Christopher Kimball: This is Milk Street Radio from PRX, and I'm your host, Christopher Kimball, today, it's a year in review some of our favorite stories and most memorable cooking lessons from 2024 like when Stella parks told us how she really feels about flour.

Stella Parks: I mean, I mean, I haven't been ready to get in a knife fight with somebody over bread flour versus all-purpose flour.

CK: Plus, we'll revisit our favorite listener questions and the kitchen disputes we helped settle.

Caller: I have a question about aprons and how long with heavy use they should typically last. I'm, I am here. I'm Carrie's husband, Daniel, and I am the primary cook in the family, and I am the one who is pretty quickly destroying every apron that we get.

CK: But to start off, I put together a few moments from interviews that really surprised me. This year. I was shocked to learn that people are actually paying 500 600 even $1,000 for a restaurant reservation. Here's a report from journalist Adam Iscoe about the strange new world of dining out. So, let's just go through the options. So, this one site you bid on reservations that money never goes towards your bill? Where does the money go?

Adam Iscoe: The money goes to the person who is selling you that reservation on the secondary marketplace. And so, you have all kinds of people selling reservations online. You have Ivy League college sophomores using bots to make reservations, and you also have industry insiders, hotel concierges, Maître D's, bartenders, line cooks, in many cases, people who are actually risking their jobs to sell reservations. One story I heard was about a kid who borrowed his parents AmEx black card, then he telephoned the AmEx Centurion concierge and booked a really hard to get table at a very difficult to get into restaurant that sets aside some of its tables for these elite credit card users. And then he resold that reservation online, and he pocketed the money. And restaurants, for their part, hate it. They absolutely hate it because they want to know the diners that are walking through their doors. They want to know the diners that they're that they're serving.

CK: So, they're essentially scalpers out there. They create a bidding war for these reservations, but then people are willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money, like a first-class airline ticket, just for the convenience of bypassing the regular lines altogether, is that right?

AI: Yeah. And I think comparing to Airlines is a really interesting thing to do here, because the appointment trader website is almost like buying scalper tickets to, you know, to a Knicks game or something to this effect, the first-class ticket is like logging into an app called Dorsia, which is a private membership club. And Dorsia takes its name from this novel, American Psycho this Bret Easton Ellis novel in which the protagonist, really, everyone in the novel is sort of obsessed with status, nice suits, nice shoes, fancy restaurants. And in the novel, there's this one restaurant that's impossible to get into. It's called Dorsia. And so, what the app does is it offers people with the right amount of money, the right amount of connections to grab hard to get tables. You can put up $1,000 to get a restaurant reservation at Carbone, but that $1,000 is a prepayment against your meal. So, if you don't order $1,000 worth of food or wine, you're out of luck. But if you can somehow manage to order the entire menu at Carbone, the money is not entirely lost.

CK: Why does this feel like Bonfire of the Vanities? I mean, are we getting close to the end of an era here? I mean, you sort of see things like this popping up, and people spending $1,000 for reservations, and you just go like this just can't possibly continue, right?

AI: It really does. You know, one restaurant tour who's not on the app, Dorsia, told me she felt the practice of sort of prepaying for this expensive meal where you encourage the diner to eat and eat and eat, feels almost like binge eating. She said, this whole thing is psychotic. I mean, she used that word, you know, so I think, yeah, whether it's Bonfire of the Vanities or American Psycho, we're in a sort of a strange, a strange moment. And I'm curious to see what happens next.

CK: That was Adam Iscoe, his article for The New Yorker is Why you Can't Get a Restaurant Reservation. This year, we heard an update from the world of nutrition. Tamar Haspel of The Washington Post explain why she believes Diet Coke is not bad for you, despite what some studies say. So, first of all, you're going to be one of the most unpopular people ever

Tamar Haskel: I'm used to it.

CK: Okay, diet soda is fine. You say that some of these studies, like sucralose that's used in Splenda, you say that the sucralose dosage that was used in the tests was the equivalent of 50,000 cans of diet soda?

TH: Yeah, that was the, one of the most recent studies that found, and I don't know if you remember the headlines that sucralose is genotoxic, that was that study that used a really high dose, but you have to step back and say, okay, why would a scientist use that high of a dose that no one would ever in their wildest dreams ingest in their entire lives to see if something bad happens. And one possible explanation, and it's the one I'm sticking to, is that they're trying to establish that there's something wrong with this product. And the nutrition community has a long and storied history of hating artificial sweeteners, and I find that view to be really puritanical and holier than now, given that we have reams of research on the stuff and all indications are that they're safe.

CK: That was Tamar Haspel we spoke about her article, 10 things I know are true about food that people don't want to believe. We also explored the new science of food texture. Here's Dr Anwesha Sarkar talking about a study she did using an artificial human tongue to see what happens when we eat a piece of chocolate.

Anwesha Sarkar: Yes, so we all know, we all love chocolate. So we went to the supermarket, bought some dark chocolates, low fat, high fat and so on. And we wanted to test the hypothesis that fat contents drives all this perception. So, if you have more fat, you will love it. You will make this chocolate more luxurious. The mouthfeel is enhanced. And what we figured out was that actually chocolate fat content, yes, it matters, but only matters in the early phase of chocolate eating. So actually, it's not the amount of fat, but it is more linked to the surface orientation of the fat. If the fats are located in the surface, the chances of getting those lubricious mouthfeel is higher versus if they are embedded within so it's a very interesting surface interaction going on between your chocolate and the and the tongue surface.

CK: That was Dr Anwesha Sarkar. Next up, why we have fights about food with the people we love. Journalist Ella Quittner spoke with couples about their kitchen drama and shared a few of those stories with us.

Ella Quittner: The one that made me raise my eyebrows the highest was probably a story I heard from a couple who is no longer together, although they're still great friends. And several months into the relationship, Pasha decided to get really into bread baking. And at first it was, you know, sort of fine or just a hobby, or kind of a guy rolling up his sleeves and getting into flour blends and things like that, but it sort of consumed him, turned their refrigerator into just like a nightmare, like a losing tetris game of quart containers. There was dough all over their apartment. His ex-girlfriend, Sophia, who I also interviewed for the piece, told me about going into the bathroom and seeing dough on the little you know holder for the toilet paper. There's dough on their couch. There's no all over the kitchen. She told me this story at one point, she came home after a long day of work on a Sunday, and she lifted up the covers to their bed because she just wanted to go, you know, have a nap and decompress. And there were just all these quart containers of bread rising into the duvet, using the human environment that was supposed to sort of bring her comfort as a way to proof his dough

CK: that was Ella Quittner, her article for The New York Times is, I love you, but I hate your cooking.

Perhaps what surprised me the most this year was my conversation with Zoe Schlanger. She shared the amazing science of plant intelligence, which made me question whether or not vegetables have souls. Okay, this is either. This is either a massive change in our understanding of the world, or it's just crazy stuff. And I think it's the first so you're basically saying that in short, plants have agency. Plants have intelligence. Plants can think. They can summon predators, for example, to attack what's attacking them? I mean, these are really amazing examples of research that show that we should think about plants totally differently

Zoe Schlanger: Yeah, absolutely. Plants have agency, whether they have intelligence is the red hot center of this pretty intense debate going on in botany right now, and I've been fairly convinced that, by a definition I'm willing to use, they do. Whether they can think that gets into tricky territory, no neurons in a plant, no brain, but they can certainly make decisions, which sounds like it's this kind of like semantic fussy distinction, but probably an important one. We're not sure if we need to be able to think to have intelligence. But going back to examples, yeah, I love that you already brought up this example of plants summoning predators to eat the thing eating them. I think a lot of gardeners will have had this experience of seeing tomato hornworm caterpillars show up on their tomatoes. For example, tomatoes we've known for about 25 years that they can detect the species of Caterpillar eating them, and then synthesize a chemical in their bodies, which they exude through their pores that will then float along the air and be picked up by a parasitoid wasp that will come and inject its eggs into that caterpillar, and the eggs will hatch and the larva will eat the caterpillar from the inside out. So, this is a very slow way in which tomato plants are defending themselves.

CK: You wrote about the ancient Greeks believing that plants had souls, and today, I think we pretty much come around to the idea that animals are a lot more intelligent than we ever gave them credit for. But it's really interesting the way we've opened up our minds to the notion that souls exist in a much broader spectrum of existence, right?

ZS: Right and of course, we're using the term soul very loosely. I mean more like something like agency or consciousness. So we are, we are in this funny business of constantly, kind of expanding that circle of our recognition of what has some sort of animacy consciousness. And really, when you think about it, it's more science sort of moving itself here and there. But obviously none of these organisms are changing in any way. It's just sort of where we choose to frame them.

CK: Well, it has massive implications for religion and philosophy as well. If you extend being to a much broader group of things on the planet,

ZS: Right. It brings ethics into the into the debate.

CK: Yeah, it does. So, you write about plant basics, and it's so interesting. I love this, the dangers of being immobile. So how does immobility factor into how plants are structured and how they grow?

ZS: Yeah, immobility is this primary evolutionary difference with plants, and honestly, it's given them some absolutely remarkable capacities. So, plants, for example, can incredibly finely sense moisture gradients in the soil, as we all know, but they can also sense the sound of running water, meaning the vibrations that are made by the acoustic impact of water running through something and move towards it. They can sense chemicals in the soil that tell them things like who they're planted beside. They can tell if the plant beside them is a foreign species, if they are the same species, and if the same species, whether they are genetically related, whether or not that is a member of their kin group, very literally, like a sibling, and then behave differently towards them. So, these are just a few of the things, but really their rootedness in place has given them, through the millions of years that they've been here, these incredibly fine-tuned capacities.

CK: That was Zoe Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters. So, vegetables may possess consciousness. But this year, we also discovered that in Austria, they're getting turned into musical instruments to play us out here is Susanna Gartmayer and Jurgen Berlakovich from the Vienna vegetable orchestra.

Jurgen Berlakovich: When you build a carrot flute, you can play it more or less like a flute or a recorder and also other instruments have the possibility to play little melodies and little tones.

Susanna Gartmayer: We did this piece. It's half of the people are playing flutes, and the other people are playing instruments that we call frogs, the sound the frogs make

CK: Oh, the croaking of frogs, croaking. Yeah.

SG: Croaking, so it really depends on the vegetables that we have. Which one happens to work best for the croaking sound, for example, it can be parsley rubbed together. Can be. Make a very special sound, also quite deep. This like like a frog

CK: You're listening to Milk Street Radio. Up next we revisit your biggest kitchen disasters and your toughest cooking questions. Hey, Milk Street radio listeners for a special episode all about Italy, I'm taking your calls with Lydia Bastianich from pasta to panela and beyond. Send us your biggest Italian cooking questions or problems. Email us at [email protected]. Again, please send your questions about Italian cooking to [email protected] and we'll be In touch. And thanks. Y

This is Milk Street Radio. I'm your host. Christopher Kimball, we're looking back at our favorite moments from last year, including some of our most memorable listener questions. Right now. I'm joined by my co-host Sara Moulton.

Sara Moulton: So, Chris, you're in the middle of everything over at Milk Street and constantly learning and also cooking at home all the time. I'm sure there's something this year, something you didn't know about, that's just gob smacked you. Could be a tool or, you know, an ingredient. What would that be?

CK: Well, it's about pasta, which is the difference between better made pasta and more commercial supermarket pasta. And it turns out they're very, very different, (really?) and they behave differently. Yeah, the better pastas have a higher protein semolina. Higher protein semolina’s tend to set when they're cooked faster, trapping the starch inside, which gives you a better, toothsome texture. That's why a really good pasta will have a little not chew to it, but it's more texture, little more texture where there's a bad pasta, it's just mushy. It goes from undercooked to overcook quickly. And secondly, the process of manufacturing it the bronze dyes which are used were more expensive pastas, because it's slower to make, give you a rougher out of surface, which means that those will hold on to sauce better than the cheaper pastas that are made through Teflon dyes, which are faster extrusion. So, there's a lot that goes into that, and your success with a dish with pasta, what brand of dried pasta you buy

SM: Makes a big difference you're saying

CK: Especially with something like cacao y pepe, where it's all about the starch and the sauce, and it can make a huge difference. For example, a really good pasta will help the sauce stick to the pasta, but also less likely to turn gluey after a couple minutes. So that's really an important part of making good pasta, is picking the right brand to start with. (Okay) I thought there wasn't that much difference, but there is a difference.

SM: Good to know yay

CK: I don't know if that qualifies as gob smacked, but

SM: No, it's exciting.

CK: That is, yeah, see

SM: Thank you.

CK: Still learning.

SM: Oh we never start learning. Never. Okay.

CK: Well, let's take a call. (Yep) welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling?

Caller: Hi. This is Carrie from Virginia.

CK: How are you?

Caller: Good. How about you all?

CK: Pretty good. How can we help you?

Caller: I have a question about aprons and how long with heavy use they should typically last. I'm I am here. I'm Carrie's husband, Daniel, and I am the primary cook in the family, and I am the one who is pretty quickly destroying every apron that we get. So, we're trying to settle just how long these aprons should be lasting. I think I've gone through about four in the past five years. So, we're just kind of trying to settle a debate about if that's unreasonable or not.

CK: Well, I mean, the first question is, what kind of apron Are you buying? If they're made out of flour sacks, I guess they wouldn't last. But, I mean, they two kinds. Kinds that will last essentially forever, like a wax cotton, right? The kinds of things you buy with, like a British hunting jacket or something. I have one like that, and I don't think you could destroy that no matter what you cook like and the other is a leather there's a place that makes leather aprons, and that's not going to fall apart. If not, then just get a really, really super heavy, almost canvas style fabric. Let me just ask, when you cook, what are you doing to destroy these aprons?

Caller: I work from home and love to cook, and I'll say that I'm in this, these aprons, you know, several, maybe two hours a day on average. I've had a variety of aprons. I've had a few durable chefs works. Ones, I think I had one of the Milk Street Kaf ones, which was my favorite. But, you know, all them sort of eventually got holes in the front of them. I mean, I don't know how often are you washing them Carrie? Probably not as often as I should.

Caller: I think maybe a couple weeks they just go through on their own or with rags. You know, I'm not bleaching or anything.

CK: You could look at it differently. You know, the other point of view is, you're basically saying an apron lasts a year, right? You've gone through four aprons in a few years, something like that. (Yes) that's not so bad. If you're expecting it to last five years, maybe it's your expectations. The issue here is not the apron.

SM: Yeah, no, let me ask a question. Your husband does all the cooking, or most of the cooking,

Caller: Most of the cooking, but with a capital M, and he does the dishes too. I acknowledge I'm very spoiled.

CK: Jeez buy him an apron every birthday

Caller: And I'll say this, Carrie is about to have our fourth child, so she puts in more than enough work around,

SM: I should say so

Caller: I'm happy to keep going through these aprons too.

SM: Okay

CK: You got off easy.

SM: You did actually, now I'm switching gears here yeah

Caller: It's more a debate we were having about how often, with the typical use one does go through them. I was wondering if the aprons that you all use in your recipe development that are getting used all day, every day, or have those got

CK: They get trashed. We end up with dozens and dozens of them for two hours a day to use one apron for a whole year is great.

SM: Perfectly fine. Perfectly fine.

CK: All right, guys, enjoy.

SM: Thanks for calling.

Caller: Thank you very much. Thank you.

SM: Bye. Welcome to milk Street. Who's calling?

Caller: This is Carrie from Cincinnati, Ohio.

SM: Hi, Carrie. How can we help you today?

Caller: I have been attempting for a couple years now to try and make a good like cinnamon crumble topping for like a cake or a muffin. And I've tried different, you know, variations on, like, brown sugar, white sugar, you know, how much flour. Sometimes they say, you know, to use melted butter, or, like, melted but not too hot. So, I've just tried everything I feel like I can think of, and I never make anything beyond sort of a crust of topping, I don't get those good like crumbles. And I was just wondering if you had any good advice for that.

SM: Well, first of all, are you following anybody's recipe in particular?

Caller: I've tried a couple different recipes. The last one I tried was actually like Betty Crocker or something like some really well known as opposed to, like, random recipes you find on the internet, (right) And that didn't work for me either.

SM: And when you say it doesn't have the crumble that you want, what do you mean? Like, big chunks of crumble?

Caller: Any chunks big or small, it's just one always end up with

SM: Sort of smooth, flat crust. (Yes) okay, and what are you putting in it, besides flour and sugar and butter, anything?

Caller: Well, I did actually try some ground almonds one time, and that did give it sort of a better texture, but I still got the same issue. It kind of feels like when you have the wrong temperature butter for your cookies, and they get too flat or too crispy. You know, I've tried refrigerating it before I bake it, and that didn't help either.

SM: Okay, well, here's what I would recommend. Are you using white sugar or brown sugar?

Caller: I typically use white sugar.

SM: Well, I would try using brown sugar. I think that will give you more depth of flavor. It has a little more moisture. I would use cold butter. And what ratio of flour, butter, sugar are you using? Do you know?

Caller: Oh, man. So, more flour than sugar,

SM: Right, that's correct. You can either do 321, or 211, so let's say you do.

CK: Or you could do 911 that always works

Caller: You are my 911

SM: You could do two parts flour to one part sugar and one part butter. I would go with cold flour. I wouldn't mix it too much, because you said you want those clumps. If I was going to add nuts, I'd add chopped nuts, you know, leave them a little course because you want some texture. Might throw in some oatmeal for a little more texture. Don't over mix it.

Caller: Oh, that's a great idea.

SM: Yeah, Chris, what do you think?

CK: Definitely, cold butter. I agree. You do it by hand, in a bowl. Don't put in a food processor. The Betty Crocker recipe you had. Just go through that recipe for me. Do you remember the proportions and how you did it.

Caller: I don't exactly remember the proportions, but the thing that was kind of different was it said to melt your butter and then let it start cooling off a little bit, but have it still be runny rather than, you know, chunky like a cold butter

SM: I think that's the problem.

CK: I think that's the problem. Cold butter is much better.

SM: Yeah.

Caller: Well, I appreciate your help,

SM: Yeah. I think we absolutely agree on that one

CK: and, you know, we all like Betty

Caller: Yeah. I mean, I've tried lots of different recipes, and this time I thought I'll go for, like, a, you know, old school, a classic, like, surely they'll know. And, you know, 100 people could make a recipe, and it'll come out different.

SM: That is so true.

Caller: No disrespect to Betty at all.

CK: Well, give that a shot.

SM: Yes, Carrie, thank you.

Caller: I will. Thank you all very much for your help. I love your show. Thanks so much.

CK: Thanks for calling. Take care, this is Milk Street Radio. If you want to be a better cook in the new year, please give us a ring anytime. 855-426-9843, that's 855-426-9843, or email us at questions at Milk Street radio.com. Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling?

Caller: Hi. This is Sierra, calling from Madison.

CK: I love Madison, great town. So how can we help you?

Caller: I have a lot of anxiety about a very large breakfast that I need to cook for my son's high school swim team this year. Basically, one of the requirements all of the parents need to sign up for making breakfast for the boys, and he's a freshman, and so we're kind of new to this, and it's 35

CK: 35 people for breakfast?

Caller: yeah, but it's double, because they're very, very large eaters.

CK: Are you sure? Wait, wait, wait, 70 portions. Oh, my Lord, yeah.

Caller: Well, more like 65 oh, that's Oh, that's much better. Oh, that’s better

SM: Oh, now that's fine.

CK: Well, is this early in the morning? When is this?

Caller: Oh, yeah. So, they go to practice around 5:45, in the morning, so it needs to be dropped up around seven when they’re done

CK: Oh, Lord, what you have to do is get big disposable casserole pans, and you have to make something like a French toast casserole, something that's going to be layered and can be done ahead of time and then heated up. That's the only thing you could possibly do, is has to be something in bulk that can be reheated.

Caller: Do you think you would make the casserole like the night before and then reheat it, or are you soaking it overnight and then baking it in the morning for the first time?

CK: That's a good question. It's a little risky, but I think something like a French toast casserole probably could be in the fridge, soaking and then baked off at the last minute. I think you could get away with that. Probably use less liquid. You want to test that on one of them first. I mean, I'm a good cook,

Caller: but, yeah, I'm not excited. I've been putting this off. I'm kind of one of the last parents to do it

CK: So, let me just ask, though, what did other parents prepare?

Caller: They are making the breakfast sandwiches and breakfast burritos that you're steering me away from.

CK: The burrito is interesting. I do a wrap because you could do beans, you know, which is the basis of it. You could have a salsa, which is easy to throw together large quantities. And if you wanted, you could add eggs to it. But beans and salsa as a burrito that can be done in bulk easily, and you just have to roll them up at the end. But actually, that's not a bad idea. But anyway, that's a mini casserole, and now Sara's going to tell you some fancy French

SM: No, no, no, I came across this recipe ready for this. It sounds fancy, but it's not cheese sandwich souffle. So, you take two pieces of bread, (yeah) you layer with either ham, prosciutto or smoked turkey, that's the filling with some sliced cheese, your choice. And then you put them all in, you know, like lasagna pans or whatever. You just put the sandwiches in there, maybe cut them in half. And then you make a French toast mixture, similar to what Chris was saying, except that you end up with portions. You pour it over, leave it, you know, to soak for about an hour or so, and then bake it off. I think you could do that that morning and then just take it, but you could put other fillings in. If you didn't want to put the ham or the other meat, maybe you'd want to put some vegetables in, or, I don't know, but it's a beautiful it's yummy. Actually.

Caller: I love that idea

CK: When they're done with this, nobody's going to remember what you made the next day. Nope, no one's going to remember true. So, I would not stop worrying.

SM: Yeah, well, we're rooting for you, and if you feel like it, reach back out and let us know how it was.

CK: I want a photograph of everybody eating,

Caller: Yeah, in their Speedos. Anyway.

CK: All right, take care.

SM: Yes, yes oh dear bye

CK: Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling

Caller: Hi. This is Ed S__ from Beverly, Massachusetts.

CK: How can we help you?

Caller: Well, I've been trying to make pita bread for a while, and I'm following the recipe as closely as I can. And the problem is, as you can probably imagine, it just can't seem to get it to rise to separate. Comes out very nice, delicious, but it's really just a flatbread at that point. So, I'm wondering if there's something I'm doing wrong, or something that I can do to sort of treat the recipe and get it to rise nice and, you know, fluffy.

CK: Well, I did this for the first time about 18 months ago, and I got about 80% of them to puff up pretty well. And I'm no expert

Caller: Good average.

CK: Yeah, I was, actually, I was quite proud of myself. Walked around for days feeling very proud a few things. It's the water in the dough that's going to turn to steam, so just make sure that it's hydrated enough. The problem with that is, it's just by feel, but sometimes, if you're using old flour, for example, it might require more water to it so that, (okay) that could be one reason. The second is, they have to be really thin, and that's the hard part of the recipe, right? Is getting them to be like an eighth of an inch thick. If they're thicker, the outside is not going to set fast enough, and they won't puff properly. The last thing is, does the recipe call for resting before you put them in the oven?

Caller: It does,

CK: Yeah, but that would also be important. So other things, sometimes people say, with these, you know, we do those small balls before you roll them out, is they have to be shaped and really taught on the top. It could be the shaping, you know, maybe you didn't do a great job with shaping. So, when you turn them and cup them, you want a really taut top, and that should also help as well. But those would be my did any of them turn out well or just not enough of them?

Caller: I would say about half of them puff up about halfway, and the rest not at all.

CK: And your oven was super-hot?

Caller: 500 degrees. I suppose I could try hotter. I do use a pizza stone as well.

CK: That's an interesting point. I have mixed feelings about using a pizza stone. If you're actually baking on a stone, are you baking on the stone?

Caller: Yeah,

CK: Yeah. Well, that should work. I mean, it's like a pizza I've had bad luck with a pizza stone just as a heat sink when I'm not baking on the stone, because I find it interferes with the flow of air in the oven. But if you're going to bake right on the stone, is it a regular pizza stone, or is it a metal one?

Caller: It's a stone one

CK: Yeah, the only thing we have found is the metal baking stones seem to be better job of conducting heat than the regular ones. So yeah, that's something to think about. Sara, do you have some?

SM: Yeah, no, I think I basically agree with everything you said. But I had a question for Ed, the recipe you're following, I assume that it's giving you weights, not measurements,

Caller: Right, right

SM: So, grams of flour, not cups of flour?

Caller: No, it is cups. Yeah, it is cups,

CK: Yeah, good question.

SM: I think that might be the problem, because everybody measures flour differently. Measures when you use a measuring cup, I would try to find a recipe, you know, from a reputable place that uses grams or ounces, because that will be far more accurate. And the amount of water. Chris brought up the point about it's supposed to be a slightly sticky dough, and that's very important to create the steam that creates the puff. I would chuck the recipe and find a recipe that uses ounces or grams.

Caller Oh, okay, (yeah) sure, I'll try that. (Yeah) great. Okay,

CK: And good luck. It is fun when you get a bunch of them,

SM: Yeah, and let us know. You know, if you have success, we want you to have success.

Caller: I appreciate that so much.

SM: Okay,

Caller: Thanks so much to help.

CK: Take care. Bye,

Caller: Goodbye.

SM: Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling?

Caller: This is a Michael Durst in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

SM: How can we help you?

Caller: Sara, how did you make the debt burger when you worked at the Del Rio in Ann Arbor, Michigan? (Oh) I was a loyal customer and classmate.

SM: Oh, my goodness, did we go to school together?

Caller: I didn't know you, but when I looked up what happened to the Del Rio a few years ago, I learned that you had worked there as a waitress and a chef, (correct) And I was a frequent customer there when I was a student at University.

CK: Wait, wait, wait, wait, did you guys go out together or something? Is this one of these, like, lonely hearts, you know, surprise, Michael, I don't know, how was it for you? Unfortunately. So, wait, wait, what? What was the Del Rio?

SM: Okay, so the Del Rio was a bar in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan that was a jazz bar. So, they had jazz couple days a week, Sundays, I think, always. And it was, you know, hippie dippie run like a commune. I remember going to the opening meeting where they all said, we all share. And, of course, nobody drinks on the job. And, you know, we're all very serious. And then the very first time I'm on the job, we do shots. You know, it's just part, of course. So, it was like one big family. It was a really wonderful job. But the food was actually very good, even though it was sort of fast food but any rate, one of the things that it was known for was this one dish. It was called the det burger, named after a bartender, Bob Detweiler, who, one night was bored, and so he invented a burger and named it after himself. And the original was so good, but the ingredients, you're going to be horrified. It had a quarter pounder that was cooked on a flat grill, right you know, flat top, and then the det mix was put on top of it. And the debt mix was canned mushrooms, canned sliced California olives that had no taste freeze dried green peppers. I didn't even know they existed. Oh yeah, it was really awful. So that was the det mix. So you would cook the burger, and then you would put the debt mix on top. So it was, that was olives, green peppers, canned mushrooms, and then the American cheese, okay, but this is the really exciting part, and this was brilliant. So, it's a flat top, right. So, then you take some beer, you pour it on top of the whole mess, you put a lid on it. It was steamed in beer. It was fantastic. Oh, with a grilled onion. So, we did grill a slice of onion, and those det burgers were amazing, right? Michael, off the charts, great. I was a regular with my buddies. We'd go there a lot, especially Sunday nights, to hear the music, the jazz, right? So, did you want to know the original or my updated version?

Caller: Either one, either one.

SM: Well, that was the original. So, my version was, I took ground chuck, you know, high fat burger, thick, eight ounces, not four. I used sauteed cremini mushrooms, either the chopped canned chilies or roasted poblanos that you peel and chop up and kalamata olives. So that's my det mix. And then my cheese is cheddar, sharp, sharp, extra sharp. I still do the grilled onions and beer and the improved versions pretty good too. I mean, they're both good. I really don't want to beat up in the original because it was wonderful. But I I couldn't see freeze dried green peppers and canned mushrooms in my cookbook, so, but Michael, that was a wonderful time, and that was a wonderful place, and I was very happy there.

CK: You guys should get together. I mean, we should, we should film this the reunion

SM: The way we were and det burgers,

CK: yeah, we'll call it the det reunion.

SM: Anyway. Michael, that was fun to share with you. That was a very special place.

Caller: It was a great time

SM: Yeah, sure was. Okay.

CK: All right, guys,

SM: Well, thanks for bringing up that memory and take care.

Caller: thank you.

SM: Okay. Bye bye,

CK: Yeah, The Way we Were is the right song for that. He seemed to be particularly fond of that point in his life, like he was a little emotional.

SM: Well, I felt the same way. I would have stayed there forever, except my mother forced me to go to cooking school.

CK: Damn, I know. You’re listening to Milk Street Radio coming up some of the best cooking and baking lessons we learned this year. This is Milk Street Radio. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball, right now we're going to revisit some of our favorite culinary vice from 2024. First up a word from Stella Parks. When I invited her on the show, I asked her to share her strongest opinions about what people get wrong about baking, and she did not hold back about flour and butter. So, for years, I used, like, Land O Lakes or whatever, which is 80, 81% butter fat, I guess, or something. And then, you know, I I started using, you know, Danish butter, for example, or Plugrà, which is probably 83 or 4% butterfat, and there's a big difference at room temperature. You can see, feel it's just a very different product. But your your take on it's a little different. Mine always was, oh yeah, you got to use the higher butter fat. But you don't really agree with that, right?

Stella Parks: Well, at least not for American baked goods. If I was going to make, you know, croissants, I would definitely not be like, reaching for Land of Lakes for that, because that's not how that recipe was developed. It relies on having a butter that has a really nice plasticity. And like you were saying, you can just, like, grab almost it from the fridge, not even room temperature, grab one of these European butters, and if you squeeze them, you're going to have a little bit of a give, whereas an American style butter will be like rock hard. And you know, for croissants, it's going to make all the difference, and it's going to be a real problem. But you know, conversely, if you're using that higher fat butter in an American pie dough, you're going to have butter leaking out of your crust.

CK: So, buttermilk. I love buttermilk. I just, actually just made a cornbread Sunday morning with lots of buttermilk. So, people often don't have it on hand. You can get the powdered stuff right? So, if the recipe calls for a cup of buttermilk, you can use a cup of water plus a quarter cup of the powder Oor you can try to acidulate, like adding lemon juice to a cup of milk. Do you have any substitutes for buttermilk? Or do you think if you ain't got buttermilk, you shouldn't make that recipe?

SP: Yeah, so buttermilk is really unique, and this is the thing that substitutes never take into account. Is that buttermilk is really thick, so when you're pouring that buttermilk into the biscuits, it's almost like a loose sour cream, like a yogurt texture, and that makes a big difference. And so, I've seen a lot of people say, Oh, you can do plain yogurt instead of buttermilk, but then you're getting a really different like pH and like dairy solids, kind of composition that's happening. And so, I found that when I was making baked goods with yogurt instead of buttermilk, I was often getting a much tighter crumb, which in some recipes is not wanted. And sometimes it's nice, sometimes you're like, oh, I made a buttermilk pancake. It has a really nice, even crumb, like, okay, that works great. But then you try and make biscuits, and it's a tighter dough, and that's you can make biscuits with yogurt but I think you kind of need to start taking into account, like, the viscosity of the fluid that you're using. But buttermilk. I mean, I grew up in Kentucky, so buttermilk is pretty near and dear to my heart. I mean, I live in Kentucky, it sounds like I'm I grew up here, and I've left. I have never left. I'm here. And so, yeah, buttermilk is just kind of a way of life, and you just keep buttermilk on hand. The expiration date is, like, you know, some type of, like, government required suggestion that we all know you don't have to pay attention to and just live your life and use your buttermilk.

CK: So, you sound very accommodating, you know, but you're a baker, so I I suspect there are things you're not going to go like, we'll do whatever you want. (Yeah) What are some of the things you go like, no, no, just don't do it. Just stop doing that.

SP: Oh, my, my hard nose. Yeah, that is a really good question. So, yeah, part of my like, accommodation has definitely come with age, because I think that, you know, like, when I was a fresh culinary school graduate. I mean, I would be ready to get in a knife fight with somebody over bread flour versus all-purpose flour or something. And you know what? That, the fact that that came up as an example in my heart, I think, tells you that that's still an unhealed wound for me, and all-purpose flour is perhaps the area that I would still get in a fight with someone over because not all all-purpose flour is the same. And some all-purpose flour is really bad.

CK: There you go. See, I knew I could get you.

SP: I don't want to slander anyone,

CK: because it's bad because the gluten content is, you know, like 10% or something

SP: Sure. Yeah, there are some all-purpose flours that are a little higher in protein, and to me, they behave a little bit more like a bread flour. And so, when I think about what flour is I want to stock in my kitchen, I want to have a really strong, high protein bread flour. I want to have good rise, good crumb development in my bread and I want to have a really soft, really weak cake flour for my cake flour purposes. And I want to have a nice middle of the road all-purpose flour

CK: That was Stella Parks. She's a pastry chef, food writer, also author of Brave Tart. Next up, Jose Andres showed me an entirely new way of thinking about a classic chicken soup. When you make chicken stock, you add chickpeas. That's the first time I've ever seen that. So could you explain why you do that?

Jose Andres: Seeing how big chickpeas are, obviously, especially because hummus and others in Lebanese cooking, you could argue Turkish. But even in Greek, for us, was very logical to say, okay, how our chicken stock, in a way, can be not different, but can already be building on that flavor that, in a way, is the DNA of those regions. So, because we were boiling so many chickpeas, we began to realize it that why are we throwing that water away when the water is actually one of the best natural vegetable broths that you can have for anything. And I am very happy that we made this decision many years ago, because now, when I close my eyes, that flavor of chickpeas is almost like a kiss on the cheek. When your mom, before you go to bed at night, will come and will give you a kiss on the cheek, or she will pass her hand through through the side of your face, I have a feeling like the aroma and the flavor of chickpeas is, is that like kiss that your mom gave you before you fall asleep when you were a little kid. That, to me, why chickpeas belong to our chicken stock.

CK: That was Jose Andres. His latest book is Latina. One of the other techniques that Jose shared was using very hot olive oil to fry eggs. But I also got an egg lesson from Kenji Lopez Alt. He did some new research into the science of salting scrambled eggs.

J Kenji Alt: I don't know if you've seen this video, but there is a very popular video in which Gordon Ramsay is showing you how to make these sort of French style really, really creamy scrambled eggs. It's a very, very popular video, like millions and millions of views on the Internet. In that video, he says not to add salt to the eggs until the very end, because he claims it'll make the eggs watery, or it'll make them gray. And yeah. And to me, I was like, you know, I've never really noticed my eggs turning watery or gray when I salt them. So, I started doing some research on them. I found, you know, other people, including Marco Pierre White, say, don't salt your eggs until they're done. MFK Fisher says, don't season your eggs until they're almost done. But on the other hand, people like Julia Child, Jacque Pepin, they both tell you to salt your eggs before you start cooking them. So, for my most recent New York Times Ask Kenji column, I did a bunch of testing on this. So, I took eggs, and I salted them at intervals ranging from zero minutes before cooking, all the way up to three days before cooking.

CK Yeah, you're being Kenji.

J Kenji Alt: And the way I normalized it is I used an induction burner that could keep a precise temperature on a pan, and so I used the same pan set at 300 degrees Fahrenheit, used the same amount of oil. I used oil instead of butter, just because butter is a more complex ingredient than oil, and I cooked them all for the exact same amount of time, and then I tasted them all side by side. The other thing I did was I drained them in a fine mesh strainer. And what I did was I set that fine mesh strainer over a bowl to see how much sort of free liquid there was, so basically to be able to sort of measure, or give a visual representation of how watery the eggs taste. And what I found was that, in fact, salting your eggs in advance helps them retain more moisture, so they end up more tender and less watery when you salt them in advance.

CK: Can I just ask, though, but are we talking, I mean, how much extra liquid was there? A spoon or teaspoon or what?

J Kenji Alt: So that is a good question. You know, as always, it's like, is it worth doing? Like, do I need to solve my scrambled eggs three days in advance? Well, no, you shouldn't scrambled eggs three days in advance. It really maxes out at about 15 minutes. And even at 15 minutes versus zero minutes, as long as you don't overcook your eggs, you're not going to think. You're not going to it's a very small but noticeable difference when it's side by side, when you're not eating them side by side, you know, whatever my general advice would be, you know, what I do is, if I'm going to make scrambled eggs, I'll come down to the kitchen, I'll put my eggs in a bowl, I'll beat them with a pinch of salt, and then I'll do everything else I need to do, you know, turn on the coffee maker, wake up my kids, get the toast in the toaster, whatever it is.

CK: Wait, wait, hold on a second. What's that you wake your kids? You should have breakfast and have a cup of coffee and then wake your kids. Come on

J Kenji Alt: Sorry. Okay, I have a cup of coffee. I get my bow tie on.

CK: Cup of coffee. Just a cup of coffee. So, at the end of the day, salt your eggs ahead of time,

J Kenji Alt: If you can. If not, they're going to be just fine. You know, the key to good scrambled eggs is don't overcook them.

CK: Kenji, thank you very much. You resolved another shocking issue in the world of the culinary arts, salting eggs. Thank you.

J Kenji Alt: Thanks for having me pleasure.

CK: That was Kenji Lopez Alt, host of the Recipe with Kenji and Deb. By the way, I put together a list of the best Milk Street recipes from 2024 that I hope will change the way you cook. You can find that collection at Milk Street Radio.com/best recipes. And to wrap up, the show and the year, I recently caught up with Adam Gopnik to talk about our favorite food moments of 2024. So, before we go, one last question. Anything that happened related to food this year that you just want to remember?

Adam Gopnik: Oh gosh, so many things. I guess the single thing that I wanted to remember most is my son's wedding. My Oh yeah, wonderful son, Luke, who I've been writing about since the night he was born, got married in a beautiful place, wonderful food cooked by the great Dan Barber. And what I loved most about it was that we drank a Corsican wine. He has a loving Godfather in Paris who couldn't make the trip. He’s too old now, but spends summers in Corsica, and we had a red wine from Corsica. And tasting that wine brought Richard, his godfather, very much present to us. Brought summer we had spent in Corsica together. So, there was nothing that pleased me more this year than the taste of that red Corsican wine.

CK: Somehow one's children always end up in the most memorable moments from a year. Funny how that happens.

AG: Always. And yours?

CK: Well, I'll tell you what it was. I took my seven-year-old fishing a couple months ago, for the first time, I had a fly rod, he had a little spinning rod. We caught a couple fish. We cleaned them, which he found eminently fascinating. And just recently, he was talking to his mother about this, and she said, next time we go, I'll come too with your sister. And he looked sort of better with a funny look, and said, mom, the boat's just not big enough. It's just big enough for dad and me. That was one of those great moments.

AG: You know, you should make that the motto that the two of you can share. The boat's just not big enough, that’s lovely.

CK: The boat's just not big enough for all four.

AG: It’s a lovely father, son souvenir

CK: Adam. Thank you so much, and Happy New Year.

AG: Thank you, Happy New Year, Chris. And let's hope that 2025, is a good one.

CK: That was Adam Gopnik, staff writer at The New Yorker. That's it for this week's show. You can find every episode of our show on our website, Milkstreetradio.com as well as on Apple podcasts. To explore Milk Street and everything we have to offer, please go to 177 milkstreet.com there you can become a member and get full access to every recipe, free standard shipping for the Milk Street store and lots more. Can also learn about our latest book, Milk Street Bakes. You can also find us on Facebook at Christopher Kimbal’s Milk Street. On Instagram at 177 Milk Street. We'll be back next week with more food stories and cooking questions. Thanks for listening and wishing you a very Happy New Year.

Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio is produced by Milk Street in association with GBH co-founder Melissa Baldino, executive producer Annie Sensabaugh, senior editor Melissa Allison, producer Sarah Clapp, Assistant Producer Caroline Davis with production help from Debby Paddock. Additional editing by Sidney Lewis, audio mixing by Jay Allison and Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts. Theme music by Toubab Krewe, additional music by George Brandl Egloff, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio is distributed by PRX.