never for my own protection. And I'm like, yes, I like that. I want that for other animals. I want skunks that can only spray once before they die. Today's episode is sponsored by Honey, the easy way to save when shopping on your iPhone or computer. Let's talk about Honey. And for once, I'm not talking about the 2003 Jessica Alba movie about a bartender who dreams of being a hip-hop choreographer and finding love. I'm talking about Honey, the company that saves me and you money. We are recording this during Halloween.

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There's so many different sites that I use to get gifts for my 600 different nieces and nephews. Thanks to Honey. Again, not the 2003 Jessica Alba movie with Mekhi Pfeiffer and Miss Yelly and Ginuwine. Thanks to Honey, the service, manually searching for coupon codes is a thing of the past. Honey is the free shopping tool that scours the internet for promo codes and applies the best one it finds to your cart. Imagine you're shopping on one of your favorite sites. Let's say a site that sells movies.

Let's say movies about dancing. When you check out, the Honey button appears and all you have to do is click apply coupons wait a few seconds as honey searches for coupons it can find for that site if honey finds a working coupon you'll watch the prices drop like the beat in a hip-hop movie what did honey save me money on and it saved money on a movie but I'll never tell which one and I saved a dollar 75 but because I bought never tell which one. And I saved $1.75. But because I bought so many copies, one for each of my nieces and nephews,

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don't already have honey, hey, listen to me. If you don't already have honey, you could be straight up missing out. And by getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting this show. We never recommend something we don't use. Get honey for free at joinhoney.com slash QQ. That's joinhoney.com slash qq that's join honey.com slash qq but we don't talk about bees the whole day all right we can talk about our stuff oh i did want to say with the drastic technology museum if people aren't familiar with it yeah it it's this museum in california that like plays with the idea of what a museum is and like and and like there's things that you you have there's like these uh unconscious or subconscious expectations for like different things in a museum like you

know the placard below the diorama or whatever relates to the diorama and at the museum of jurassic technology there's no guarantee that it does like there's it might not relate to it at all and it might also be a lie there's a lot of there's a whole installation in in that museum where they were like talking about the evolution and uh origin of cat's cradle and they attributed it to this inuit tribe it's just a complete lie like it all feels very real but it's all a big lie yeah it's awesome yeah i love it it's very frustrating though i understand and there were things that i didn't i started to get really in the weeds while I was there because at one point there's broken installations,

like there's stuff areas you can't go into. And I can't tell if that's part of the experience. Yeah. There's also at one point while we were there, somebody just broke a glass. There's like this terrarium section and the whole front of the terrarium shattered. And I was like,

is this for me? the whole front of the terrarium shattered and i was like is this for me so everything in the museum feels intentional in a way where you're like i don't know what's going is i can't tell this is all for part of the experience um but yeah everyone should go check it out if they can if they go to los angeles oh is it in palms not culver city well they're very close palms and Culver City are right next to each other. Okay. Yeah. Dan, I have a... Should we do our theme episode? Did we talk about that at all?

What do you mean? Did we talk about it? Did we talk about it on the podcast? Have we said that what we're doing today? No. We have... We've been talking about bees for 10 minutes. It's just so surprising

anyone listens to this. Well, you know famously that bees make honey, everybody. And we wanted to talk about today, food. You know what's got to be extra frustrating is the title will be something intuitive the title will be about how this is our our our food episode and for any of

the people who like subscribed out of the kindness of their heart but have mostly checked out and they're like all right i'll check out a food episode like that that seems like they'll they'll at least stay on track with a food episode and right out the gate we almost moved from bees to Jesus Christ Superstar and then we pivoted to a museum I imagine that you come into this and you're like I know how the intro goes I don't need to listen

to that again I'm just gonna like go forward a little bit and you come in on us being like bees are the best I told the bees about a wedding i was going to i can't i'm just gonna unsubscribe uh we want to talk about not just food but we want to talk about cooking food because dana and i both do enjoy cooking and uh i have some questions for you yeah i have one main question let me ask you

a quick question okay oh we could call it you know we could do it we could call it um uh quick quick kitchen kitchen kitchen let's before you get before you ask me a single thing about i'm telling you before you say a single another fucking word about cooking or food workshop with this this with me quick quick cooking quick no quick kitchen quick kitchen but quick quick kitchen yeah quicken no it just doesn't think that oh god the ch wants to be that so bad i know wants to be so bad. I know.

Quick kitchen. Let's see. Oh, it's cook kitchen. It's cook kitchen. Cook kitchen. Cook kitchen with with Suprin and pan. OK, here we go. What?

I think everybody's got one of these, but let's say the circumstances are that your boss is coming to dinner or somebody's coming to dinner that you need to impress and you've got your go-to locked-in meal that you kick ass at. And I want to know what that meal is. We've got to be very clear that when we talk about a boss coming to dinner, we're talking in like the, the sitcom, my boss with a suit and tie. Oh, right. Not John Oliver. John Oliver. Yeah. Because for a million reasons, he would never come to my house for dinner and I would never cook for him. If he was

like, Hey, I want us to get really, I want us to get closer. Uh, how about you cook a meal for me? I would say, no, sir. I will name, I will name a good restaurant that we can go to or we'll order food from somewhere and that's my instinct even when I'm anytime anyone's coming over I'm like why would I cook let's just order something let's do something that we both enjoy but yeah in the traditional sense of like a sitcom

where a farce like that you have somebody coming over for dinner who's very important and you need to impress. What are you going to make? My main thing, the food that I make most often, probably too often, is I make lots of different pastas. I do it all the time because I love pasta so much. And I love just like screwing around with sauces. And you can follow recipes or if you've been cooking it long enough, you can just sort of like make stuff up as you go. But one of the game changers for me as someone who's been making pasta since high school, a new thing this year is cooking the pasta

in the sauce itself. That, so like doing like a one pot pasta thing. Like for the longest time, I would boil water and cook the pasta in that. And then my sauce would be separate. And then I would mix them together at the end. But now I will do a big old pot where I'm cooking my sauce, and when I'm ready for the pasta,

I add the pasta in, like dry pasta, and then just cook it in the sauce together, and it infuses it, and it's so great. And the other big change that I've done with one pot, because you're making your sauce, you're making your sauce, and your sauce is a little wet. And some recipes, when you want to add the pasta, they'll say, add some water into the sauce and boil that water in the sauce. And then drop the pasta in there and let it simmer in that for a while.

I do all of that, except instead of water, I cook it in chicken broth. And it's so good. One pot pasta cooked with chicken broth in the sauce and I do a one pot sun dried tomato pasta with like a whipped ricotta that I make a little bit spicier and that becomes like the, you serve it on top

of the whipped ricotta and it's got, there's some fucking garlic in there, there's some, obviously the sun dried tomatoes are the star. Oh,

and the other thing, you get the jar of, this is another like like i'm obsessed with this this this one pot and like using every part of the animal to do your cooking for you if you get like a jar of sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil you use that oil as like the base when you start your cooking so you like strain the the tomatoes out and it's like pour the oil so now you're not buying and using your own store of olive oil and you're not letting the olive oil in the jar go to waste so you're just like using that to to to cook your shallots and your garlic or your onions or you know whatever it is some sun-dried tomatoes and some lots of red pepper

add your add your chicken okay uh sorry to interrupt you it's okay i i so you're doing a chicken as the protein in it yeah that sounds great yeah that sounds really good is it uh i've been camping before and pasta is like a really easy meal to make when you're camping um because for for a big group of people, it's just like a very easy thing to do over a stove. Now, you're also water is that short supply when you're out like in the back country. And so I was on a trip once where we boiled pasta in water. And then we were like, well, the water has been boiling. It's just had pasta in it. If we just put a little like powdered lemonade in there, we're not going to

taste the pasta. We're just going to have some clean water that we can drink. And we did that. And then none of us shit for like four days because the water gets so starchy from the pasta. It's not just like the water's infusing the pasta. It's going both directions. Some of the pasta is coming out into the water and it's so starchy that it it would really like back you up and i'm very curious how that how do you get over that hump um i don't know what to tell you man i i i i shit very well oh that's awesome for you it's so good for you uh i love that for you it doesn't matter interesting yeah also the i love the idea and don't like don't sleep on the whip ricotta at all either like like uh next question i'll throw in a little bit of lemon

juice in there and then i have like i through my travels am constantly collecting different weird niche hot sauces so whatever i'm sort of in the spirit for, I'll mix the hot sauce in with the ricotta and the lemon and some red peppers in my immersion blender and whip that up and plop that as the base and then put the pasta on and then mix it all together. And it just gives that a nice little zest to it that really makes it sing. Are you whipping your own ricotta? What do you mean? I put it in the immersion blender. If you have an immersion blender, it's the best thing in the world. No, I don't think so.

I have a Ninja. Is that an immersion blender? I think they're similar. I believe they're similar. All right. So ricotta is a cheese that I famously hate. I don't like ricotta because it shows up in like calzones a lot shows up in lasagna a lot and it's always so overbearing and over present in those

things really I think it's so bland unless you do shit to it oh god like stuffed shells I don't even like stuffed shells because it's just so much lumpy, not meltable cheese, wet cheese. Kind of sandy, a little bit grainy. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's not a cheese I enjoy. It doesn't do the things I expect cheese to do.

And I don't like that unpredictable nature of it. But I do like cannoli. And I think that that's just sweet ricotta. Isn't it? Cannoli is not in my world anymore when i talk about uh cooking with ricotta it's it's a uh i think it's toto tofuti is the is the brand it's a ricotta that doesn't contain dairy because of my because i'm being punished okay and like and like i will use ricotta in my cooking but like i'm not a dessert enough person that I have even bothered to look for a dairy-free version of cannolis.

But yeah, I mean, obviously the problem that I have with ricotta is exclusively texture. It's a texture problem. And so if you're whipped ricotta, I'm now on board again because I'm like, well, that's different. I could try that. That sounds neat. It sounds like a whipped cream cheese. I mean, what did I make? I made whipped

ricotta earlier oh this week i was uh because it's it's squash season so i made uh roasted delicata squash and mushrooms uh and that was like the whole meal with a garlic spicy whipped ricotta dressing on the top of it i've had so much extra whipped ricotta dressing that I've been like putting it on little breakfast sandwiches. It's great. I want to sell this dressing. It's not my recipe. It's probably illegal, but it's been really good. And I would imagine that if you're putting the noodles in with the sauce, my biggest complaint with a lot of homemade sauce is that it breaks, like it's a watery sauce. Yeah.

It always feels a little loose to me. But that would really clean that up because all the water's going into the pasta instead. And so the sauce gets a little thicker. Yeah. It's real thick sauce. The only knock against it, and it's not a knock against it for me, but my experience eating pasta growing up was, uh, being in a house with, with five people and it would always be separate affairs because you would get like, cause everyone has different tastes with how much sauce they want on their pasta. And, uh, like one of my brothers for a long time just didn't want any, he'll just do buttered noodles.

And I, I don't give anyone the option to have more or less sauce when I make this dish. It's just, this is what it is. You are having this. I mean, that's my dream, honestly. I love being told what to do, even around food. So I'd like the idea that somebody just serves it to me and they're like, no, I've done it. I crunched the numbers. I did the ratios. This is it. You made me a great pasta with uh i did a little sausage medallions maybe oh yeah i did um that was really recent because i haven't i discovered that recipe fairly recently that was like a um it was february maybe tomato cream sauce yeah yeah pasta that i made yeah with a penne oh that's a good one yeah my wife just made a

big ziti but she does it without ricotta for all the reasons i just described and i fucking love it so good but we are baking the noodles i mean we're cooking the noodles outside of the dish and then adding them to the dish i'm very curious to try this especially cooking with a chicken broth yeah i i really love it it's been a real game changer for me. I've been, I've been meaning to spice up my pasta life for a while. And this is, this is just the spark I needed. When we had Ronan, you made me a pasta that had raisins in it. Oh yeah. It was like a, like a Sicilian big Z. That was, that was exotic and awesome. I was so pumped. You like showed up, you're like, I made pasta. I was like, Oh, it has raisins. And I was like, You showed up and you're like, I made pasta.

I was like, oh, it has raisins. And I was like, oh. Yeah, it's weird. Sicilian has a lot of really surprising Arabic influences in their dishes that make a world of difference. Yeah, it works really well. The acidity of tomatoes, when you cut that with the sweetness of a raisin, it's actually really great. Yeah. But that's not my dish.

Okay. My dish has been for a very long time. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think I may have just dethroned it, but my dish for a very long time was a, uh, this kind of miso salmon that I would make. Wow.

It was, yeah. And I could nail it. Like I knew how to fucking cook the shit out of this thing. Especially if I have a barbecue. If I've got like a grill outside, I can make this thing on tinfoil. And I know exactly when to put it in the marinade, how much marinade to add.

And then it's a marinade that I, they concocted over years basically, where I was like, no, this isn't right. No, this isn't right. And so it's got some ginger in it. It's got miso. It's got, um, a lot of soy sauce, a little brown sugar, uh, but not too much. Cause you don't want to burn. And then there's a bunch of other things in there, but it's like, you're, there's a little bit of Sesame dressing. Like you just want all these kinds of influences to kind of come through. And then you want like a glaze on top of the fish. i put it if you get as long as you get it with skin you just put it on the on the tinfoil and you don't ever have to like oil it or anything like

that because you're leaving that skin there that skin's going to get all charred and blacked and then when you're ready to eat you just basically peel the salmon right off the skin and plop it on your plate and And I can really nail this dish. And I know how to do it with some Israeli couscous and maybe like some, something on Brussels sprouts or asparagus. And I can, every time I've made it, people are like, this is great. This is really, really good. And I can think, I can say, yes, I know. And cooking meat in general, cooking proteins in general is such a gamble because it can always go differently. No matter how thick the fish is,

the type of salmon you got, it's always a crapshoot. And when you can kind of lock in something like that, it feels very good. However, the other day, I'm going to butcher the name of this. I made something in the crock pot. I made a coq au vin. You know the crock pot. Thank you. Coq au vin, is that what it's called? Can you spell it? It's C-O-Q-A-U-V-I-N.

Those are three different words, by the way. I see, yeah. It's a French dish. You basically braise some chicken thighs, like bone-in chicken thighs, and maybe legs. And then you're making a red wine sauce. You're reducing red wine for 20 minutes. And then you're putting it all together with onions and shallots and carrots. I don't know if carrots are traditional for it, but then there's a little bit of tomato paste. You're making a red wine based though sauce. And then you're putting this chicken in it and you're cooking the rest of the chicken in that sauce for hours.

And it becomes very tender. I've seen it on cooking shows constantly. It shows up in MasterChef. It shows up all over the place. And every single time I see people make it, I'm like, that looks so good. Surely I'll never be able to make it. That seems like it's out of my reach. And then I did it in the Crock-Pot, found a recipe for it for the Crock-Pot, made it. And at the end, I was like, this rules. Justck pot made it and at the end i was like this this rules like just tasting the sauce when i was done i was like oh this is what i wanted this is exactly

it there's like pearl onions in there it's delicious and then uh the next day i ate it again and i was like it's it's even better it's like better the next day it just keeps getting better and so from now on i feel like I want to make this. It's time intensive even before you get in the crock pot. It's like there's like some big prep that has to be done. You get it in and then like you're, you know, you don't have to do anything with it for the next eight hours or whatever. And then you serve it.

But I'm kind of thinking like I make this the day before. Yeah. Get it right. Nail it. And then when somebody shows up, I just make this the day before. Get it right, nail it. And then when somebody shows up, I just reheat the whole thing because it's so much better the next day. I'm really glad you had the self-restraint to wait for the next day because that is something I struggle with as someone who is almost always cooking for one. The first time I made this sun

dried chicken pasta dish, I was texting a friend that I talked to about meals it's so good I'm so full but I want to keep eating it because what if it's not as good tomorrow it's perfectly warm right now I'm just going to do it I'm just going to eat a family box of pasta

because if I ever have a lesser version of this i'm gonna die right i've done that with like mashed potatoes or like surely mashed potatoes don't keep like the butter just sliding around on the top of it right now what a waste that would be that got gelatinous um yeah so we had some leftover and like the kids ate it too the kids ate the chicken and they were into it. And I was like, that's rare. That's rare that they will actually eat something that I take a lot of time to make. Because it's just, in general, that kind of stuff has too many ingredients for them.

And they're like, no, just pasta with some salt and butter, please. But this fucking worked. And it's so tasty. And I don't even know if it's supposed to be a stew or whatever. It comes out kind of very much like a stew. And so I put it in a bowl when I ate it. I ate all my chicken. I ate all the veggies and everything.

And then I still had some sauce, like some red wine sauce in there and like a good amount. I thought, is it crazy if I just drink this? So I split it down the middle instead and I used a giant spoon and I just kept eating just this weird sauce I had made,

this broth I had made over and over with nothing else in it and really loving it. That sounds fantastic. There's a long held dream of mine. Sometimes I'll just like disassociate and fantasize about this very specific situation. In this version, I have a really big house and I'm fishing all the time.

And I come home with a lot of fish and I can just sort of like text enough people in my life that it's like, hey, it's fish day. And then I just make so many different fish tacos. Because I've gone fishing so much one of the one of my favorite things to cook for anyone in the world is fresh caught fish because there's nothing better than fresh caught fish it's just my favorite thing on the planet and there's such a difference between fish you get in a store fish you get in a restaurant and a fish that was like this was pulled out of the ocean today and now we're eating it right now and because i've fished so much in the last couple of years, and I'm always like

cooking different versions of fish, including different versions of fish tacos, that just seems like I would love to catch a whole lot of fish and then have a bunch of people just show up in my giant backyard and then have strangers off the street coming and just have like a variety of different fish tacos like i uh have a really good like deep fried recipe for for fried fish so we could have some of those we'd have them tossed with like spicy buffalo sauce we'd have like just standard grilled fish i guess those are the main three varieties and just like different sides and coleslaws and shit to put on there but like that sounds great we used to go to this place mondo taco in los angeles that had uh really small

very different interesting tacos they weren't all fish but there were some fish and i'm cribbing a lot of their ideas for my various mini fish tacos and just like this is i just want to to make tacos for the people fish tacos fresh caught fish tacos and then and this is i just want to to to make tacos for the people fish tacos fresh caught fish tacos and then and everyone just stops by and like they're just like come by and it's like oh it's fish taco day good everyone tell the bees that sounds so god that like has all the elements of a meal of food too like the the ethereal elements of food that that chefs get really romantic about where they're like, no, I'm nurturing people. Like I'm feeding people. Like it's community. It's about bringing people together. And that would absolutely check all those boxes as well. I love this.

Yeah. Quick question, Soren. Yeah, go ahead. Do you have a favorite burner on your stove? Oh my God. Do wait, have I, i haven't told you about this have i no weirdly in 11 years of friendship we've never talked about our kitchen burners i know it's nuts how did we get this far it this is like a thing i think about all the time because i have two fucked up burners on like an amazing stove um ah so i when you move into when you buy a house sometimes their appliances are included and in this case there's what i think

it's called a viking maybe it's called a thor i can't remember it's it's a great stove like you look at it and you're like oh yeah that's that's nice. It's a big silver thing. It's got six burners across the top. And those cool cast iron removable racks that sit over the burners. It just looks like it should be in a restaurant. And when I moved in, I first started using it. I would put a pan on. I have six burners. So think of it like three in the back, three up front.

They're the two up front on the sides, the left and the right. If you put a pan over them, they will just, it will just keep going. Because it thinks it's not lit for whatever reason. And I was like, well, as soon as i moved in i was like oh we got to get this fixed let's go figure out how to fix this and so i i was trying to figure out like taking it apart and everything and then i looked it up online finally and they're like oh it's just a defect of the stove doesn't think it's getting enough oxygen it doesn't think it like the flame has enough oxygen or air or whatever and so it's uh it constantly thinks it needs to reignite. And I was like, but I can't use those ever.

I don't want it to do that. I understand that something's wrong. I wasn't looking for anyone to commiserate with me on this. There are new pieces you can get for it to fix it, or you can have somebody come and do it, and then they order the pieces for you. But all that made me so mad that I still haven't done it where now I cook basically either

in the very middle on the front or I cook exclusively on the back like if I have a griddle and I need to spread it across two burners I always have to do it in the very back so you're like reaching across all these burners to do your pancakes or whatever anyway there's one in the front that works

gangbusters right in the middle it's a very very nice burner it's bigger than the others and i use it for everything i use it for tea even even though the flames like lick up the side of the teapot it doesn't matter this is my burner yeah i that's fascinating to me i have uh i don't make as much money as you do so I can only afford four burners on my stoves. And my, this question first came to me when my older brother Tommy asked me if I had a favorite burner. And I hadn't thought about it before, but immediately I was like, oh yeah, back left. Back left is my, that's the one that I use almost exclusively. And I don't know why i started using it and then

i moved to this my current house and my favorite burner is front left and i don't know why i switched to that one it's really unclear to me but it's very it's very obvious like no this is this is my guy and if if i'm doing like the main show it's on him and if i have to do some other stuff then i go back right for spacing reasons uh but in on this stove back left is just completely ignored i never use it for anything i never need more than two burners going at once that's interesting are they all uh at like first sight are they just the same no okay but i don't know if it's i don't know if it's a difference that that matters like the the black circles on some of them are bigger than others but i don't i can't

necessarily tell if it's changing how much heat is coming through i have to assume it must be right i don't know i don't know enough about it. I feel like the bigger the burner, yeah, it feels like it should heat stuff up faster. Although maybe not. Maybe it's just like about how the heat is dissipated through the pan. If it's a bigger burner, you get more even distribution. I don't know. I'm not a fucking shit.

I don't know either. As much as I pretend to be with my coq au vin. That is such a fancy meal. And when you look at it, I mean, just go pick a pull up pictures of it. You're like, oh, fuck. Somebody made like somebody really put some time into this. It looks like it's you can see the work in it. And I love that about it.

Oh, it makes me look like I know what I'm doing. You get a little like braised carrots and braised onions in it, too. You're like, oh, shit. There's like multiple elements to this. Do you use your crock pot a lot yes that that leads me to my next uh quick question if you had to you were staying at an airbnb for let's say a month or two months and it's like a normal airbnb it's a it's a stocked kitchen they say yes we have pots and pans what from your kitchen are you taking with you no matter what they have?

Yeah. Here's the things that travel with me. I want my cast iron skillet. Not every house is going to definitely have a cast iron skillet and I use mine a lot. You know how it cooks too. Yeah. I want a crock pot

because there's no guarantee that they're going to have a crock pot and I use my crock pot a lot. I want my crock pot because there's no guarantee that they're going to have a crock pot. And I use my crock pot a lot. I want my coffee maker. I'm very specific about my coffee maker. I love it very much. And for no real reason, one of my walks. I'm sure the house has a thing that can do everything that my walk does, but I'm just so comfortable with them and used to them now.

They're just like, yeah, yeah use these and when i moved into this current house which was again fully stocked i emptied the cabinet of most of her pots and pans the landlord's pots and pans and put them in a closet somewhere and put my own stuff in there removed her coffee maker and put it somewhere else and brought my crock pot and my and my cast iron skillet and she has like since come in there and looked at the looked at my coffee machine she was like oh that's a that must make really good coffee like yes it does um i'm definitely bringing i have like a uh a Southwest seasoning that is from Tucson that Colleen's dad brought for us one time. And I was like, okay, whatever. And then I put on my food and I was like, fuck yes, this is going on everything from now on.

I wasn't even anticipating a seasoning. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm bringing a seasoning with me and I definitely, yeah, I'm bringing at least one of my skillets because I know, same reason. Like I know how they cook. I know what I know – same reason. I know how they cook. I know what I can do with those. I know how good they are. I'm also bringing this bullshit wooden spoon that we've got.

It's not like a big stirring spoon. It's the size of a spoon you would eat cereal with. It's like a tablespoon. Yeah. But it's made of wood, and I cook every single meal with it. Wow. I love it yeah i mean i brought i don't want a big spoon i brought my wooden spoon too but mine's a mine's big yeah so i've i mean i've used big wooden spoons before uh the the they feel weird to me they feel like i'm gonna get slivers from them almost all big wooden spoons I feel not good about.

And if I have to taste something off of the spoon, I get very anxious about that because I don't like my lips touching it. Because every single one of them, I think maybe they start out feeling very polished and nice. But as you wash them and everything, over time, they get very slivery, I think. But this wooden spoon, I think because we burned it so many times it's it's now it's it's that it's incapable of ever slivering and it's such a small surface area that's not as bad and i when i'm cooking with it i always feel like i'm not creating as many dishes because this thing is so small it's easy to like put on the edge of a many dishes because this thing is so small it's easy to like put on the edge of a pot pan it's it i just love it i cook mac and everything from mac and cheese to uh what are you making for dinner tonight you know yet i think we're gonna have to have leftovers

eating we have a bunch of it still oh yeah so leftovers man that's actually maybe i don't know if this is on the table i would like to bring my microwave if if that's an option did i i go ahead did i tell you uh i no longer have a microwave yeah you did i think it and i i didn't like it i think i asked you how you're heating up your leftovers and you said you really have leftovers and then you said you're oh no so so this was um that's going back a ways where i didn't used to have a microwave okay when i lived in new york i just didn't have one and then i moved here to my beach town and the house came with a microwave and i had that and now it's gone my okay my landlord uh who also lives in this building and i i uh i'm i'm ride or die for my landlord i think

she's incredible uh she's kooky and strange and the world is against her and it's it's except for me i am the only one on her side and we have tremendous affection for each other. It's one of my favorite relationships I've ever had. And she, uh, knocked on my door and she asked me if I use my microwave a lot and muscle memory. I said, no, because in my imagination, I don't use my microwave a lot. And then she said, can I have it? Because my son Because my son needs a microwave. He's only going to need it for like three months. I was like, yeah, okay. And so I took the microwave out and I gave it to her.

And it made me realize that it turns out I do use that microwave for like leftovers and stuff. And popcorn. God, man. It comes in handy when I'm heating up tortilla shells for for for tacos that's pretty big or if i just want to like very quickly melt cheese it's pretty handy for a lot of baking but a lot of times like you need room temperature butter and yeah there's no there's no option for that you can't put that in the oven yeah um i love my microwave i know exactly how long i need for everything with it too. It's so familiar

to me in a loving way that if I know exactly how long pizza versus Chinese food is going to take in it, I know what I need to soften a stick of butter. I know everything about it. We know each other backwards and forwards. We love each other. Yeah. It's like me and my landlord. One of my favorite interactions with my former microwave is it was a very old microwave and it didn't have like a button on it that says time cook, which is historically what I would press. That'd be like time cook. And then you set for three minutes, 50 seconds, whatever it's going to be. It didn't have any button for that. And I stared at the interface on this thing for so long thinking,

what would time cook be called here? And it's just not. They have like, if you press one, it's one minute, two, it's two minutes. They have like popcorn, chicken, defrost, frozen, whatever those options are, but nothing that could be time cook. And so i got the

name of the microwave and i went to youtube and i i i asked youtube like just like let me just put in the name of this microwave and they'll give me a tutorial and there was a full youtube tutorial that is like that is everything except time cook it is just going through this microwave very polished very professional and i'm so mad and then i scroll down and the top comment comment is like press power and then you can put in the time and there's so many people under that comment they're like jesus christ thank you so much you're a hero and that's exactly the type of thing i'm trying to avoid if i'm going to an airbnb for a month i don't want to have to fucking learn the language of a new microwave. I don't want to have to find the glossary of terms to turn this microwave on. Because I've done that dance before where you show up somewhere. The first thing I'm looking

for is time cook. I don't see it. And I'm like, okay, now what? I'm just going to start punching numbers and see if maybe time cook is just, that's the default. And then if I punch numbers and nothing happens, or the worst is when you're like, I don't see time cook is just, that's the default. Yeah. And then if I punch numbers and nothing happens, or like the worst is when you're like, I don't see time cook. Okay, let's just try and put in one minute. And you push one and also just like, and then you're like, oh no, what is this setting? I did before I looked it up,

I would do like one minute and then they had that plus 30 seconds button. So I was like standing in front of the microwave, adding 30 seconds as it went being like this has just got to go by vibes at this point. It's whatever I feel like this has done. My current microwave part of what I like about it is that

it does make me feel like I'm in the driver's seat. It has there are not numbers on the front of it. It has a gradient like a scale like what you see like a time code basically that would be at the bottom of a youtube video and i put my finger on it and i just move it up and down that and like the time will appear next to it it's like okay you're getting up to like four minutes or five minutes or whatever and i'll like kind of like just i know like feeling wise how far I have to push it for a minute

and uh and then I let it go and then if I'm like looking in there and I can see that my cheese isn't all the way melted I just put my my finger right back on that button and I get to work you know like just stretch it out a little longer and it's it's such an intuitive and like I I don't like tactile design that I love it i love not having to like push buttons like it's like i'm living in logan's run like i like this feels very alive to me i uh stayed at an airbnb in baltimore once uh and it's i almost wondered if it was a joke because the the airbnb listing was like feel free to to use whatever appliances you want in the kitchen and it was like one of those big old-timey kitchen

specific mixing bowls where it's like you'd only find it in the in in like a in the back of a bakery and uh a french press thing i was like what the what the fuck one of those mixing bowls you can't make less than 40 loaves of bread with what if i want toast you lunatic uh wait do you do you have a toaster oven dan toaster oven no i don't know i've never you know what used to drive you crazy no because okay our, our listeners will walk out if we don't correct this. I did always have a microwave in my New York apartment. I never had a toaster. That was the thing that drove you crazy.

Yes, I didn't like that. Yeah. I didn't care for that. Yeah. God damn it. I wish I remember the answers to all those questions because I know that already there's like a million in my head that you're not using a toaster. You're a bread guy.

Not really. No. Who said, who, who told you I was a bread guy? You love sandwiches. Sandwiches are your favorite meal in the entire world. You love sandwiches. Okay. That's me.

That's me. I'm thinking. I, uh, I, I famously gave up bread for almost a year oh because i was when i was trying to lose weight and i thought what is a thing that is a regular part of my diet that can lift out and i picked bread because i was making a bagel sandwich for breakfast every single morning and i was like all right well i just won't do that and that's my like definite everyday loss uh and it'll sometimes it'll also stop me from getting burgers when i go out to eat i've since i'm back on on on bread now that was like a stupid year-long experiment but i am uh and far from a bread guy when you were eating your

your bagels how were you toasting those i would cook whatever i wanted in on on the the stove like like like my breakfast sausage and my bacon my my fake eggs my whatever put it on the sandwich wrap the sandwich up in foil put the sandwich in in the oven, cook the sandwich that way. It's not toasted. That's so much time. It's like a delicious. I know. I love it.

It was such a great. It was a really important part of my morning routine. I think it's very, my buddy Ryan Holiday talks about this a lot, to wake, when you wake up in the morning, don't look at a screen of any kind for the first hour that you're awake and i don't have like it he's got he lives on a farm and has two kids so it's really easy for him to find things to look at and do i don't uh so i really like having a breakfast task that takes a long time by design was very helpful to me to make sure i had that first hour undisturbed and but you gave that up gave that up now i ate like fucking

fucking breakfast bars while i stare at my phone and walk jackson into traffic every morning yeah learning about the atrocities of the day just Just trying to like catch up. It's hard on the West Coast. I mean, the East Coast has already been up for four hours. So by the time I get up and check my phone, I'm like, shit's gone down. Nancy Pelosi's been attacked in her house. And I'm like, okay. All right. Let's learn about this. I did a really dumb thing that I'm sure I could figure out how to undo it by Googling. But do you have the Amazon branded smart speaker in your home? No.

I do. And I'll call her Alice so she doesn't hear this and start talking to me. Yeah. But she's been doing this new thing recently where she will alert you to other features that she has in case you're interested because she knows your habits and your thoughts. And sometimes you ask her for something and she'll be like, hey, did you know I can tell you when new books that you might like are going to be available? Do you want me to do that? And I say no.

And sometimes you don't even have to ask her anything. And she'll just like pop in and offer you one of her services. And one such time, because she knows I listened to the news from her a lot. One such time she said, hey, do you want me to set the news? So I tell you the news every day at 7 a.m. I was like, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. And it's really not a good idea, but it's like, I want to be the kind of person who wants to hear the news every day at seven. And so now, uh, I get up around six every day and I start my day and I take Jackson for our long morning walk. And sometimes it's so long that I come back to the house and the news is just talking at me. And it was like, stop it stop it stop telling me get out of here i forgot i did this and i don't again i could google this and figure this out but yesterday i said uh alice don't ever tell me the news again and that didn't if if today is any indication that didn't take that wasn't the right thing to ask her to do.

She's thinking he didn't mean it. Yeah. He's just clumpy today. Fine. I won't tell him any more news today. Yeah. I don't have one of those. Only because every single house I've ever been in where they have an Alexa, at some point in the middle of a conversation, shit just goes off the rails

because Alexa's like, you're talking to me? You want to hear Huey Lewis in the news? You got it. Yeah. There's a character on Schitt's Creek called Alexis and it drove my fucking speaker crazy

anytime I tried to watch that show. Yeah. I mean, imagine having somebody named Alexa in your house. I it's you can't do it yeah unless you're allowed to change her name no you can't do it that's right you're not allowed to change your name that's the other thing that with these with these speakers that i can't change her name and i can't uh i don't think i can change her voice i want i mean like the dream would be I want Jarvis or I want yeah some kind of butler adjacent thing

Cortana from Halo you're a big gamer you know Cortana is the covenant coming oh you do know it oh fuck dude absolutely well as we said this is our food episode we talk a lot about

Cortana and we talk about our home alexas just what you were looking for um that's the end of our episode that is the end of our episode episode of quick question that's the show but you knew that already we're recorded edited and produced by the irreplaceable gabeer, who you can find at GabeHarder.com someday. Our theme song is by the incredible MeRex. Their digital album is available at MeRex.Bandcamp.com. You can find me on Twitter. For the time being, I don't know, as of recording, Elon Musk bought it today.

And it seems like things are getting pretty much, pretty bad pretty quickly. But for the time being do no wrong he's hitting the ground running he's such a good guy he's doing it right i love him you can find soren and ask him to elaborate on that at soren underscore ltd or the show at qq underscore soren and dan you can email the show at qq with soren and daniel at gmail.com we also have a patreon and you can support us where you will get exclusive content that- Oh, fuck! We have to record today. I thought we were done. Shit! Fuck!

So listen to more stuff like that. That's begrudgingly doing our Patreon. Thanks for the money. Bye. Bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. I want to hear your thoughts. I want to know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right.

The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? What do I be? Remember? What's it up with? Word it all up.

What do we know? Oh, forget it. I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien. When will I be remembered? Was it out there? Where did all that go? Oh, forget it. Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien. Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here.