Cal and Christa DeMercurio
Welcome to another episode of Cooking Like a Pro with Chef Cal and Christa DeMercurio! Dive in as we explore the distinctions and delights of cooking techniques, spicy food tips, and wine pairing insights.
*** Differences between char grilling and griddling, and their impact on flavor.
*** How to counteract spicy food effectively.
*** Cooking tips for shishito peppers and their health benefits.
*** The importance of learning and practicing cooking skills for meal planning.
*** Insider wine knowledge: tasting, pairing, and aerating tips.
Don’t miss out on our practical cooking advice and engaging food discussions!
Pro Cooking Tips at Home: “If you can get some other ready made items, like a ready made salad, ready made bread, ready made side potatoes that you just got to throw in the microwave, and you just focus on one dish that can help you spread out your time”
Salad Revolution: “I used romaine, but it was a romaine from the farmers market, and it was not bitter at all. It was almost as gentle as a butter lettuce.”
Timestamp Overview
00:00 Edible flowers add unique flavors to salads.
03:37 Finishing editing, discussing lettuce preparation and additions.
08:03 Eating spicy food benefits body and health.
11:11 Memories of dad’s breakfast routine in 1960s.
14:14 Cooking method comparison: char grilling vs. griddling.
16:28 Remove pepper membranes for milder taste.
20:41 Cooking techniques and tools, including pressure cookers.
25:54 Family meals crucial for cultural connection and exploration.
26:52 Embrace joyful moments and create lasting memories.
31:13 Dinner prep revolves around 05:00 deadline.
33:24 Practice convenience for better meal preparation.
38:00 Wine adds flavor and enjoyment to dishes.
40:01 Wines stored in 60-degree cellars in France.
44:57 Pinots age 3-5 years. Quality, season matters.
47:15 Wine oxidation affects flavor and color. Return corked bottles.
Transcript
Christa:
Hey food fans, welcome to cooking like a pro with Chef Cal and me, Mrs chef, his wife Chrsita 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 shishito peppers fresh from the farmer’s market, pan griddling, meal timing and enjoying a glass of pinot noir. Let’s dig in. Today’s episode was broadcast and recorded live on AM FM radio.
Cal:
Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to cooking like a pro with your host Chef Cal and my co host, my beautiful wife, Christa DeMercurio. And we are here for the next hour. Thank you very much for, for tuning in and listening to us talk about food, trying to take you to the level of cooking like a pro. We are here. You’ve reached us at KCNR 1460 AM or 96 Five FM. And you can call in. There’s a couple different ways to reach us. Call in at local number 530-605-4567 that’s 605-4567.
Cal:
Or if you’d like to just text us a question from your mobile, you can go to cooking like a propodcast.net.
Christa:
And now we have a kitchen phone that you can call and leave a voicemail on.
Cal:
Oh, we do?
Christa:
We do.
Cal:
Okay. That’s why I’m not the tech person cookinglikeapropodcast.net.
Christa:
There is a kitchen phone. You can call and leave a voicemail anytime you like 24/7 okay, well, I’m.
Cal:
Not sure how often I’ll be checking that, but I’ll let, I’m going to let the tech expert, my wife Christa do that.
Christa:
I have notifications on my iPhone, but.
Cal:
We are excited again for the support of the people that have, that are listening and be sure to pass it on. Set it in your calendar every Wednesday, 05:00 right here again on KC in our 1460 Am. And we want to start off like we have the last couple of weeks with a fresh update. So I had something going. I was cutting wood and so Christa went to the farmers market. So I’m going to go let her talk about kind of some of the things you’ve seen and some of the things that you picked up again like.
Christa:
Last week still tons of peaches and tree fruit, plums, things like that, giant tomatoes, little itty bitty baby tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini. But I started to go for the fun stuff that I don’t normally see. And I got shishito peppers.
Cal:
Yeah, she brought home the fun stuff. All right. Okay. The shishitos. We actually prepared those last night for dinner.
Christa:
Yeah.
Cal:
And we’ll talk a little bit about that. What else? What else did you bring out? You brought a couple other things home, too.
Christa:
I brought home some donut sized peaches. Those are delicious.
Cal:
Those are delicious.
Christa:
I also got edible pansies.
Cal:
Edible pansies? Yeah. The thing about flowers, when you’re eating edible flowers is they really have an amazing difference in flavor that some of them have a nice spice to them, some of them have a little more heat, some of them are a little more fruity. So it’s one of the things I wanted to talk about, and that’s the different things that we can add to our salads. You know, people think of the salad as being mainly an iceberg lettuce, sometimes romaine. Walking through the process of making sure it’s crisp is something. Is that video up on our site yet?
Christa:
No, I don’t have that.
Cal:
Okay, well, we’re finishing the editing on that. We’ll get that one up. Because how you prepare the lettuce is vital to how crisp it’s going to end up being. But what we’re looking at and talking and discussing now is things we can add to it. Textural components, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, any variety of nuts, but also other things that fall under the herb category. Not in lettuces, too. Butter lettuces, different types of lettuces. But because from the cooked standpoint, I take this overall salad that I’ve made, and I have to match the salad dressing to it.
Cal:
If I took a nice, light, butter less lettuce salad and put blue cheese on it, it would just be flat on the plate.
Christa:
Well, here’s what’s interesting about the salad I made last night. I used romaine, but it was a romaine from the farmers market, and it was not bitter at all. It was almost as gentle as a butter lettuce. And then I put on these sweet and spicy sprouts on it, and a blue cheese and some toasted sesame. No, not sesame seeds, but the sprouts.
Cal:
You put on it. What was the name of the farm you got those from?
Christa:
Those are from Clay Farms.
Cal:
Clay Farms. Okay. And thing about sprouts is they can. Sprouts by themselves are very earthy. Let’s just use that term so they can have more of an earthy flavor. Some might say dirt people that aren’t so nice. But again, they can add so much variety, not just a textural component with the crispness, but they often have they come with just a variety of different spicy flavors to them.
Christa:
Well, it’s sprouted from many different things. I think in this mix, they had some cabbage and different things that I never would have thought would have been a sprout. You know, you think of broccoli sprouts or alfalfa sprouts, you can have sprouts from any types of different vegetables, you.
Cal:
Know, and herbs also. We have a lot of things growing around our house, in our house, around our house. But, you know, things like different herbs, like cilantro, maybe you want to cut up a little bit of that. I’m talking about just like, rough chops. Pieces that are maybe, you know, quarter and a half inch in size. Don’t need to be, you know, precisely cut. Just have those mixed in. Or mint’s a good one.
Cal:
If you want to liven up your salad with a little bit of, you know, just a little bit of vibrance. And the mint is a good one. Basil. Basil gives it a nice, deep flavor. So, you know, adding these different ingredients to your salads can just take the regular, boring salad, and you can do some great things with it. We have not tried the. Well, you did. I did not have a salad last night.
Christa:
No. Well, if anybody’s got their phone open right now, if they want to go to Instagram, I posted that salad.
Cal:
Oh, okay.
Christa:
So they can see all the ingredients.
Cal:
I don’t even know what Instagram is, folks. Remember, I am not the tech person here, but on the shishito peppers, those were, those are blistered. So what you want to do is you want to do those in a very heavy bottom pan. That’s the key. Heavy bottom pan. And because you want to sear them, so you get a heavy bottom pan. Cast iron, of course, is heavy bottom. A lot of your pots and pans, you check those.
Cal:
You check kind of the thickness of the bottom of that pan. And you want it. You want it thick because you want even heat distribution. And then when you just throw the tablespoon or so, just enough oil to just lightly coat the bottom and just throw in your shijih tzus, sprinkle down with a little bit of salt. And just let them blister. Let them blister on one side, shake them around. Saute if you like, flip them around, but let them get a nice little blister to it. And they’re.
Cal:
You’ll love them. They’re a very mild, distinctive flavor, and.
Christa:
They’re very low on the Scoville scale. Even I can handle them.
Cal:
Yeah, yeah. On Scoville, they’re actually a 200. And to give you an idea, a jalapenos of 5000 on Scoville units. So they’re right around just a little bit over a bell pepper, but you can get some, some hot ones. But you know, they’re great in a lot of things. Vitamin c, b, six, e. You know, in latin american countries, they have a much less, many fewer people, let’s put that way, with heart diseases and heart concerns. And a lot of that has to do with a capcasem, which comes from the peppers that they’re eating, because that causes your body to sweat.
Cal:
And if your body sweats, that’s your body air conditioning itself. So it’s a much lower rate of different heart issues. In, again, the latin american countries where they use a lot of cafes, a lot of Chilis, South America, asian, they use a lot of chilies, but it helps also with immune system, nervous system, variety of things. I remember I wanted to learn more about Chili’s, so I taught a class on it. That was decades ago, but it was out here at the local college. And some of you listening may have taken that class I taught for quite a while out there, variety of different classes, but I could barely handle jalapenos when I taught the class. And by the time the class was over, I could eat habaneros and I could drink tabasco sauce.
Christa:
Not me.
Cal:
Yeah. So. Well, it’s a matter of getting used to it, right? It’s a matter, and that’s what it is, you know, your body’s got to get used to being able to do that. I seen people try to eat the ghost peppers and the crazy things that are out there. And it. It’s just painful, you know, I don’t know why you’d want to put your body through that pepper.
Christa:
What are the peppers that everybody puts on sandwiches?
Cal:
A little more of an ortega.
Christa:
Yeah, there’s like a banana pepper and.
Cal:
Yeah, banana peppers. Pepperoncini.
Christa:
Pepperoncini. Pepperoncini is my threshold. I can’t go above pepperoncini, but.
Cal:
Well, because that can generate, that one’s going to be one that’s been marinated and that vinegar is going to pull off a little bit of that heat index as well. But anyway, they’re healthy and they’re good for you, so maybe try some the next time you’re there. What’d you pay for that basket?
Christa:
Four?
Cal:
$5.
Christa:
It was about $5 somewhere in there.
Cal:
It was a great veg for me, Christa and our son, our youngest, Isaac.
Christa:
And it’s a hands on vegetable. You can grab the little tip of it and pull it off. It’s kind of like edamame. It’s the same thing, handheld type appetizer.
Cal:
Yeah. So what you want to do is head down to your farmers market. Don’t forget the farmer’s market. We’re going to go ahead and take a break, and you’ll be back in just a moment with cooking like a pro with Chef Cal and Christa DeMercurio. Grab your smiles and get your hats. Farmer’s market is where it’s at. Have fun and then go back and got a load of veggies in my sack. Grab your smiles and get your hat.
Cal:
Farmer’s market is where it’s at. Have fun and then go back and. Got an older veggie in my sack. I got a load of veggies in my sack. I got a load of veggies in my sack. Please support your local farmer’s market. Well, who would have ever thought that there was a song about spam? Well, I mean, if you’re a Monty python fan, you would, you definitely would found it.
Christa:
I don’t know how you found that one.
Cal:
Well, but anyway, it was, you know, spam is just something I came across the song, so I figured, hey, you know, I got a, got to talk a little bit about this because when me and my brothers were young and dad would always come home when he, especially when we’re graveyard, he’d come home and he meet. It was very, so very important for him that all of his boys had a hot meal for breakfast before we went off to school. And it was just so important for him. And so he always made sure to have something. 90% of the time it was something in a tortilla. Now, this is way before Taco Bell, and we’re talking in the early sixties, early and mid sixties, it was, you know, but it was anything in a tortilla with a piece of cheese. But I tell you, in fried bologna, bologna takes on an entirely new just dimension, folks. When it’s fried, trust me on that.
Cal:
Everything but from the ears to the tail and spam, very similar fried spam on top of that piece of an american cheese with the tortilla. I’m getting a strange look from my wife, but, yeah, I don’t think she had, no, I did not have the tortilla upbringing that I did. Thank you, dad, out there, for introducing spam to us. I know that when in a couple of our trips to different trips to Hawaii, we’ve been blessed to do that. Spam is a big thing over there. They got sushi, spam.
Christa:
Yeah.
Cal:
I can’t remember, what’s the name? I can’t remember what the name of that is. But I’ve always like musumambi, mumbi, something like that. But I’m guessing here, and I didn’t google it, but that had something to do with all the soldiers there during, because of the army base at Pearl harbor. And they brought, and, you know, I went to the store the other day and I didn’t go and buy any, but I did pass the spam aisle and it’s no longer a can of spam. There are like half a dozen varieties. Spam light, you know, low sodium spam, a bunch of different flavors of spam. And someone’s, you know, someone’s taking it, taking it to the next level. But for me, I think you just, you take away from it.
Cal:
If you’re going to go for spam, then it’s, you just go hog wild. Literally hog wild.
Christa:
Well, we do have an old post on the blog which we need to refresh and actually make it again, is we did have some spam in the cabinet and I took it and made spam cakes, like a crab cake, more of an elevated dish with the spam.
Cal:
I’m not sure that that elevates it, but I don’t know. I’m just used to the tortilla. So anyway, we did want to talk a little bit about our, this is going to be our cooking skills bee block here that we have. And I wanted to talk a little bit because we’ve been trying to just touch on a different cooking skill as we go through and griddling. Now, when you griddle, and here’s the big. It’s not a misconception. It’s more of just a misunderstanding. People think like cooking on a barbecue is grilling.
Cal:
That is not grilling. That is what we call char grilling because the meat is exposed to flame from directly underneath. If it’s cooked on a heated flat surface, let’s just say pancakes, something that’s cooked on a heated flat surface, then we’re talking, we use the word griddle. Okay, if it’s so, it’s char grill. If you’re cooking outside, and we did talk about that, that’s a dry cooked cooking method. Griddling is also a dry cooking method. And the thing that’s so great about it is what we want to do with our food, folks, is we want to lock in the flavor. We talked about this last week with the salmon cooked in the paper bag and things like that.
Cal:
But you want to lock in that flavor, and you lock it in by searing it quickly, deep frying, you know, you need to be 375 degrees. But I’ll tell you, it is a very healthy way to cook. The reason it’s not if people, and that’s if people do it wrong, do it wrong in the sense that the oil’s not high enough temperature. So when the food goes in, it starts soaking in grease. And that’s the thing that.
Christa:
So what do you griddle? What type of things do you griddle other than pancakes?
Cal:
Oh, you could grill anything. A lot of people grill steaks. There’s a local place here in town, Jack’s. All their steaks are cooked on a grill griddle. This is a flat surface, and there’s no place for anything to go. So it’s pretty much got to be maintained, the flavors maintained. So that’s a great way to do it. One of the things that we use, also in place of a griddle would be the cast iron, the heavy bottom pan that I mentioned earlier, where you want to just sear your meat to lock that flavor in.
Cal:
And black and catfish. Black and catfish. Now, my wife is not a real big, she’s a big flavor person, but not a big spicy person. The spicy spice has got to be balanced, you know, like she mentioned earlier. I mean, you know, she can handle the pimentos, get up to a bell pepper, doing well. Doing, yeah, but, you know, anything much over a jalapeno, but I can’t even do jalapenos. Yeah, well, the thing on a jalapeno, though, is what we want to taste with the peps, or the pepper, rather, is we want to taste the flavor. And the flavor comes from the fruit itself.
Cal:
The pepper is a fruit. And so you take the seeds out of it, and you take those shoulders, those little membranes, you take those out of the pepper, and now you got the true taste of the pepper. You don’t have all that heat because you removed it. And the heat comes from those shoulders that are in there, that go from the membrane, and then they go into the, into the seeds themselves. Or you can let your peppers go until they get reduced. You know, when, when they get red, they also lessen and heat as well. Most peppers eventually get, will get red, but. But blackened catfish is just a great dish.
Cal:
I’ve always loved that. It’s a. Take some red snapper. Red snappers always. Well, it used to always be very inexpensive. There isn’t anything. It’s real inexpensive now, but, but just butter your filet. And remember, filet, f I l e t.
Cal:
We were talking about beef. Filet mignon, filet fillet, two L’s. We’re talking about a filet of fish in this case, like we did halibut. We talked about the halibut wrapped in pastry last week. So we take the catfish, lightly butter it. And you do this with anything you wanted to blacken. Swordfish, shark, any other type of rockfish would work. And then you lightly butter it and sprinkle it heavily or maybe pat it down into some, some cajun seasoning, which doesn’t have to be overly hot and spicy.
Christa:
Cajun seasoning, is that specific to blackening? Can you blacken something without cajun seasoning?
Cal:
No. Blackening, it comes from the south Louisiana, you know, and that’s where you get your blackened foods down there. Scallops is something that they sear a lot, but with the seasoning we’re calling, it’s blackened. But then you want to counterbalance that because it’s going to be on the spicy side. And we serve that with the raspberry sauce with a little bit of cream in there. And remember, when you get something hot on your tongue and you want to get rid of that, you need dairy. Yeah. Ice cream, milk, something like that.
Cal:
There’s a couple of other things that work real good. Sugar. Sugar will take it away. And then carbs, things like getting a hot salsa. And that’s why you serve with, with chips.
Christa:
Tortilla chips.
Cal:
Tortilla chips. Because it takes that, that heat element out. So, you know, I’ve tasted something really hot. Been in a restaurant, just taken a sugar packet, just touched it to the tip of my tongue and it just removes the heat.
Christa:
But do not use water.
Cal:
Yeah. If you do, you go to, straight to a beverage. You know, you grab a beer or something. All you’re doing then is spreading the heat. Yeah, you’re, well, you’re, yeah, you’re exactly, you’re absorbing that into your, into your mouth, you know.
Christa:
So, so what’s the difference between pan searing and griddling? Is it just a different size of pan or is it the same concept?
Cal:
It’s the same concept. It’s just going to depend. We generally cook on griddles that can be one to two inches thick. I mean, you can, they take quite a while to heat up. So you’ve got this griddle that’s going to hold it. But the thing is, the thicker it is, the more even the heat is going to be all right. We’ve all cooked in pans that were, like, cheap and inexpensive, and they kind of warp when you cook on them. Invest in a good, solid pan.
Cal:
You know, maybe someday we’ll have a line of pans. I don’t know. What do you think?
Christa:
I enjoy our double burner griddles that we have.
Cal:
Double burner griddle, because it goes across.
Christa:
The big long ones. That covers two, you know, so you can do things on the back, you can do things on the front and distributes the heat more.
Cal:
Yeah. You want to make an eggs benedict. You can have your muffins grilling in one spot, your eggs frying in another, although traditionally they would be poached. And then also your ham going. So, you know, anytime you can do one, the fewer the dirty dishes, the better. So what we call this is like one pot cooking. It’s like making a stew. Your potatoes are in there, your vegetables are in there, your beef is in there, your gravy’s in there, and you dish it up in a bowl.
Cal:
And you only got one dirty pot, maybe a cutting board.
Christa:
But if you’ve also got a double burner griddle, then one side can be a little hotter, one side could be a little cooler. If you’re doing a, you know, something requires a higher temp. You’re still only using one dish technically, but they can have two different temperatures.
Cal:
On each end that can work as well. And coming up in the next segment, we still got another minute here, but just as far as talking about these cooking skills and preparing things for dinner, we’re going to be talking in the next segment about something that is probably the number one question that we get as professional cooks and chefs, and that’s how do you get all the food to come up together? And that’s the whole part of this understanding what’s going on, what it is you want to prepare. And we’re going to talk about that particular, like a to z on that one. But, you know, there’s a lot of different things that are out there, different ways. You really have to do what, what you’re most comfortable with. I think probably one of the most popular items, I would say, would be the, well, we got the pressure cooker now, but it’s really a crock pot. Well, a crock pot without the pressure. But, you know, I remember mom.
Cal:
I remember mom. I come home, I was the first one home from school, and there’d be these little post it notes on the refrigerator to Cal and say, you know, cow please turn the, put the casserole into the oven at 350 at 05:00 or turn the crock pot off or heat this up or do this here. And I’ll be honest, that’s kind of where it started for me. I was very young. I was the first one that came home. Of course, we talked about this before. I was also the worst shot. So all that kind of drew me into the kitchen and, and we got what it is.
Cal:
We got. But again, when it comes to those cooking skills, learn the different skills first. Learn how to saute, learn how to griddle, learn how to chargrill, learn how to boil. We talked last week about learning how to poach, learn how to boil, learn how to do these different cooking skills because they’re more important than what it is you’re cooking. Because if you don’t know the skill, literally the chances of ruining what it is that you’re cooking is probably going to be greatly increased. So the idea is to learn that cooking skill, focus on learning that cooking skill. That’s what they did in my french apprenticeship, and it was something that you just had to learn, and it came way before you ever were able to get up on the line and start cooking. So, anyway, just some tips, and we’ll be coming right back with some more tips here at cooking like a pro with chef Cal and my co host, my beautiful wife, Christa Dima.
Cal:
Curiosity. Oh, yes. We have no bananas. We have no bananas today. String beans and onions and big, juicy lemons and all kinds of fruit and sage. We’ve got an old fashion tomorrow, a long island photo. The one and only great Louis Prima. Louis Prima.
Cal:
Oh, you know, that reminds me of the big night. The big, the movie, the big night. That was. I tell you, folks, if you have not seen it, I will give you my recommendation. Five stars for the big night. One of the few food cooking kind of guru movies that I really think does a great job showing the challenges and struggles of operating a restaurant with your family. With the family. You got the brother in the front and you got the brother in the back and the tension that comes along with it, trying to keep a restaurant alive.
Cal:
Yeah. And they end up doing this big event because Louis Prima is going to come and, and eat at this, at this meal. And they wait all day, and I’m a spoiler alert. But anyway, it’s a really, really fun, good movie. They, they, they make that. That’s the first time I seen Timpano. It’s a baked pasta dish, and it was kind of the center of everything they made. But they must have made 20 courses.
Cal:
I mean, it just went on.
Christa:
Yes, it did. It’s a good movie, though.
Cal:
Yeah, but that big night. Big Night. Big pasta, eggs, lamy meatballs, red sauce, all kinds of good stuff. But. But anyway, so we want to talk a little bit about setting up your meal, making meal planning easy. It is something that we have to do, whether you’re, you know, just buying something that’s RTU, you know, ready to eat or something that just needs to be heated up or you’re having something dropped off or you’re. Or your Uber eats, and it’s coming already prepared, ready to eat. But again, you know, there’s a high cost in that.
Cal:
But not just the cost aside, I really, truly believe that the deterioration of much of this country came down to the simple fact that families quit eating together. When we were being raised, if you weren’t at the table, you didn’t eat it. If you weren’t there on time and you ate everything that was on your plate, you know, and there are, you know, kids, kids starving in the Sudan, but, you know, you literally had to. And you had to try everything. And that’s why we had, me and my brothers really had a great opportunity to try some. Some really cool things that, you know, most people probably went a little different in our house.
Christa:
I didn’t have to try everything or eat everything, especially in large portions, but we cooked together. My grandma made the salad. I made whatever the bread component was that night. My mom usually made the main and my dad would be out on the grill. Literally, the entire family cooked together every single meal.
Cal:
And that’s the excitement. I mean, that’s. That’s where the love is being shared. And if you’re going to do something, I tell you folks out there, if you’re going to do something that you’re going to be doing anyway, why not do it and get the most out of it? You know, we can’t. We only go around once, so why not enjoy those times? And I can tell you that that’s when you’re going to create the memories and when folks go home to be with Jesus, and that’s kind of what we got is the memories, and that’s what we focus on. So having all that fun at the table is great. And some of the tips is, first off, knowing what you want to make, kind of decide that, making sure you have those products on hand. So if you need to get something, get it on the way home from the store.
Cal:
But always, always try to be a day ahead, knowing what you want to make and knowing what you have to buy. And we have tools to be able to help you to get that free tools online at our culinary yours, our website. You can get some of those things. We have more that we’re adding all the time. One thing I like, make sure the kitchen is clean. My wife is so good at that. Much better than that. I’m really good at making sure the kitchen is dirty.
Christa:
Yes, you are. And so is our son.
Cal:
Yeah, well, that’s why we’re such a perfect match. Honeydeheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh in so many ways. And then after that, you know, make sure you got your recipes. Make sure that, you know, I mean, we didn’t have the Internet when I started this, and I have, well, I used to have around 900 cookbooks. I think I’m down to probably 800. I think krista’s sneaking a few, you know, into the trash bin here and there. But I do have a lot of cooking.
Christa:
I won’t let you throw them out. I’m the one that keeps them.
Cal:
Well, we got a bunch. We got a bunch. Yeah. So. But having those recipes and now with the Internet, you can get something, you know, right away, check a couple of the different things. I don’t go online to get recipes because I’ve learned the cooking skills and I know what it is that I want to do. But that’s how you get better, and that’s how you practice and that’s how you. Why you utilize your notebook.
Cal:
Have your culinary notebook. You’re cooking like a pro notebook. Get a cookbook and just make these notes in again, like we talked about last week. What works? Okay. Do blueberries work with duck? Does brie work with roasted garlic? Does balsamic work with strawberries? Some of these real traditional things that you may not know well.
Christa:
When you’re beginning out, start with the stuff that you do know, the stuff that you’re comfortable making. Always have your go to and add something to it.
Cal:
That doesn’t mean you can’t take your regular lasagna and then layer fresh basil in it. Or maybe go with, instead of using cottage cheese and ricotta cheese and cottage cheese, maybe you want to go with a little bit of asiago in there to give it that cheese a little more bite. And if you do that, though, you’re going to want to add a little mozzarella because you still want to have enough stretch. So, you know, just think about. Thanks. Is it a cheese that melts? But look at what you’re going to make. And say, okay, how can I take this to a different level and to be able to enjoy it? Remember, and I’ve said this, and I’ll say it continuously, I’ve said it hundreds of times in the past. In America, when we eat to live, right, we eat so we can have the fuel to keep going.
Cal:
In France, they live so they can eat. They do their daily things that they do. So at night, when they get together to eat, it’s a family affair. It’s a celebration. Even if it’s not a celebration, it’s a Tuesday night. And you see this in a lot of the different. A lot of different countries. In fact, I think in America is about to probably the only place where.
Cal:
Where you don’t see it. Such a family gathering. And again, that’s what we need to get back to. I know you went to Argentina. Same thing.
Christa:
Oh, we constantly.
Cal:
Yeah, food was food.
Christa:
It was food centric down there. Absolutely.
Cal:
So food’s in the middle. Not just holidays and celebrations, but also time that you can spend together. And then even lastly, kind of count down to what it is that you need. Again, most people have. The biggest challenge that we get is how to get all the food. Or the biggest question we get that is a challenge is how do we get all the food done at the same time? And you do that by having a countdown time, like in the restaurant. We’ll say, okay, it’s whatever the time is. 05:00.
Cal:
Dinner is 05:00. 05:00 to the window. So everything gets counted down to that time. Maybe the asparagus is blanched off, so it just needs to go into a pan for 30 seconds to bring it up to heat and hit it with a little bit of seasoning. Maybe the meat is cooked and it’s resting so it’ll be ready to slice. And maybe your starch or your potatoes, you know, are hot and bubbly and ready to come out of the oven. And maybe they got done a little bit earlier. So turn the oven off and let them sit in there and stay hot.
Christa:
Yeah, whatever. Can you cook ahead of time and what can hold?
Cal:
I. Yeah, prepping ahead of time. Definitely want to start there even the day before. I mean, it’s so simple to prep a really nice vegetable. For example, you know, say you got a nice vegetable. Like. Like, I happen to love Brussels sprouts. They are a little more time consuming to clean, and it’s a special way to do it.
Cal:
I did a video on that, so we’ll get that one online as well. But you really need to know how to do it, or you’re going to end up with, you know, a little baby cabbage that’s rock hard in the middle and the leaves are overcooked and falling off.
Christa:
They’re so bitter.
Cal:
Well, you know, but you blanch them, when you blanch them, it takes the sulfur out.
Christa:
There you go.
Cal:
So you really miss a lot of that. Broccoli and cauliflower, a lot of sulfuric vegetables. You can easily do that. Drop them boiling water, let them get 80%, 80, 90% cooked, pull them out, put them in ice water, cool them down, cut them up, then just bring them up to temperature in a pan. Maybe you’re going to throw some beets in there. Something that goes great with beets. A little salt and pepper and cream makes it look fluorescent also. But creamed beets are great now that.
Christa:
I have not tried. But I think one of the things we need to emphasize, too, is not everything has to be cooked from scratch.
Cal:
No.
Christa:
If it’s not a restaurant, you’re not a chef. You can rely upon Trader Joe’s or another pre made product to assist you if you don’t have an assistant. Like I said, my family, we all cooked. We all took on a different dish and cooked together. If it’s just you focus on one dish. If you can get some other ready made items, like a ready made salad, ready made bread, ready made side potatoes that you just got to throw in the microwave, and you just focus on one dish that can help you spread out your time and.
Cal:
Exactly. And as you’re practicing this, you’re getting better at it, and then you’ll be able to, because what we call those are convenience products. Maybe it’s convenient sauce or it’s convenient vegetables already cut or protein that’s already prepped and seasoned, but they’re a convenience product. And the convenience is it takes some of that work out for you that you don’t have to worry about. But all that work you can do yourself. Just take note of the things that you enjoy and the things that go well together. And we talked about the plate balance last week about, you know, about your 40% being your main protein and then your starch or your grain and your vegetables being about 30% each. So that gives you your 100% on your plate.
Cal:
So you want a complete meal. So many times, we just kind of pick up and just eat one thing. Why not enjoy it? Why not take your food, something you have to do, and take it to the next level, and you don’t have.
Christa:
To make huge portions we’re both at that age now where we’re eating less and less and less. We’re not eating big things like, you know, when we were running around and doing sports and very active.
Cal:
Yeah. So anyway, there’s a lot of different things that you can look at when it comes to making it easier. We’ll just say that this is the dinner doctor dinner doctor segment. And again, if you have questions, you want to type those in. How do I get this? How do I do that? How do I reheat my pasta? Different things like that. Again, you can go to cookinglikeapropodcast.net again, cooking like a propodcast.net and type those in. And what was the text again?
Christa:
It’s right there. There’s a button on the page. You can either text from your phone if you’re using your phone to access it, or you can also hit the record button and send us a voicemail.
Cal:
Fantastic. Please don’t show me how to do that. Hey, chef Cal, we did get one message from, she called in. She didn’t want to take up any airtime, but she did want to say she’s listening from Melbourne, Florida, and she loves the show. Well, thank you. She didn’t want to interrupt you guys. Did I give a first name? Jenny. From Jenny.
Christa:
Jenny.
Cal:
Shout out to Jenny on the left coast all the way over there.
Christa:
So, Jenny, if you do have a question, go ahead to that cookinglikepropodcast.net and send us your request and we’ll answer on the next show.
Cal:
Thanks, Jenny. We appreciate you calling in as anyone else. So we’re going to go to our next segment here back on our d block. But right now, you’ve been listening to cooking like a yemenite pro with chef Cow and the co host, my beautiful wife, Christa Dima Curio. When the moon hits your eye like a bigger pizza pie that’s amor. When the world seems to shine like you’ve had too much wine that’s more than bells will ring ting a lingering tingling and you sing with the bell hearts who play tippy tippy tay, tippy tippy tay like a guitar.
Christa:
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:
Makes me forget. All right, I’ve been enjoying, been enjoying doing a segment or block on wine. It’s such a passion because it’s my restaurants in the past and welcome back. Welcome back. I’m sorry to cooking like a pro with chef cow and misses chef Christa, but it’s such a, with my restaurants being higher end in the past. But we also had old school, which was just, you know, those type of, you know, chicken dumpling, roasted gaming type visuals. Yeah. Meatloaf and things.
Cal:
But anyway, wine has always been just a great additive for the dish, for the flavor, for the enjoyment of it. They do have non alcoholic wines as well. But one of the things about wine I wanted to talk a little bit about one of the red wines that I enjoy, and that’s a pinot noir. And Pinot noir was very similar to Merlot. Yeah, Pinot got famous when the, when they started being able to pronounce pinot again, just like when Merlot quit being called merlot, you know, and this was like in the late nineties, I kind of noticed that. But wine can be, you know, it can be as sophisticated or as simple as you want. And some people just have a, you know, a tendency to feel a little more pressured because maybe they don’t have that experience. Tasting it is how you do that.
Cal:
And I know that that’s something that’s going to be very big upcoming on our website to be able to kind of explain to people how to taste and how to match and do food and wine pairing. Because if you’re going to have a glass of wine with dinner, you certainly want it. First off, drink what you like, which is always first and foremost. But if you want something that’s going to enhance that meal. A pinot noir is a red wine generally. It’s a soft, round kind of, it’s been, you know, noted as being silky. You want to slightly chill it. The temperature is so important with wine.
Cal:
There’s very little wine, if any, that you want to drink out of the refrigerator. Right. Your refrigerator’s, you know, 40, 41 degrees. There’s not too many things. Maybe white zinfandel or some kind of sangria. You meant sangria.
Christa:
So your whites are usually colder. Youre reds are a little bit warmer than that, but not warm.
Cal:
They’re just, oh, no, definitely not warm. They’re what we call cellar temperature, which.
Christa:
Is about 58, 62 degrees.
Cal:
Yeah, right in the 60 degree range is what the cellars were in France and that’s where the wines were stored. So that’s where they were stored, which meant that’s where they were aged. And then they would, you order a bottle, they would head down to the dungeon, and that’s where they’d get it. Pinot can, can go anywhere from kind of a light dry to even a more of a medium bodied wine. But when I look at them, there are certain regions that I always go for. If I want a cabernet sauvignon, I’m going to be hard pressed to not, you know, dive down into Napa. If I, if I want, you know, a Zinfandel or maybe a big, bold wine with lots of flavor and spice, then I might do like a zin somewhere out, maybe from paso robles. They make just amazing wines down in that area.
Cal:
And then when I go up north, Oregon is where I get my pinots, and Washington is where we get our merlots. Those are just growing regions where those grapes perform generally very, very well.
Christa:
And I would have to say about a pinot that it is very similar to a merlot, that it’s good for entry level. For me, starting out with the cav, or is then way too strong, way too much in tan, it’s way too hard for me to learn to embrace. But you started me out on Pinot’s and Merlot’s, and that kind of got me going into the red route because I always did whites before that.
Cal:
And then you start at the bottom and you work your way up. And I can’t tell you how many people enjoyed our winemaker dinners over the years. You know, we started those back in 89 at DeMercurios for 17 years and once a month, and then just continue those on, in other restaurants that we had. But people would just, because it’s fun, you learn about something and it works, and you know that, okay, this dish is going to go great with that. And it helps you in your home to know which wine works most of the time. You can go to a wine market, they’ll have some kind of a wine monger there, and they’ll. And you can ask them that or read the. Read the back of the bottle.
Cal:
Some of the things that traditionally go great with pinot, with salmon, salmon has, I don’t like to use the word stronger because it’s not a fishy fish, but it can be stronger in flavor. You want salmon to be as fresh as possible, but also a brie cheese, mushrooms, anything earthy. Grilled bell peppers work good barbecued pork. So a lot of items that fall into that category just a pinot noir works.
Christa:
Does it usually have kind of a dark cherry kind of flavor to it?
Cal:
Can have a lot of fruit. It can have a lot of tree fruit flavors to it, and also drawing some air over it. You know, how you actually taste the wine, you know, putting a little bit in your mouth and drawing air over that. So the wine touches all the different sides and parts of your tongue, so you pick up all of those different flavors.
Christa:
How important is it to opening your wine early, to letting it open up and air out?
Cal:
The better the wine, the longer you want to give it. I mean, I would if I, you know, I was given a wine back in the early. It was 96. It was when we went up at the Olympics, and we came back from Europe, and someone gave me a 78 cake bread, John Frank, a dear friend of mine, and I sat there, and you couldn’t have convinced me. And I had a restaurant for, you know, I’d been restaurants for 15 years by then, and I would never have guessed that a wine be worth, you know, two, three, $400. And I gave me this wine, and it was, again, 78 Napa Valley cake bread. And it was. I sat on my porch and drank it with a Hershey bar in one hand and that wine in the other.
Cal:
Because the wine was perfect. The tannin level had reached where it is. The tannins helped the longevity of the wine, but chocolate helps take out some of the bitterness from the. From the wine. If there is any tannin left, then chocolate can do that. It’s just a great match. A great match. But you can swirl it, see if there’s.
Cal:
What the legs are. It’s got some viscosity. If you get an inexpensive wine, which we do, and sometimes, and you get a nice deal on wine, and you think, hey, this sounds interesting. It’s four years old. It’s a cabernet. It’s grown here. Let’s give it a shot. And maybe it’s not quite up to par, then you really want to air it out and give it a little shot.
Cal:
What’s the little thing that we.
Christa:
Oh, those little aerators that you pour it through?
Cal:
Venturi. Yeah. You can aerate it that way. That air will help take out a lot of those off flavors. So it can kind of. It can take a wine that, you know, this one isn’t really so good and make it palatable, or it can take a wine that’s just okay and make it even better.
Christa:
So what. How old should a pinot be? What should be the year?
Cal:
You know, it depends on how they’re made, depends on the winemaker. But if I was to give an average, I would say my pinots, I would. I would want them to have maybe three to five years on them. They could certainly be built to last longer. You know, I’ve drank wines that were, you know, well over 20 years old before, but it just depends on how they were made, the quality that they’re made, and even more than that, on the season, the grapes, and how the grapes were grown and produced. But again, a lot of knowledge online now you can go and get like a wine spectator, a lot of different places that have, where you can plug in your wine and they’ll give you wine, the wine notes, you know, and wine notes should also include the type of foods that would go with that. And I’m sure you could even put in a. We’re going to do grilled barbecued rabbit.
Cal:
And I’m looking for wine choices and wine selections. And I’m sure that Google, whoever’s behind the Internet thing, will give you as many options as you want.
Christa:
Well, I like to get whatever is on sale at Trader Joe’s personally.
Cal:
Well, on sale is always a good thing. And you can hit them out of the park once tomorrow. You can get one that they bring in that just happens to be slip under the radar a little bit and they get a good deal and they wipe out the that year. And there you go. You stock up some wines, but you always want to keep them in a fairly cool place. The biggest challenge with wine is in storing it or affecting its flavor is the storage. And you want to store it at the right temperature, but also a temperature doesn’t fluctuate.
Christa:
So let’s say you’ve got one of a certain year, a certain varietal, a certain brand, and then you thought, I’m gonna go back next week and get that exact same bottle. Is there a chance that it’s not gonna taste the same?
Cal:
No, no, no. Well, when they make wine and they bottle it. I ran a winery again, you know, that for a couple years in Napa, and the juice that goes into bottles goes in the entire run. All right, so that would be. Well, okay. I guess the only possibility if you’re. Would be if it was corked, you know, and cork, cork, this is where it doesn’t get a good seal because of the quality of the cork, maybe the way it was put in. But if air can get to it, air adds oxidation.
Cal:
And with oxidation, you start getting off flavors, and then you’ll start getting the coloring. Red wines will start to get a bit of a brown to them. White wines will start getting kind of a little more of a dull, almost kind of a grayer color, but not really noticeable. But yeah. Other than that, nope, should be the same. And if you get a wine that’s corked, bring it back. Bring it back wherever you got it and tell them, I would think they would stand behind it. I mean, now if three quarters of the bottle is gone, they might not go for it.
Cal:
But other than that, I think that, you know, when you get a wine and it’s. And it’s not right, then, you know, and there you go. And if you don’t drink the wine, be sure to make sure the oxidation doesn’t happen. There’s a variety of tools you can get to suck the last of that air out or rest maybe some, by putting some gas into the bottle so it rests on top so air doesn’t get to it. Because oxidation is really the biggest challenge.
Christa:
And if it’s a bad bottle of wine, you don’t want to sit and drink it. Should you cook with it?
Cal:
Can you at least somehow you can always cook with it. Always cook with it. I’ve taken wines and even frozen them. If I know I’m going to make a big pot of stew, you know, and I’m going to want that wine in there and it’s going to have the same flavor, but also it’s going to, you know, the alcohol will cook out, but I want, like my beef bourguignon, I do want a red wine flavor.
Christa:
You know, just maybe pour some in like an ice cube tray so you.
Cal:
Can just grab a. Yeah, that’s always a trick that they’ve done in the past. Throw them in an ice cube tray and anytime you want a little red wine, just go and toss it in there and you’re all set to go.
Christa:
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.
