Cal and Christa DeMercurio
Join Chef Cal and Christa on this week’s episode of Cooking Like a Pro as they discuss fresh cucumbers at the market, learning the skill of sautéing and breading, pairing Merlot and tipping your server at a restaurant.
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Join Chef Cal and Christa on this week’s episode of Cooking Like a Pro as they delve into culinary tips and techniques to enhance your cooking skills. This podcast is packed with valuable insights and practical advice for both novice and experienced cooks.
✨FEATURED RECIPE in this episode GAZPACHO✨
✔️ Learn how to prepare a unique dish of sautéed cucumbers with garlic, shallot, cream, and dill. Get tips on grilling cucumbers and reducing their bitterness.
✔️ Dive into wine pairing insights, focusing on merlot and how to enhance your dining experience.
✔️ Understand the importance of the “dry, wet, dry” breading method for perfect coating.
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Find the DeMercurio’s
👨🍳 Chef Cal www.chefcal.net
👩🍳 Christa www.mrschef.net
together at www.culinarilyyours.net
podcast page www.cookinglikeapropodcast.net
Timestamp Overview
00:00 Exploring local farmers market for food.
04:07 Ice cold dish and chilled spoon preference.
07:01 Slice, saute, add cream, dill, enjoy. Delightful surprise!
09:54 Enjoying John Denver while craving homegrown tomatoes.
14:48 Breading is used for fast-cooking, tender items.
17:35 Sautéed and deep frying can be healthy.
21:50 Refrigerator whisperer finds fun in cooking.
25:17 Enhancing wine taste and food pairing tips.
27:47 Testing grape sugar content using refractometer.
30:06 Chardonnay with buttery, nutty flavor pairs with halibut.
35:15 Pairing food and wine, merlot, sweeter wine. Drink what you like, ask for samples.
38:36 Restaurant owner emphasizes importance of customer service.
40:35 Request for ice water, customer engagement essential.
43:38 Eating out, supporting restaurants.
46:27 Service: Getting order right, tipping becoming common.
Transcript
Christa [00:00:04]:
Hey, food fans, welcome to cooking like a pro with Chef Cal and me Mrs Chef, his wife, Christa DeMercurio. We’re dishing out culinary intuition, insights and imagination to spice up your meals and make cooking more fun. On today’s episode, my chef, husband and I discuss how to cook cucumbers, saute a piece of toast, the importance of.
Christa [00:00:25]:
Dry, wet dry when breading, and we
Christa [00:00:28]:
pair a glass of merlot. Let’s dig in. Today’s episode was broadcast and recorded live on AM FM radio.
Cal [00:00:40]:
Welcome, welcome, welcome, folks. This is chef Cal Demercurrio, and we are here at cooking like a pro from off of our culinary ores website. I’m here with my beautiful wife, Christa.
Christa [00:00:51]:
Hello.
Cal [00:00:52]:
DeMercurio as well. And we are excited to be here. This is just so much fun to, to spend this hour. We appreciate you tuning in for the hour. It’s always nice to get your questions as well, but you’ve found us at KCNR 1460 AM and 96.5 FM. And again, you can call in live. We’d love to hear from you. If you have a cooking related question, that’s a local number, 530-65-4567 again, 605-4567 and boy, I’m excited today.
Cal [00:01:29]:
I’m always excited. But talk about food. But me and my wife took a little journey this morning through a local farmers market. It’s kind of a little branch off of the Saturday one. It’s done over in the, oh, and that section by the dairy queen over off of Churn Creek. And I tell you, you don’t have to walk around too far before you see what’s in and what’s fresh and in season. And so we’re just gonna, we’re gonna start off, start off with our fresh update. So we’ve seen tomatoes.
Cal [00:02:02]:
Oh, peaches.
Christa [00:02:03]:
Peaches. Peaches everywhere.
Cal [00:02:05]:
Tree fruit and lots and lots of cucumbers. And we’re excited today because for this first segment, we’re gonna share a couple really, really cool things with you, utilizing those fresh ingredients. One is going to be cucumbers done in a way that you may have never heard before. So we’ll get to that in just a second. And then tomatoes. You know, our engineer over here can probably let you know what you thought of the soup. Yep, we’re getting some whoop, whoop, whoop, whoops for the gazpacho. Gazpacho.
Cal [00:02:39]:
Just one of my favorite chilled soups. Great soup that we do in the summertime when it’s a, you know, like it is today, 115 here in northern California. I’m not sure where you’re listening, but it’s hot here.
Christa [00:02:54]:
So chilled, sir, better than the 119 record we hit earlier this week.
Cal [00:02:57]:
Yes. Yes. We did make a record. We did make a record, but gazpacho. I’ll just toss the mic over to my wife. What did you think about that, sweetheart? Now, you’ve had my gazpacho before, though.
Christa [00:03:08]:
I’ve had it. It’s like a salsa on steroids.
Cal [00:03:12]:
Oh, salsa on steroids. There you go.
Christa [00:03:14]:
You can drink it. You can eat it without dipping a chip in it.
Cal [00:03:17]:
Uh huh. And now. And originally was actually served with bread. With a bread actually in the bowl. And then tomatoes were added later on. It’s actually from the Andalusia area. It’s in the southernmost tip of Spain. It was popular around the mediterranean area.
Cal [00:03:32]:
And, you know, the Strait of Gibraltar is. That’s the Andalusia area. And then right on the other side of, you know, the tip of Africa would be Morocco. So that right in that little area, that’s where it is dated back to about the 10th century. So it started there. And then once tomatoes and green peppers were introduced to Spain back in. Oh, it was, I guess, around the 15th or 16th century, maybe. Well, no, it must have been earlier.
Christa [00:04:01]:
It’s a spanish dish.
Cal [00:04:02]:
It’s a Spanish dish, yes.
Christa [00:04:04]:
And you said it needs to be super, super cold.
Cal [00:04:07]:
Ice cold. It’s one of those things that I’ve actually done it before where we’ve served it in a iced dish, like ice carving. We did it for one of our Olympic team events. But it needs to be ice cold and served in ice cold dish. I would even serve it with a chilled spoon. It’s just something that the colder it is, the more refreshing it is. And so we picked up some ingredients, and all fresh right out of the garden. Actually, to be honest, most of those came from mom and dad’s garden, but we had fresh tomatoes and cucumbers.
Christa [00:04:41]:
Well, walk me through, because I was taking a nap while you made it.
Cal [00:04:43]:
Yeah, well, those are diced up and you allow the juice to come out. There is one little secret that I do, and this recipe is available. So where can they find this recipe?
Christa [00:04:52]:
They can find it on culinarilyyours.net dot.
Cal [00:04:57]:
Yeah, so they can go on there and again, pull it up. But the one thing it has to the ingredients that go in there, there is a little bit of onion. I would go with a white onion. Or you could perhaps use yellow, red, even. It just depends how hot you want it. Then a variety of really just spices. And the main broth of it would be tomato juice. But what I always use is spicy Bloody Mary mix.
Christa [00:05:24]:
Where do you get that?
Cal [00:05:25]:
Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere vodka is sold. But yeah, to make a Bloody Mary with vodka and bloody Mary mix, and they make a wild one. It’s more like just tomato juice. And then they make some that they’re called loaded. So they got a little bit of zest and a little bit of kick.
Christa [00:05:43]:
Well, it wasn’t too spicy for me, and I’m not very good on spice factor.
Cal [00:05:46]:
Well, what that does is the juice gives it the soup. Okay. It would end up being closer to a salsa because it would be thicker. It’d be almost, almost like a tomato cucumber salsa. But anyway, get that recipe, folks. Get that recipe. And again, one more time where you can get that culinarily yours.
Christa [00:06:00]:
Culinarilyyours.net.
Cal [00:06:04]:
Sounds great. And then I also want to talk about another ingredient that we see in there, and it was cucumbers. Okay. So what I did, like I normally do at the restaurant, we look around. Okay, what are we going to do for soup? What are we going to do for salad? What are we going to use for vegetables? And I got, I was a little bit long, meaning I had more than I needed of cucumbers. So I peeled these cucumbers. They were a regular cucumber with the kind of the harder skin, the waxy type. Yeah, yeah.
Cal [00:06:31]:
And they’re, they actually put a shine on there, a wax on there. You really, you don’t want to eat the skin on those things. It’s just hard. If you want to make a pickle or something, then use an english cucumber. Use one that has a skin on it that you can eat.
Christa [00:06:44]:
Now what about an Armenian cucumber? Those ones with the real bumpy skin?
Cal [00:06:47]:
Yeah, yeah. Those are fine, too. This is, skin’s edible on those. Plus they’re hard to peel. But on the. So we just take these, these cucumbers, we peel them, cut them in half lengthwise and then scoop it out. So it’s going to look like you have a boat.
Christa [00:07:00]:
You take all the seeds out of.
Cal [00:07:01]:
The center, take all the seeds out of the middle, and then you just slice those up however you want to slice them up. Now you’re going to saute those cucumbers with a little bit of fresh garlic and a little bit of fresh shallot, maybe a tablespoon of shallot, teaspoon of garlic, a medium hot pan, saute those cucumbers, once they start to get tender, you’re going to add a little bit of cream. You can add, I’ve got a quarter cup of heavy, unsweetened cream and then some fresh dill. As much dill as you want. I’ve served these at the restaurant where people, they’ve enjoyed them so much, but they’re like, what is this? They have no idea that it’s a cucumber, and they’re absolutely delicious. And the poor cucumber gets kind of. What’s the word I’m looking for? Regulated to the cold.
Christa [00:07:47]:
Yeah.
Cal [00:07:47]:
To a garnish on the side of your salad. Right. Well, why not? Just instead of sticking it in your gazpacho, you can also use it as a hot vegetable. And they’re absolutely delicious. Again. So you just want to peel those things up and cook them again. Just a simple splash. You can even do a touch of.
Cal [00:08:06]:
Well, I probably wouldn’t do too much acid. Okay. But you could do a little vinegar. But again, cooked cucumbers.
Christa [00:08:11]:
Okay, so I’m gonna throw a weird question at you. Can you grill a cucumber?
Cal [00:08:14]:
Can you grill one? Oh, you could grill it if you took the seeds out of it, because the challenge is the skin and the seeds, you can get some bitterness to that. I actually know people that before they make pickles, they’ll brine the cucumbers, brine it to pull out some of that bitterness. And then the burp. I always burp with cucumbers. Raise your hand out there if you burp with cucumbers. Not if you’re driving, but if you’re not driving, raise your hand. Because they make me burp, and they make me burp every single time. You can take the seeds out.
Cal [00:08:44]:
Take the seeds out, and that should help with your burpiness.
Christa [00:08:47]:
Well, that’s why an english cucumber, especially the Burpee brand, makes a burpless english cucumber.
Cal [00:08:52]:
I know. Well, why would you not want to burp, though? Burping is just one of the great joys that are there bodies, one of the body sounds that we get, that we get to make. There’s a lot of sounds that the guys make that probably. We probably don’t need to talk about on a cooking show. But again, if you do have any. If you do have any questions, please give us a call at local 530-605-4567 or you can texture, they can text questions. Why don’t you explain that, sweetheart? Because you’re the tech person, okay?
Christa [00:09:26]:
So we just launched this as an official podcast last night. It’s on the major streaming platforms for podcasts. And you can go to that podcast and click on a link that you can send us a text. So you can go to cookinglikeapropodcast.net. that’s all one URL, cookinglikeapropodcast.net. and there’s a button. You need to do this on your phone. You can click and you can text us your questions.
Cal [00:09:54]:
All right, sounds great. You know what? We’re going out with a little bit of John Denver. Who remembers John Denver? All right, let’s bring that one on. All right. Ain’t nothing in the world that I like better than bacon and lettuce and homegrown tomatoes. Up in the morning, out in the garden, get your ripe ones. Don’t get a hard, plant em in the spring, eat em in the summer, summer, all winter without a culinary bummer. I forgot all about the sweating and the digging every time I go out and pick me a big and homegrown tomatoes.
Cal [00:10:29]:
Homegrown tomatoes. What would I be without homegrown tomatoes? Only two things that money came by that true love and homegrown tomatoes.
Christa [00:10:42]:
Hey, food fans, let’s talk about making food so good you’ll want to stick a fork in it. Whether you’re looking to impress your family or simply enjoy your time in the kitchen, we’ve got you covered with tips, tricks and tempting morsels of culinary wisdom. You can even contact us with your cooking questions and get expert answers. You don’t want to miss out on the delicious details right here on cooking like a pro. Podcast.
Cal [00:11:10]:
Jeremiah was a bullfrog was a good friend of mine I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him a drink in the wine. All right, Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Now you’re probably wondering what it is that a cooking show is going to talk about that’s related to Jeremiah being a bullfrog. Well, we do have a couple things. And actually, apparently Jeremiah has wine, right? Because I help him drink his wine.
Christa [00:11:44]:
Oh, I haven’t listened to the words that closely.
Cal [00:11:47]:
Well, the reason we did that little jingle coming back. And again, this is chef Cal and my wife, Christa D. Mercurial at cooking like a pro. Thank you for tuning in to KCNR 1460 AM and again, 96.5 FM. If you have a question, you can give us a call here, local number 530605 4567. And you can even text us a question. Honey, why don’t you explain to them how to text a question on our.
Christa [00:12:15]:
Brand new podcast, we have cookinglikeapropodcast.net. and it’ll bring up a page, and you can click on the button on your phone, and you can send us.
Cal [00:12:23]:
A direct text, and you can listen to it that way. Right? Okay. Yeah. So you can listen to.
Christa [00:12:29]:
We are now on Apple and Spotify. So everything that we say here will be recorded and released on podcast. In case you missed what we said.
Cal [00:12:35]:
Tonight, there you go. We’ll get the archive going. And. Yeah, so you’re driving home, but now you’re already home, and you’re sitting in your car, but it’s hot. You don’t want to waste the gas. Keep your car running. So pull it up on your phone because you were listening in your car, and then you can go in your house and get cooled down. So Jeremiah was a bullfrog.
Cal [00:12:53]:
So the word saute, the French, remember, the French have a different word for everything. And satay comes from the verb satire. And sat, the word satay means to jump. It means to jump like a frog jumps. So when I train people, which I’ve trained thousands over the years, the saute means the food is jumping in the pan. Now, do you remember, sweetheart, how I taught you how to saute? Why don’t you walk through the saute training, all right?
Christa [00:13:25]:
You take a piece of bread, and it should be post toasted, probably toasted.
Cal [00:13:29]:
Okay.
Christa [00:13:29]:
Toasted. Because you gotta have a stiff, dried out piece of bread, not a flimsy, limp piece of bread.
Cal [00:13:34]:
Trim the corners.
Christa [00:13:35]:
Trim the corners off so it’s more roundish. And you use that to try and get it to slip to the edge of the pan and then flip back over like you would an omelet. So you start by practicing with a piece of bread. And then you keep advancing.
Cal [00:13:49]:
Yeah. Then the house gets dirty after that. Okay. What was that? Remember what you used the second time?
Christa [00:13:54]:
Beans and then rice.
Cal [00:13:55]:
Beans and then rice.
Christa [00:13:56]:
So it’s getting smaller and smaller.
Cal [00:13:58]:
Yeah. So a small handful of beans and rice in your pan. And what you’re doing here is you’re trying to just get muscle memory in your wrist. And I would. If you’re right handed, if you’re right hand dominant, you should learn how to saute left handed, because when you’re cooking, you’re sauteing with one hand, and you’re adding the ingredients with your. Usually your dominant hand. So, yeah, you know, left handed is great. But then you take that small handful of beans or rice, maybe a quarter cup, and you just practice flipping that.
Cal [00:14:24]:
Practice getting it to the far edge of the little egg pan. When you’re holding it onto the handle, flip it back towards yourself and then just keep doing that. And as it bounces around all over, maybe do it in the kitchen where you can sweep up. Anyway, that’s saute. That’s saute. And it’s frog again, frog. Like to jump and saute. It’s one of the cooking methods that we use.
Cal [00:14:48]:
Generally, it’s going to always be used for very tender items. They’re going to be used for items that are going to cook fast. And a lot of the things that we do, we’ll put a light breading on them. So I wanted to talk about that because breading is just one of those areas where a lot of people have, have challenges. Right. So when we’re breading, we always go dry, wet dry. If you can remember a few key things from these shows, dry, wet dry would be one of them. So dry, wet dry, when you’re going to bread something.
Cal [00:15:16]:
All right, so. So how about. How about you, Chris? I’ve got some. Well, not veal. We used to do veal, but let’s say we got some nice pounded out cutlets of steak and we’re going to go ahead and bread those. How would you bread those?
Christa [00:15:28]:
Well, what you’ve taught me is the dry is usually like a flour. That’s your flour. And then your next wet is going to be usually egg. Usually. Add a little milk to the egg or any other liquid components.
Cal [00:15:39]:
Yes. To keep it from being, you know what? It looks slimy. You know, something to break up the egg white.
Christa [00:15:44]:
Oh, no, wait a minute. Back up. Now, the first flour component has to have a little seasoning in it, usually, right?
Cal [00:15:49]:
It can. It can. Yep. Or you can season the product itself. You can add seasoning to the flour and you. Or you can add seasoning at the very end when you cook it. So it’s kind of up to the individual person.
Christa [00:15:59]:
Okay. So either season your product or put some seasoning in the flour. Then you go to your second pan and then dredge it in the egg.
Cal [00:16:07]:
Egg. Very good.
Christa [00:16:08]:
Then you go to a third pan. You got three pans lined up, each with different components. Flour, egg. And the third one will usually be a panko.
Cal [00:16:14]:
Panko. Japanese breading. Yeah.
Christa [00:16:16]:
Which can sometimes have coconut in it and different nuts, etcetera.
Cal [00:16:20]:
Well, yeah, we did that. What was that, your mom. What was that, your mom?
Christa [00:16:24]:
Coconut, almond chicken.
Cal [00:16:25]:
Almond chicken. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Christa [00:16:26]:
That was my birthday this year.
Cal [00:16:30]:
So that was. Yeah.
Christa [00:16:31]:
So.
Cal [00:16:31]:
So. And there’s just a variety of ways. We used to do a halibut with macadamia nuts that were in that outside breading. Just a beautiful, beautiful dish.
Christa [00:16:41]:
Potato, potato flakes.
Cal [00:16:42]:
Potato and crust, potato flakes. If you’re going to do a potato encrusted. So anything that’s dry, but again, is dry, wet dry, because you want that. I don’t know how many times you’ve perhaps eaten, maybe even at a restaurant where the breading is coming off. That’s because it’s not being breaded properly. And breading is something that I know we’ve gone over that. I don’t know if that’s edited and up on our website, but if not, we’ll get that up pretty quick. But it’s the process.
Cal [00:17:07]:
And then this stuff is sauteed. So when you saute, you want your pan medium hot. So if you could do something for me while you’re listening to this, imagine you’re sitting in front of a stove and you got a saute pan with a little bit of oil in there. And you hold your hand about twelve inches, ten to twelve inches above your flame with the pan underneath your hand, and then without the pan underneath, that should, it should be about the same amount of heat coming off.
Christa [00:17:33]:
If your pan is not hot enough.
Cal [00:17:35]:
Yeah, if your pants are hot enough and you’ve got the oil in there, then all you’re doing is saturating your food with oil, which. So you’re adding calories galore. Sauteed is actually extremely healthy way to eat. So is deep frying. Deep frying gets a bad, bad rap. But the reality is if you’re deep frying it, you know, 375 degrees, which is what you’re supposed to, the food starts cooking immediately. And plus, there’s no place for the flavor to go, so it stays locked in. So if I take a beautiful piece of cod and I put it in flour and then, or dredge it lightly and then dredge it in some like a beer batter or any type of a light batter.
Cal [00:18:17]:
One of the best asian batters, matter of fact, is really just. What is that we do with just cornstarch and soda water or actually soda water flour, even better, soda water and flour. It makes it light and airy. Have you ever been to a japanese restaurant where their tempura was like, really lightly colored, almost white? Well, that’s what, you know. They didn’t put any butter or any egg yolks or anything to get any color off that.
Christa [00:18:44]:
So how far in advance can you do your breading. Can you hold it? Does it be immediately right before you put it in the pan so it doesn’t get soggy?
Cal [00:18:50]:
Yeah, no, you can definitely hold it, but if you’re holding it, just don’t stack it. When you go to. Well, when you go to stack it, stack with the parchment paper in between. Just little patty paper is what we call it in the restaurant business. But then it keeps the moisture from one getting to the other.
Christa [00:19:04]:
Can you do it like an arbitrary.
Cal [00:19:06]:
You can do it the day before if you’re that good at it. Yeah, just get a good breading on it where it’s nice and dry with the panko and you’re ready to go. And then, so you saute it on one side. You see it starting to brown around the edge. You flip it over nice and golden brown. And if you’re going to deglaze, now would be the time to do it. And deglaze is the term we have for getting all of the flavor that’s in your pan, the pan that you just flipped your protein over in. In this case, we’re doing a nice beef cutlet, and we’re going to flip that over and we’re going to deglaze it.
Cal [00:19:40]:
And in this case, we’re going to, let’s say we’re going to do a marsala. So we’re going to hit it with a little marsala wine. That meat’s going to cook super fast because it’s nice and thin. Maybe even pound it out so it’s nice and tender. Remember, we only saute very tender items, okay? That’s why we saute fish. That’s why we pound out things before we saute them. And then once the, the meat is cooked, remove it from the pan. Now we’re going to throw in our garlic and shallots.
Cal [00:20:07]:
We’re going to throw in some mushrooms, maybe a little demi glace, and boom, there you go. You got beef marsala or beef cutlet marsala. Or go make it scaloppini. Or make it any one, any number of the sister sauces. Remember last week we talked about mother sauces? Do you remember how many there are?
Christa [00:20:23]:
Oh, I think there’s, what? Five.
Cal [00:20:25]:
And the color?
Christa [00:20:27]:
White, blonde, brown, red, yellow.
Cal [00:20:34]:
There you go. Yellow is hollandaise. You got them. You got them. Yeah. And last week we talked about which mother sauce.
Christa [00:20:40]:
Oh, remind me. My memory doesn’t go back that far.
Cal [00:20:43]:
Last week was we talked about red because it’s the red sauce that you use to make barbecue sauce. You take a red sauce, which is tomato based sauce, just simply tomatoes. And you’re going to add brown sugar, mustard and one other ingredient, vinegar. Vinegar. And now you have barbecue sauce. And we gave out all the. And you can get those barbecue sauce recipes. How many did we do? We did about ten.
Christa [00:21:08]:
There’s about ten recipes.
Cal [00:21:09]:
Yeah. That you can actually go to the store, buy yourself a nice, inexpensive barbecue sauce case. There’s a ton of them out there. And then those recipes, we enhance them with different ingredients. And when we enhance those, for example, I know there was a ginger one where you sauteed a little bit of ginger up first and added it to it. There were a variety of them, but you can get those by going to our website@culinaryyours.net.
Christa [00:21:32]:
Dot.
Cal [00:21:32]:
And that’s free. There’s a free barbecue packet that we did for last week with 4 July where we started our program on.
Christa [00:21:41]:
None of those recipes are yours. One of them is mine.
Cal [00:21:43]:
Oh, really? Which one’s yours?
Christa [00:21:45]:
Mine is the quick one where you take ketchup and salsa to make, to make a quick barbecue sauce.
Cal [00:21:50]:
There you go. That’s what’s in the fridge, folks. That’s what’s in the fridge. Remember, some days it’s just you open up the fridge and the fridge kind of whispers, I’m going to start calling you the refrigerator whisperer. Right? So you open up the fridge and it’s like, okay, what do we got and what can I make? And you know what? By listening to this show, folks, I’ll tell you this here, that you’re going to get so many tips and tricks on how to open up your fridge and be able to, to do something really cool out of that, because that’s why cooking is fun. It really is fun. And it should be fun.
Christa [00:22:21]:
We do have a barbecue sauce question. Do you want to answer it now or after the break?
Cal [00:22:25]:
Sure, go ahead. I’m here.
Christa [00:22:26]:
All right. So you can text us your questions@cookinglikeapropodcast.net. dot and one of them just came through. She says that she’s not using fruit or sugar these days, trying to improve her health. And she’s trying to make a good barbecue sauce or a glaze and she’s trying to add allulose. The sauce is not thickening. So what do you do?
Cal [00:22:46]:
Well, the alulose is in that sweet component that she wants to use. It’s just going to need viscosity. Right? Viscosity. We call it like mouth fill. How it feels in your mouth when you eat it. It’s got that velvety, that creamy mouth feel to it. And you need, you get that by thickening something up, by tightening something up. And in this case, since you can’t use, you know, you’re not going to use flour or cornstarch or any other sugar, I would suggest using xanthan Gumdez.
Cal [00:23:12]:
Xanthan gun is a cold food stabilizer, but you can cook with it. It’s something that works great, something you can get at the store. It’s a little bit pricey, but it goes a long way. So Xanthan, x a t h a n. Again, x a N g h a n. Xanthan gum. And it’s just something that works great. It’s a great item to have in your pantry.
Cal [00:23:35]:
And I highly recommend you grab some break at the bottom. We’ll be right back. It’s up to you. Red, red wine. There we go. Oh, yeah. I love why I’m. Oh, I’m italian.
Cal [00:24:22]:
Okay. So I do have to confess, I think when you’re italian, you start drinking when you’re five. I’m not sure. I’m not saying that’s good. I’m not recommending that. I’m not actually saying that happen. But I am italian, so we know that’s true.
Christa [00:24:35]:
So all of these peaches that we found at the market this week that could go into that red wine and make a sangria.
Cal [00:24:42]:
Yeah, Sangria. There you go. Yeah, red wine.
Christa [00:24:45]:
Do you add anything to sangria, like any sparkling water?
Cal [00:24:50]:
Yeah, usually there’s some citrus and something carbonated. You want something that’s nice. I mean, you can use something like club soda, perhaps a little bit of something to give it a little bit of sparkle. Because, remember, sangria is one of those things where you’re taking wine and you’re adding juices and ingredients to it for basically more of a refreshment. So it’s something you’re going to drink cold. It’s something you’re going to. Most likely, I would drink it over ice. You know, I know we’ve made sangria before, but, yeah, you kind of.
Cal [00:25:17]:
It’s kind of a. And also if you get a, you know, a lousy bottle of red wine, you can add. You can add stuff to it to make it taste better. I mean, yeah. Wine is one of those passions that I have as well, not just because I’m italian, but I, I actually ran a winery for a couple years in Napa Valley, California, and it’s such a great accompaniment with food, you know, and what, especially once you learn how to do it. And we’re going to be choosing different things. If you have any questions, again, on food and wine, anything along those lines or questions about food in general, again, you can call us here local at 530-605-4567 again, 605-4567 or you can text those questions to cookinglikeapropodcast.net dot. Again, cookinglikepropodcast.net dot.
Cal [00:26:10]:
So we’re going to pick wines today. I’m going to talk a little bit about merlot. Now, merlot is one of those wines. It’s a red wine. The grape itself is what we call a varietal. All right, so cabernet is a varietal, merlot is a varietal, pinot is a varietal. What’s your favorite red varietal, honey?
Christa [00:26:32]:
Oh, I’m more of a white wine drinker.
Cal [00:26:35]:
Oh, geez.
Christa [00:26:35]:
But I would probably go with the merlot.
Cal [00:26:37]:
Merlot?
Christa [00:26:37]:
Yes, it’s more of the middle ground, calmer, more accessible wines, I guess you would say, for a beginner.
Cal [00:26:44]:
Well, more fruity. More fruity. So what it is for a merlot you want? Those are the merlots that, that I personally like come from further up north, because you want the grapes to have a slower, longer growing region, because you want the grape itself to become more complex. And it does that as it grows, everything gets more flavor, to the point where it’s like in the case of wine, it keeps getting flavor until it’s a raisin. So, and also members, it gets sweeter. So sugar plus yeast, which is either natural or added, sugar plus yeast equals alcohol. Right. So the more sugar in the grape, the higher the alcohol is going to be.
Cal [00:27:26]:
And most wines run around the twelve to 14%. You can get them a little bit higher, perhaps.
Christa [00:27:31]:
Now, is the late harvest that’s been on the vine longer going to be sweeter than when this picked earlier?
Cal [00:27:36]:
Yes, it is just like eating a grape versus eating a raisin. Raisin is going to be quite a bit more sweeter because it’s concentrated.
Christa [00:27:45]:
So that’s my answer. I like to harvest reds.
Cal [00:27:47]:
Yeah. Well, I remember going out in the vineyard and you pick a grape and you put it in what’s called a refractometer, and you look at this little gizmo. It’s about, I don’t know, maybe round as a quarter and maybe four inches long. It’s cylinder in shape and you smash the juice on there. Then you look at it. You have to do it on a day where the sun’s out of and it will tell you what the brix content is. Brix is the measurement that we use for the amount of sugar. So Merlot is going to have a little higher sugar content, but also what Merlot is going to do is it’s going to give you what we call a fruitier, a wine that’s a little more fruity.
Cal [00:28:30]:
So I think that’s something that you would like. Something that’s a little more fruity.
Christa [00:28:33]:
Yes, definitely. Something a little more sweeter.
Cal [00:28:36]:
So that’s what you’re going to get out of Merlot’s. And I’ll notice it from owning restaurants for the last four decades that Merlot became popular when people quit calling it Merlot. And this was somewhere in the nineties, somewhere in the mid nineties, people started calling it Merlot. And I tell you, I am telling you, that’s when it happened. People quit calling it Merlot. Kind of like when they learned how to pronounce pino rip or they learn bouguelet. Once people learn, because wine can be a little intimidating. It shouldn’t be, but it can be.
Cal [00:29:11]:
And you want to get the right wine. So again, any cooking and food wine related questions you have, shoot those over to us, even if it’s later on in the week or something. We’ll certainly answer those questions again.
Christa [00:29:23]:
Well, and we do have another free download on culinaryyours.net for a beginner’s wine guide of how to pair food and wine.
Cal [00:29:31]:
Yeah, and that has a lot of recommendations on food, on wine and cheese. Which wine and cheese is, again, here? Here is we only, we have a couple minutes left here. But when you’re looking at actually a little more than that, when you’re looking at it matching anything, food and wine is what we’re talking about. Now, you do it in two different methods. One is similar, meaning similar flavors. One is contrast, meaning opposite flavors. So I’m going to take this wine, and let’s say I have a white wine. You mentioned white wine earlier, and it’s a chardonnay.
Cal [00:30:06]:
And the chardonnay is done maybe with a little my lactic fermentation in the process. So it is coming out with this buttery, this buttery flavor in the wine as well. And it’s earthy wine. It’s been in a barrel, so it’s seen some oak. So maybe it has a little nuttiness to it. So I’m going to take that chardonnay, which has butter and nutty flavors, and I’m going to serve that with a halibut. With a cream sauce to match the butter and maybe encrusted in some, we talked about encrusted maybe some walnuts or some macadamia nut. So now when you take a bite of taste, taste the wine, taste a bite of the fish, taste the wine again.
Cal [00:30:44]:
Boom. Boom. I mean, boom. It’s just like the match is there.
Christa [00:30:50]:
The flavors come out even more.
Cal [00:30:51]:
And you can go with an opposite. Like asian food, they use a lot of chilies, a lot of cap quesum in there when they’re making their chilies or they’re making their asian food. And that’s why they’ll use a plum wine. You know, plum wine is very sweet, but you can get an order of plum wine when you’re at an asian restaurant if you’re going to get something that’s hot. So.
Christa [00:31:09]:
So back to the merlot. What would you pair that with?
Cal [00:31:12]:
Well, you know, it would depend. So you’re going to take, I’m going to taste this wine, and there’s nothing wrong with that taste of wine. And then perhaps ahead of time, maybe cork it, you know, earlier that day, maybe when you get off work or something and then go to the grocery store and maybe you taste that wine, it’s like, you know, it’s fruity. I’m getting some berries in there. So one of my favorite dishes, I might even mention this last week, is duck. When we talk about duck, we talk about doing duck. And kind of just a nice sear on one side. Flip it over.
Cal [00:31:43]:
Go ahead and season it. Remove it out of the pan. Let it slow down. Make sure you’ve cooked that skin and that fat. Render that down so it’s nice and crisp. We’re going to slice that, and we’re going to add some blueberries to the saute pan and maybe a little bit of, a little bit of demi gloss, maybe a little bit of brown sauce. But this blueberry flavor that I’m going to lace over top of my cooked duck is going to make that a marriage. And that’s going to be a similar match because you got the fruity flavor of the wine and the fruity flavor of the blueberry actually in the sauce.
Christa [00:32:18]:
Now, can red wine go with white meat?
Cal [00:32:20]:
Yeah, the general. Well, first off, the general rule, always with wine. Always. Number one rule.
Christa [00:32:29]:
Drink what you like.
Cal [00:32:30]:
Yeah. Drink what you like. Okay. Because you have to kind of start there. But if you’re trying to match something and pair something. Yeah. You just look for those components. Taste the wine.
Cal [00:32:42]:
I know there are places I think bevmo does like a wine tasting. If you go to a place where you can taste wine. Moseley’s here locally in Redding, California, also does this as well, periodically, where you can taste the wine and come up with those flavors, those components within the wine that you can find and say, oh, I’m getting this out of there. I’m getting raspberries, or I’m getting strawberries, or perhaps I’m getting an oak flavor out of this, or I’m getting, you know, whatever the flavor happens to be. There’s a myriad of flavors. You can actually get something that’s called a wine tasting wheel, and it has just hundreds of different flavors, flavors that you can pick up, and then you come up with that match, and that’s what. What takes it to the next level, folks. I mean, you know, yes, I’m enjoying this food.
Cal [00:33:30]:
Yes, I’m enjoying the wine, but now. Now I’m enjoying those together.
Christa [00:33:33]:
Well, the interesting thing with those wheels is sometimes you can’t pick up anything out of it. But you see the suggestion, you’re like, oh, I never thought of it. Yeah, I’m picking that up out of that.
Cal [00:33:42]:
Yeah, you might get. Just say you get tree fruit. It’s like, well, what kind of. Was it apple? Is it pear?
Christa [00:33:47]:
Plum?
Cal [00:33:48]:
If it’s a pear, is it a nation pear? Yeah. Is it a plum? What? What? You know, what are the flavors that you’re getting out of that? So that’s kind of how you start. And I know that we’ve done this in the past, and we’ll be offering this, again, food and wine pairing, done through our website. And we do that on a Zoom call. So we’ll let you know the next time we do that. And those are training sessions to help get your palate to be able to taste things. And it’s just like practice for anything else. You’re practicing running the mile.
Cal [00:34:17]:
You start out jogging before you know, you know, you’re under five minute mile, but you have to start and you have to practice. Well, food and wine pairing or food and wine matching is the same thing. It’s something that takes practice.
Christa [00:34:31]:
I don’t think I drank red wine before I met you, to be quite honest.
Cal [00:34:35]:
Well, it was last week. My wife did wear her shirt. IBM. Won’t you tell what IBM stands for?
Christa [00:34:42]:
Italian by marriage.
Cal [00:34:44]:
Italian by marriage. Okay, so that’s. That’s what happens, right? You end up just becoming an Italian by marriage, because that’s women, and we’re, you know, we’re italian. Like, loud italian family.
Christa [00:34:58]:
Yes.
Cal [00:34:58]:
You know, seven conversations going on. Took a while to get used to that. But after 20 years of marriage, I mean, I think you’re getting hands flying everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We speak with our. I couldn’t do this show if you tied my hands behind my back. I’m serious about that. I’m just sitting here wailing and frailing in here.
Cal [00:35:15]:
But anyway, food and wine pairing, similar or contrast merlot, a little bit of a sweeter wine. It’s, again, going to be one of those wines that’s going to be nice and mellow as far as white with white and red with red. That is kind of a standard way to maybe approach it. But again, you drink what you like, and then once you start making those matches and you write those down, like, oh, man, that Chardonnay was so good. And, you know, when you go to a restaurant and you’re thinking about, you know, I’m thinking about having this. Do you have a wine open that I could taste? Ask them, hey, send you an ounce over, say, you know, I’d like to have a chardonnay. Do you have a chardonnay by the glass that I could taste? And if they’re a restaurant that really is hospitable and really, you know, has a real heart towards hospitality, they’d be more than happy to sit there and let you go ahead and have a little sip so you can get that match.
Christa [00:36:07]:
And if they have flights, flights are the great way to learn.
Cal [00:36:10]:
Yep. Flights. Also flights where you can try four or five at a time, so. All right, well, there you go on your food and wine pairing. We’ll be back in just a moment. Again, this is cooking like a pro. Chef Caldy mercurial, and my wife Christa, do her curio. I like a bigger pizza pie that’s more.
Cal [00:36:36]:
When the world seems to shine like you’ve had too much wine at some order, bells will ring, tingling, tingling. And you’ll sing the dead land. Oh, there you go. All right. That Dean Martin, you know, he always brings me back. He brings me back. Yeah. Amore, amore.
Cal [00:37:04]:
And actually, that song. Song actually probably reminds me more of lady and the tramp than almost anything.
Christa [00:37:10]:
Yeah, yeah. So, like that one.
Cal [00:37:12]:
Yeah, yeah.
Christa [00:37:12]:
Sounds like the lady and tramp song.
Cal [00:37:14]:
There you go. All right, so I think that was Bela note. Yeah, yeah. Bellonota.
Christa [00:37:19]:
Very similar.
Cal [00:37:21]:
All right, so, hey, so this last segment, and thank you for hanging out with us. We appreciate that. Those of you that are there are still out there. Again, this is chef Cow, my wife, Christa D. Mercurial. We’re at KCNR 1460 Am and 96.5 Fm. Again, if you have a question, you can give us a call. Maybe go ahead and save that in your phone in case a question pops up in the middle of your mind in the middle of the week and type that into your notes and give us a call here.
Cal [00:37:48]:
We’re here every Monday at 05:00. Yeah, I’m sorry, but I say Monday, Wednesday. That’s why you’re here, Monden. You’re here to keep me online. So 605-4567 again, 605-4567 and I want to talk a little bit about restaurants just because that’s what I do and what I’ve done and there’s just a variety of things. And I know that this is an interesting subject, can be a sore subject as well. But I wanted to just talk a little bit about tips and, and to get kind of an understanding of that because the word tip tips was originally designed to mean tips to ensure proper service. To ensure proper service.
Cal [00:38:36]:
So I think that you kind of think that going in line and then you generally start. The average industry average is 15%. I know as a restaurant owner, I would look at the tips and if, for example, somebody had a $100 check for their bill for the night and they were left $5, I would ask the server what happened? Were they unhappy? Or if I seen the opposite, that maybe a 20 or $25 tip was like, hey, great job. But that tip is what it is. And again, it’s to ensure proper service. Was my water refilled? Was I offered water? Did they ask me what the special is? There’s a lot of pet peeves that I have, and for one, I always like to know, what’s the soup? I don’t know. I may or may not have it, but I do want to know what it is. You have a pet peeve at the restaurant.
Cal [00:39:22]:
When you walk into a restaurant.
Christa [00:39:23]:
Now, one of the things that started to bug me is, well, in our area, you couldn’t pour water without the customer asking for it. Oh, yeah, that was a rough one. I like my water delivered fresh, cold. Offer me some lemon or some cucumber at the top. And they stopped serving water at some point without the customer asking. It became a law. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the server’s problem.
Cal [00:39:45]:
It was the city’s problem because of the drought and stuff. Tell you, the amount of water that goes into a glass in restaurants, you know, hey, that ain’t nothing compared to, you know, someone that forgets their garden hose. And it just keeps running and running and running. And, you know, it’s interesting is I seen this stat the other day that we drink more bottled water in the United States than anywhere else in the world. And we have the best water that comes out of our garden hose than anywhere else in the world.
Christa [00:40:18]:
So it makes you. When you were a kid, we always.
Cal [00:40:21]:
Drink out of a garden hose.
Christa [00:40:23]:
Yeah, I’m still alive.
Cal [00:40:24]:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s, you know. Yeah, exactly. Still made it. So. But anyway. But those are the different things. Now, for example, just to round up the water, you know, I, you know, discussion here.
Cal [00:40:35]:
Yeah. You know, I want ice cold water when I sit down now, maybe, you know, ask if you want a refill or not because you don’t want to waste that water. I don’t. But, you know, I do think that water, first off, when you go walk into a restaurant, customers need something to play with. I’ve always said that. And even in my, when I’m doing consultant work, is where customers need something to play with. You can sit there and watch a cup a guest, and they’ll sit there at a table and just be staring at each other until something comes to the table. I’ll come with it.
Cal [00:41:07]:
Water. I don’t care whether it’s bread, but something needs to get on that table. And that’s when the discussion starts. And that’s why we go out to eat. Right? That’s why we eat at home. We eat. And why not take something that you do more than probably anything in your life other than sleep, you probably eat. So why not take that? And that’s what this show is about.
Cal [00:41:29]:
And take it to the another level. Take it to a higher level of enjoyment, a higher level of just having fun, having fun in the kitchen, having fun cooking together, having fun in just a variety of ways. But why not do that? Why not take advantage of this life we have and enjoy to the fullest? And for example, when we were walking through the farmers market this morning, you know, my head’s just kind of exploding as I’m looking at all these beautiful peaches and pluots.
Christa [00:42:01]:
And I was looking at the bread stand.
Cal [00:42:04]:
You’re looking at the bread stand. Oh, that’s that pie.
Christa [00:42:07]:
I think it’s pie.
Cal [00:42:08]:
Meats.
Christa [00:42:08]:
Bread.
Cal [00:42:08]:
Pie meat bread pie. Me like that bread. I don’t understand the title, but they merged into one. Well, they do a great job. They do a great job over off.
Christa [00:42:17]:
A turkey, but meaning playing with your hands, taking a nice crusty bread and dipping in olive oil. And balsamic.
Cal [00:42:23]:
Oh, yeah. You can’t go wrong with a nice sour. And just again, remember, you judge your bread by the crunch, right? The texture, especially when we’re dealing with sourdough. But there are just a variety of things that happen when you go out to eat that really should be happening at the table. I mean, you should be greeted. Well, it starts at the front door. Many times you walk into a restaurant.
Christa [00:42:47]:
And there’s nobody there.
Cal [00:42:49]:
Maybe there’s a sign that says, please wait to be seated. You know, how long do they really need to wait? How long should they have to wait? But then a smile. A smile. Even when something’s going wrong and you’re busy and they can’t get to you, just a smile or the acknowledgement that you’re sitting there. Oh, I’m sorry, folks. Maybe I’ll be back in just a second. I got a room, you know, so. But just acknowledge.
Cal [00:43:09]:
Acknowledge people’s tone of your voice. Tone of your voice is always important. And I always teach, you know, just don’t slouch when you’re sitting there taking someone’s order. You know, stand with your. With your shoulders back and your chest out, and, you know, be that appropriate distance from the table. I mean, if you’re talking to older folks, then you need to be close enough so they can hear you. You know, be able to pronounce it, enunciate, but also explain it. You know, I mean, that’s a part of it.
Cal [00:43:38]:
I’m going out to eat. I could be eating this meal myself and paying about a third the amount of money at home. So instead of doing that, I’m here supporting this restaurant, whichever restaurant it is. And also, the tipping is the process of that on supporting of the servers. Now, you know, I heard a promise that if we get a new president in there towards the end of this year, in November, that he had stated as a campaign promise that he would have. Not tax tips. Oh, God, I love that.
Christa [00:44:15]:
I mean, really nice.
Cal [00:44:16]:
Gotta vote for the guy for nothing else. I mean, but, you know, again, yeah, no, because it just doesn’t make any sense. I’m giving somebody, you know, $10, you know, for be doing a good job, bring me my lunch and being on top of it. Why can’t they keep the $10? I mean, doesn’t the government have enough? And we are in California, folks, if you’re listening from somewhere outside of California, we’re in California.
Christa [00:44:40]:
So it’s a part of the server is entertainment. I mean, you hear that from Dave Ramsey. Eating out is more entertainment than the food. It’s that experience of being out and being waited on.
Cal [00:44:50]:
Well, you know, it’s dinner and a movie. That’s something that I’ve always seen. Dinner and a movie. What did our parents do back in the day? They went out for dinner and a movie. Now, people don’t go out to movies very often anymore. I don’t even know if they have movie theaters all over the place in every town anymore. But dinner and a movie. But what’s the movie? The movie can be a movie, but the movie can also be great service.
Cal [00:45:14]:
Could be great wine service. It could be, you know, a cheerful server. A cheerful server can completely make a meal or break it. Or break it. Yeah, make it a break. We’re trying to be positive. We’re being. We’re an opt.
Cal [00:45:28]:
Cooking like a pro is an I. Optimistic show. All right, we’re going to stick with optimism. But again, all those things that. That happen at a restaurant, your tips, again, to ensure proper service, and that’s the way to look at it. And more often than not, servers are paid pretty much minimum wage. Unless, well, again, we don’t talk about California and minimum wage for fast food service.
Christa [00:45:54]:
Since we’re talking about tips, how about the automatic button? Because everybody’s using these handheld devices for you to check out your own cash tips and stuff. And they’ve got this button that says you want to do 510 or 15%.
Cal [00:46:05]:
Yeah, you know, that’s, um. That bothers me. I’ll be honest. It bothers me because it’s almost like forcing, like, if I go get a coffee and the coffee costs me, you know, three or four anymore. Yeah. And then they, um, they say, what do you want to tip? A dollar, $125, 50, whatever. I don’t mind tipping, but it. To ensure proper service.
Cal [00:46:27]:
What was the service? The service was just getting my order right and handing me the cup, and now they’re saying, hey, you want to tip a buck? You know? So, yeah, I can. I mean, generally I will, because I see it from a little different perspective from owning restaurants all this time. But that is something that I think, because of COVID it really, really took on, and now it’s pretty much everywhere. But they also have one that says custom tip and just custom tip it, you know, 15%, whatever it is that they deserve. If, you know, my grandpa always left a buck. Grandpa Joe. My grandpa Joe always left a buck. I don’t care if he had a cup of coffee or if he had, you know, a $100 meal.
Cal [00:47:06]:
He left a buck. You know why? Because the grandpa. A buck was a buck. A buck. A dollar meant something. It was a dollar earned. All right? So grandpa would leave a dollar, and then after he would leave, I would throw a couple more bucks on. On the table when he wasn’t.
Cal [00:47:20]:
When he wasn’t looking, because, you know, I own restaurants and. Anyway, but, yeah, so. But, you know, restaurants are out there for us to enjoy ourselves for birthdays and special occasions, anniversaries and stuff. And I have one quick story. I remember Dean Mercurio’s. There was a couple that came in, and they were a little shabbily dressed. Dean Mercurial’s was kind of a, you know, a higher end restaurant. And they came in and I went over and I said, hey, how you doing? To folks who celebrate anything with us tonight? Because most of my restaurants people were celebrating when.
Cal [00:47:51]:
And they said they had had, they came from a local town, Cottonwood, right down the road, and they had had a yard sale to raise money to come to my restaurant for their first wedding anniversary.
Christa [00:48:04]:
Now, let that sink in.
Cal [00:48:05]:
Yeah. You know, and that was 40 years ago, you know, but those are the memories that restaurants are allowed to create. Create. So as a restaurant hospitality industry, why don’t we promote that, right? Why don’t we be hospitable, have that servant’s heart that it takes when you come out and greet somebody to really make it worth their while.
Christa [00:48:27]:
Sounds good.
Christa [00:48:30]:
Thank you so much for spending time with us. Until next time, we hope you’ll be cooking up a storm in the kitchen. So we’ll be with you again next week with food, flavor and fun right here on cooking like a pro podcast.
