Cal and Christa DeMercurio
Ready to get cooking, sipping, and savoring? Welcome to another episode of Cooking Like a Pro with Chef Cal and Christa DeMercurio. Tune in for expert cooking tips, delicious recipes, and insightful culinary discussions about heirloom tomatoes and a soup made out of leftover holiday pies.
On This Episode
Did you know that pumpkin pie soup exists? It’s a unique twist that Chef Cal recommends for those leftover pumpkins. Who knew those autumn vibes could be captured in a savory soup!
- Chicken in Clam Juice: Discover how marinating chicken in clam juice can transform it into a mock abalone dish – it’s all about that savory twist!
- Lobster & Shrimp Tips: Learn key differences among shrimp sizes, and why cold water lobsters from places like Maine and Alaska make all the difference in your seafood dishes.
- Perfect Pork Chops on the Grill: Say goodbye to dry pork chops! Cal breaks down the ideal grilling process and the importance of a direct response thermometer.
- Wine Wisdom: Step up your wine game with tips on pairing Sauvignon Blanc with the right dishes, and why it’s perfectly okay to chill your glass on a hot day.
TimeStamp Overview
00:00 Discussion about food, freshness, and variance.
03:40 Nostalgic description of a tomato sandwich.
08:00 Cook pork evenly, aim for consistent turns.
12:00 Historical soup origins.
13:19 Create Asian-inspired egg drop soup.
18:47 Leftover ingredients? Whip up a delicious soup.
20:52 Flavors merge, avoid overcooking certain vegetables.
24:04 Internet makes finding fish songs easier now.
26:28 Shellfish categorized into crustaceans and mollusks.
29:56 Seafood risotto is best shared in Italy.
33:53 Layer proteins, vegetables, and rice for paella.
37:38 Celebrating birthday and discussing Sauvignon Blanc.
41:06 Pair salad with blue cheese, pecans, wine.
43:26 Deglaze with, drink same wine for pairing.
46:25 Ice in wine, personal preference, respect it.
Transcript
Christa:
Hey, food fans, welcome to cooking like a pro with chef Cal and me misses 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 the simplicity of heirloom tomatoes with mayonnaise, specialty soups, cooking shellfish and enjoying a glass of sauvignon blanc. Let’s dig in. Today’s episode was broadcast and recorded live on AM FM radio.
Cal:
Welcome to cooking like a pro. This is chef Cal with my, my co pilot here, my beautiful wife, Christa. Yes. And you have. You’ve reached us here at KCNR 1460 am. We appreciate you tuning in and listening to us chat about food and things related to food. So again, always excited to be here Wednesday for your drive time, something you can listen to on your way home.
Christa:
And again, I’m not looking forward to this because I’m hungry right now.
Cal:
Are you hungry?
Christa:
I’m even more hungry.
Cal:
Well, we’re gonna have to talk about food. I’m not really sure what I could do to help you with that. Well, you’ll be starving when we get out anyway. We’ve been talking a lot about the fresh foods because of summer and the farmers market. And things happened to swing by a fruit stand on my way back. Julia, I was coming back from Chico last week and picked up a variety of things and just things that are in season. And one of the things I noticed is that there is a variance in the same product dependent on a variety of things. Of course, when it’s picked, how ripe it is or mature, but also where it’s grown.
Cal:
And I noticed, like that watermelon that we tried today that I picked up more lighter pink color inside that was a sweet crimson, but great flavor in the middle. But you notice that a watermelon seems to be one of those things that, you know, it’s always going to be good in the middle and then kind of decreases in sweetness as it, as it goes on.
Christa:
It had more of a rind flavor. The closer you got to the rind.
Cal:
The closer you got to the rind. Exactly. So it wasn’t quite as sweet, but it was delicious. It was delicious.
Christa:
I’m finding I’m getting spoiled because this had seeds in it. And I’m getting to the point that I don’t want to deal with the seeds anymore.
Cal:
You know, that’s just what it. Spitting watermelon seeds is really something that, you know, as a kid, you grew.
Christa:
Up with yeah, we did.
Cal:
I do not. And I’m. Okay, I’m thinking about this now, since you brought it up. I do not remember a time when I was a kid that they had watermelons that did not have.
Christa:
No, it’s. It’s more of a. Something that they’ve created.
Cal:
I should have googled that. Like, when did seedless watermelon, you know, come out? Well, hey, if you want to google it and give us a call, you can do that. Again, the number down here. 530-605-4567 again, 530-605-4567 and you can also send a. A question to our podcast, cookinglike a pro podcast.net. again, cooking like a pro podcast.net dot. But yes, I thought the watermelon was interesting. Now, I’m going to throw something out at you, because, again, me and my wife have an age difference.
Cal:
It’s not gigantic, but it’s. But I did ask her earlier, I said, have you ever had a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich? Because I remember those white bread, wonder bread. I think that was the only bread they had, to be honest. I don’t even know if they had wheat bread back then. I’m talking about the sixties. Okay. But I remember just the wonder bread, white bread with the mayonnaise and just a big thick slice of fresh tomato on it. And that’s.
Cal:
It was like the beginning of a BLT.
Christa:
Did you put. You see? You put mayonnaise on it?
Cal:
Tomato and mayonnaise sandwich.
Christa:
So you’re missing the L and the T.
Cal:
We’re missing the L and the T , but we didn’t have it. You know, I mean, this was just something that we ate, and I don’t. You know, I’ve done some work over the last number of years in independent living facilities when we have older clientele, and I have been had people request that just mayonnaise and tomato, or sometimes just mayonnaise and cheese. And I guess it was out of necessity or whatever was in the cupboard.
Christa:
But, you know, well, if we would just take a big old slab of tomato and just put a real light seasoned salt on it, you know, salt and pepper and garlic, and, I mean, just nothing else but the tomato and a little bit of a salt mixture.
Cal:
But bacon makes things better. Bacon actually makes life better.
Christa:
Yes, it does.
Cal:
You know, I mean, it just does. It can be used in so many different ways, and, you know, but when you’re talking about getting something that’s sweet like that tomato, and then you get something salty, like the bacon, like the bacon yeah. And then something crisp, like the lettuce. It’s, you know, throw a piece of cheese on there and you kind of got all the food groups. Well, the only thing you’re missing is.
Christa:
Dairy, and the acid of the tomato balances the creaminess, the fattiness of the bacon. So it’s. It’s just a perfect pairing.
Cal:
Yeah. Well, I want to throw a fried egg on top of that, too.
Christa:
Oh.
Cal:
Make an ultimate sandwich, especially the eggs that we get from our chickens. You know, I. I’m just so proud of them. This is beautiful eggs, folks, that the yolk is twice the size of the white, and it’s just this amazing, amazing flavor that you get.
Christa:
So happy chickens come from California.
Cal:
Highly recommend. Happy chickens. Happy chickens. Well, they got, you know, condos now that they’ve changed the law on that. But we also had a cantaloupe, and I was surprised about that because the cantaloupe was an ambrosia. And last week we had a cantaloupe, which was delicious. I think you said it tastes like cotton candy or something. Yeah.
Cal:
Other than that, I mean, this one just wasn’t. It wasn’t there. You know, it wasn’t as a sweet, which kind of. Kind of surprised me on that. So as we’re talking about produce here, we have a. We have a phone call. We have a John online, too. John, welcome to the show.
Cal:
Appreciate you calling in.
Call-In:
Hey, chef Callan. Christa, I hate to interrupt your waxing eloquently about watermelon, but I have a question. I have a question for you.
Cal:
Sure.
Call-In:
Okay. I want to grill some boneless pork chops, and I want the nice grill marks on both sides, but I don’t want it to turn into a hockey puck. Is there any secret reason that we can’t have moist centers of pork chops that are grilled?
Cal:
Yes, you can. There is a reason that you can’t, and that’s overcooking. But I’ll tell you, John, this is something that I’ve always done when it comes to the char grilled items. So you’re talking about char grill like a barbecue? Correct.
Cal:
Outside?
Call-In:
Yeah, gas barbecue outside. I just want those nice grill marks. Crunchy on the outside but moist in the center. When I do it, it ends up being a hockey puck.
Cal:
Well, the key is always four turns, right? It’s always four turns. You put it on there. First off, it’s got your season or your rub or your marinade. If you want good grill marks, you want to scrape that grill off with any of the food particles that were on there from the last time you cooked. And then you want to go ahead and wipe that, wipe it after that with paper towel or, you know, a towel, a kitchen towel, if your wife’s not looking. And, and then you get the soot off of it and then you spray it with pan coating and it’s just fire hot. Goes straight on there and you want to take it. And when you turn it, I like to look at my two back corners of my griddle on the grill.
Cal:
You have a left side and a right side. And when I put that meat on there, in this case pork, I aim it towards one side and then I flip it, aiming towards the same side. And then this third flip and the fourth flips are all to the back right corner. So let’s say this, this, you know, it could be a half inch thick, it could be two inches thick. So the timing is going to be a little bit different, but you want each turn to be the same. So if you had a standard pork chop, let’s say an inch and a, inch and a quarter thicken, I would go, you know, three to four inches right back corner, three to four inches left back corner on the opposite side. And then the last two, three to four minutes, excuse me, head and right, and then the fourth flip would be three or four minutes. And then just take a temperature gauge and you want your pork.
Cal:
A lot of people overcook pork, too, because, you know, they figure, oh, it’s got to be well done. It’s got to be 160. Well, yes, 160 is, is what you want, but you want. But it’s going to continue to cook, right, John? When you take it off of there. So what you want to do is make sure that you pull it when the internal temperature is somewhere around 154, 155 because it’s going to keep climbing. If you pull it at 160 and it keeps climbing until it’s 165, that’s when you’re going to get your dry hockey pipe now, David.
Call-In:
Ok. That’s how I’ve been getting it. So no trichinosis involved if you take it off early.
Cal:
Yeah, exactly. No, if you have a direct response thermometer and you point that into the very center of the meat and get that temperature somewhere in the low 150s, knowing that, because a barbecue is very, you know, it’s a type of heat that’s going to be, you know, pretty abrupt. Right. So it is going to be high temperature. You take it off there, it’s going to continue to cook something. We use the terminal carryover cooking. And again, you want it to be 160 when you eat it, not 160 when you pull it. And 165.
Cal:
- Because, you know, a juice is fat, fat is flavor. So if you’re going to eat protein. Yep. Keep it in there. All right.
Call-In:
Sounds good. Okay. I’ll get the applesauce and onions ready and try that. Thanks a lot.
Cal:
Sounds great, John, appreciate you calling. All right. You know, that’s one of the things that people generally would do is overcook in their food. And I appreciate John calling in so we can clarify that. But a direct response thermometer. And you want the tip of that into the center of the protein. And then you just read it off from there. I mean, you want medium rare, you want rare, 125, you want medium rare, 132, you want, you know, medium, medium.
Cal:
Get up to, you know, 138 to 140. And then. And then medium well, somewhere around the 150 mark. And then, of course, well done at 160. So, you know, get it yourself.
Christa:
I think we make a cheat sheet on that.
Cal:
Well, we could do that, but, you know, and I always use the baseball touch, you know. Now, obviously, we can’t do that here because you can’t see, but you just kind of hold a baseball in your hand and clutch it, and you can use that to kind of, kind of tell when it’s ready. So, anyway, John, we appreciate the call. We’re going to be coming back in a minute. We’re here at cooking like a pro. Back in just a moment.
Cal:
Let’s make some fruit salad today. It’s fun to do. It’s a healthy way. Take all the fruit that you want to eat. It’s going to be a fruit salad tree. The first step.
Cal:
Peel your bananas in the flophouse. I’m spending my days on the street. I’m looking for work, and I find none. I wish I had something to eat. Soup, soup, they give me a bowl of soup. Soup, soup, they give me a bowl of soup. You know, I’m kind of. Welcome back.
Cal:
Welcome back to cooking like a pro. This is chef Cowell with my wife, Christa. Dean, mercurial. And I know I came across that song, and it just kind of reminded me of maybe the recession. Not that I was there, but, you know, when they had the soup lines and they talk about those things historically in our past, but we did want to talk about some soup because soup isn’t overly pop. The big, thick chili type things really aren’t the kind of thing when it’s triple digits that you really want to, want to dig into. But there are just such a variety. We had talked about chilled soups, you know, a number of weeks ago, but soups are really fairly simple.
Cal:
There’s really only five categories. And again, I went through a french apprenticeship. So the five categories of soup were, they taught us, were thick soups. Like a bisque. If you see the word bisque, bisque is normally seafood. So you see, a thick soup would be like lobster bisque, crab bisque, those kind of things. Cream soups, like cream of vegetable, cream of asparagus, cream of broccoli, cream of cauliflower, cream of carrot, cream of everything. You know, I.
Cal:
That carrot soup that we used to make, that cream of carrot and ginger, that was a nice touch with, like.
Christa:
A coconut cream in it.
Cal:
Well, it had what? Yeah, you can go that direction and keep, you know, kind of an asian thing. But, uh, it’s just, it’s basically just cooking the vegetables down, tightening it up with your roux, your flour and butter mixed together, and then just whatever vegetable you want. And it’s a great utilize for utilizing like the asparagus we had last night. Yeah, I was talking to our son Isaac, and, and it’s like, what are we going to do with that? I said, well, you can boil that down and we’ll get asparagus broth, and then we can use that broth as a base instead of just starting off with straight water. So, you know, you got more flavor.
Christa:
So a soup is based on water?
Cal:
It’s based on liquid. Yeah. And generally that’s good. That’s gonna be a water, you know, I mean, because you’re gonna have water even in a cream soup, that’s gonna be cream. It’s not gonna be all cream. But we so thick soup, cream soup, and then next would be broth. So things like, you know, beef barley, you got your chicken noodle falls into that category. You think it’s more of a liquidity and liquid broth based.
Cal:
Let’s see. And then legumes. So anything that’s a bean soup again.
Christa:
So is chili considered a soup? Yeah.
Cal:
Well, I think if it’s thick, then I think you’re looking at is an entree. If it’s thinned down a little bit, then perhaps. But mostly when we think about legumes, we think about split pea soup. We think about white bean and hamdan, you know, with some, you know, chopped red peppers in it, something like that. And then the last one is specialty soups. The last category. And I’ve always broken the category of soup. And I taught soup for, I don’t know, 15 years at a local college here, soup making.
Cal:
But I usually break that specialty soups into two categories, meaning national soups or even international soups. So we have a variety of those. We have a miso, which, of course, is japanese. We have borscht. It’s a bright beet soup, which is russian. Let’s see, french onion, that’s french soup. But also the French have a soup that’s called a boulevace that we made. And the boulevace is really the french version of Cioppino, which for us, Cioppino, of course, is italian, as Italians, but it’s the same thing, except if it’s french.
Cal:
This boule base ingredients are pretty much similar. And then Italian.
Christa:
Minestrone.
Cal:
Minestrone, yeah. And then can they even hear that on the radio phone? You know, it’s. Some people say faux. You know, it’s a, it’s a Viet Vietnamese soup that is just really just a broth with noodles, a variety of ingredients. But you can do, I mean, it’s. It’s top ramen. Okay. You’re kind of looking at top ramen on withdra.
Cal:
A little more liquid.
Christa:
Okay. So my favorite asian soup is egg drop soup.
Cal:
You do a good job on egg drop. In fact, you do a better job than me. You know, there’s the trick. What’s your trick?
Christa:
The trick to making an egg drop soup is to beat up your egg. And then you go to your broth. It’s really simple. You make a chicken broth. You flavor it with ginger and soy sauce. And sometimes they even add white corn to it. But you get an agitation going. You get the water, the broth spinning, and then you slowly stream in the beaten egg.
Christa:
And that’s how you get that egg drop soup that you get at the chinese restaurant.
Cal:
Now, do you, do you just dump it in there while it’s spinning, or do you.
Christa:
You pour it in just like you would do an emulsion in, like, a salad dressing where you’re slowly pouring in the oil.
Cal:
Okay, so you’re not, like, running it through a sieve or anything like that? Or a colander? Because some of the things I’ve seen, that’s why mine doesn’t turn out. I just let her make it.
Christa:
Yeah, I just beat it up real quick and then just pour it in as the broth is spitting.
Cal:
And then regional soups, of course, we have a Manhattan clam chowder, which I really like, but you don’t see it. It’s an east coast clam chowder.
Christa:
I don’t think I’ve ever had it.
Cal:
Yeah. But. Well, it’s a red clam chowder. Yeah. And then Boston clam chowder, which, of course, is creamed. And the key to making these chowders with clams is if the clams are already cooked, they’re in a can, they don’t need to be cooked. They’re already dead. You don’t need to kill them again.
Christa:
Just need to heat them up a little bit.
Cal:
Don’t over overheat them. You’re going to be chewing rubber. Clam flavored bubble gum, and we don’t want that. But other things, gumbo from the south in Louisiana. Tortilla soup, of course, or pozelle, which would be mexican. The pozo I like, because it’s really the only item that I really use hominy in. You know, hominy, of course, is white corn that’s been dehydrated and then rehydrated once it’s hydrated, the shells removed. So it’s got a ton of fiber.
Cal:
It’s got great flavor. It’s a little bit unique. Generally, it’s going to be canned. And remember, with that canned harmony, it’s already cooked. It’s already cooked in the can, you know, so it’s just dried corn. It’s also gluten free. So, you know, it’s something to look at when you’re looking for something that’s gluten free, but a variety of things. But I think one of the things that I like the most about soup is it can be total utilization of ingredients.
Cal:
Because what you’re looking for is, you know, you’ve got, you know, some chicken that’s left over from that pulled chicken. You’ve got some, you know, mushrooms left over. You’ve got some carrots and onions and celery and things. So, you know, it’s pretty easy just to throw together a soup and just get it simmering on the back. You want to add your aromatics, again, would be your vegetables and also your seasonings. Whatever protein you have laying around, there’s very little you can’t make out of soup. And actually, I have a soup that was very popular. And this was sometime around February of, you know, decades ago, I was at my restaurant.
Cal:
So it’s well after Thanksgiving, and I look in the freezer and there’s like five, you know, I always look in the freezer. What’s left over? I gotta make soup. Our restaurant, we gave soup and salad for every guest that came in. So. And I seen these five pumpkin pies. So I made a poultry stock. I dumped these pumpkin pies whole, just thawed them out, dumped them in the pot. The crust actually thickened it up.
Cal:
I used a stick blender and just a warm pumpkin pie, serve it with a little dollop of fresh cream on top and a little sprinkle of nutmeg. And people loved that. I was just using up leftovers. Okay. Trying to be creative because I can figure out what a soup needs. But again, you’ve seen those leftovers and you can utilize those. And soup is a great way to do it. If you have a little bit of chicken or you have a little bit of something left, just wrap it up and freeze it, you know.
Cal:
And then when you get ready to make soup, pull out these ingredients and throw them together in a pot and experiment, you know, do I want to make a broth soup? Do I want to make a cream soup? Do I want to make a seafood soup? And then just kind of fill those categories in because the methods are all very similar, but you get a chance to use up whatever happens to be.
Christa:
So how far ahead did you need to make soup? So you hear a lot of, a lot of restaurant menus have same day soups. And I find that soup tastes way better the next day after the flavors have had time to meld and open up.
Cal:
Exactly. And that’s a good point, because a lot of times, well, there are certain things just get better with time, you know, red wine, of course, but we’re talking about, you know, spaghetti sauce tastes better the next day, chili tastes better the next day. And it’s just had, again, used the perfect term. It’s had that opportunity for those flavors to meld together, to blend together. So having a soup does need to be cooked on high. You don’t need to boil the heck out of it. Certain vegetables will start to get bitter, especially celery, when it’s cooked too long. Asparagus, broccoli, sulfuric vegetables definitely are going to get just that sulfur flavor that you really don’t want.
Christa:
So make your soup, enjoy it that first night. Cool it down rapidly if you can.
Cal:
Cool, yeah, cool down rapidly and don’t want to throw it.
Christa:
Enjoy maybe into the next day and then freeze the rest and keep it for down the road.
Cal:
Yeah, you know, you throw a handful of ice cubes in it when you’re done with dinner. And then because you don’t want to put something hot in your fridge, that’s just going to raise the temperature of your fridge, which has everything else in it. But you, certain things that you want to have. You want to have a heavy bottom pot. You really need a pot that’s really heavy on the bottom. A stick blender is a good thing to have. That’s going to puree it, smooth it out, makes it a little bit easier and then a really good whisk. So you don’t need a whole lot of things.
Cal:
The heavy bottom pot is important, especially if you want to sweat things. Allow them to kind of, you know, saute at a low temperature just to get those flavors in there. And you throw in your, your mirepoix and your bouquet garni, which would be your seasonings and your vegetables, and then just allow those chance to. To develop, to develop that flavor and then start adding whatever it is you got. You got some leftover beef, some leftover fish and just kind of go from there.
Christa:
Okay, I got a quick question for you. The first time you ever served me soup in your restaurant, you had like croutons on top of it. I have never, other than having the little crackers on a clam chowder, had croutons on top of my cheese, oyster crackers.
Cal:
You know, it’s nice to have a textural component. You know, if I’m going to eat minestrone, I want some Parmesan cheese on there, but I want some croutons. So I want a textural component that’s going to give it that extra texture, also give it that extra flavor. So we appreciate that. We’re going to take a break here at the bottom of the hour, cooking like a pro. You’re here with chef Cal and Christa on KCNR 1460. Am. I don’t want french fried potatoes, red ripe tomatoes.
Christa:
I’ve never seen satisfied. I want the rim brims ours with.
Cal:
The r’s and they wish a fault on the side. I don’t want jocelyn.
Cal:
Vegan crustaceans and mollusks, cephalopods and fish are different types of seafood that make a tasty dish. Mollusks such as scallops and oysters contain zinc, an element that keeps your skin healthy and pink.
Cal:
There you go. You know, there are. Welcome back to cooking like a pro.
Christa:
You have been searching out songs today.
Cal:
Yeah, you know, I mean, but we didn’t have the Internet back then, so now you can just put, you know, fish song and, you know, and YouTube pop, surprise what comes up. But, but, you know, I think that I love that song choice because it talks about the healthiness of seafood. And again, I start off with this because I’ve heard so many people say it that are, I don’t like fish. I can’t stand fish. I always ask them why, and they say, because it’s fishy, and it’s not supposed to be fishy. Folks, if you’re. If your fish is fishy, there’s something wrong with the fish. Again, fish should be fresh.
Cal:
Fish should have kind of a. Of an oceanic kind of a flavor. It should have just a beautiful, sometimes mineral kind of a flavor, especially if you get into shellfish, like, you know, scallops and oysters. But I’ll tell you, it’s not supposed to be fishy.
Christa:
That’s why I have you cook it. Because I had so many episodes of food poisoning growing up.
Cal:
Yeah, well, you know what? We took the boy scouts fly fishing a few weeks ago, and, yeah, they all caught fish. And I, couple of them had never had it before, and we cleaned it, they had to clean it, fillet it, and then we barbecued it, and they ate every last morsel. But it was fresh. It was right out of the water. It was treated well, it was cooked well, and it was very lightly seasoned. I mean, you want to taste the trout fish is very mild, so it’s almost like taking abalone and putting tartar sauce on it. I mean, you wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t cover it.
Cal:
Plus $85 a pound. But, uh, you really wouldn’t, uh, you don’t want to mask the flavor. Seafood expensive, you know, unless you’re getting.
Christa:
Fish sticks, and then you’re pretty much paying for breading with a little stream of fish inside of it.
Cal:
Well, I think it’s probably fish, you know, in there somewhere. I don’t know what.
Christa:
Dehydrated.
Cal:
Dehydrated cod, I’m not sure. Again, I am a lover of fish and chips. So you get a nice batter, whether it’s a beer batter or something that’s more japanese, like a tempura batter. Tempura batter. Again, very simply, it’s just flour and soda water comes up. Nice battery. Color it if you want. But some of the seafood that I like to, I like to want to talk about is separating what we call shellfish.
Cal:
So, shellfish, we separate into two categories. One’s crustacean, and that’s multi segmented. So that’s where you get your crab and your shrimp and your lobster. And then the second shellfish would be mollusk, and a mollusk is either one or two shells. So again, scallops, oysters fall into that category. Clams fall in that category. And one of the things I like to do when we talk about crustaceans and shrimp is that shrimp is still one of the very few crustaceans or seafood items that are fairly reasonable. You can do a nice shrimp dish, get some really nice shrimp, and as long as you don’t overcook it and make a really nice dinner.
Cal:
Scampi, you know, one of the things that we did a lot of is a french dish called scampi provencal. Scampi Provencal is just sauteed scampi. You just get your oil hot, throw in your garlic, start your shrimp, get shrimp halfway cooked, add your mushrooms, green onions, little Dijon mustard, hit it with some white wine, a little tomato. And, I mean, it’s just a combination.
Christa:
And you’re making me hungry.
Cal:
It’s a french combination that just. That works. And then if you want to go to a mollusk, one of the things I really enjoy is steamed clams. I get a vanilla clam. There’s a variety of different types of clams, of course, but a manila clam is a good, meaty, medium clam. So it’s got good meat, and it’s medium sized. You just want to steam it. A little bit of water in a pan, throw it in there, bring the water to a boil, put a lid on it, let it steam, take them out.
Cal:
And I like to toss them into what I call a clam nectar. So it’s like a clam broth. You can use a base clam base or just clam juice, which you can get. I add a little, saute some garlic, some fresh tarragon, add your clam juice, and then thicken it up. And you want this to be translucent because you want to see the clams. So we’re going to thicken that up with just a little bit of cornstarch and water. And it should steam your clams, throw them over. All you need then is some chardonnay, some butter.
Cal:
And grandma, my grandma, we used to do clam feeds all the time with grandma. It was a lot of fun. That was something that I really enjoyed. But clams are great.
Christa:
So I’ve got an idea here that I’ve heard of and I haven’t had. It is mock abalone.
Cal:
Mock abalone? Yeah. You know, and it’s actually, the recipe can become very close to tasting, similar to abalone.
Christa:
So it’s really chicken, right?
Cal:
Yeah.
Christa:
You take chicken in clam juice.
Cal:
Yeah. But what you want to do is you want to take the chicken broth, and you want to use a mallet on both sides. And you want to break it up. Well, and then usually I’ll go three days in clam juice, flip it once a day, and then it. Then just take it out, lightly flour it, saute it. And if your eyes were closed, you’d think you’d have abalone. It’s very, very close.
Christa:
Do you grill it?
Cal:
Do you saute pan sear? Yeah, saute it, flip it over. Gives just a touch of wine. And from there, you can, you know, it’s poultry. So, you know, you can add different things if you want to picotta, you know, like the white wine with the cream and the capers and the shallots in it. But a variety of things. You can use seafood. It’s very versatile. You want to use a risotto.
Cal:
Risotto is always a good one. A seafood risotto, very popular that I’ve done in my restaurants. And just so you know, if you travel to Italy, you cannot get seafood risotto there for one person. They only cook it for two. They do it from scratch, and they only. You can only get it for two people. I tried, I begged. I could not get when I was there, I, you know, I had to find someone that would eat with me so they would make a seafood risotto, because, you know, risotto, of course, is the arborio rice, the short, fat rice that it just takes a while to cook.
Cal:
When you’re cooking it, you have to continue to add stock to it, and it cooks very slowly. So.
Christa:
Okay, I’ve got a shrimp question for you.
Cal:
Okay, sure.
Christa:
Okay.
Cal:
There’s.
Christa:
There’s bay shrimp, there’s prawns, there’s scampi. What are these different types of shrimp? And then something about a U rating.
Cal:
Yeah. What it is, is it always goes by pound. How many are in a pound? So if you take salad shrimp or what we call bay shrimp, it can be anywhere between 250 to 300 pieces per pound. It’s real small, but then you start getting shrimp that’s larger, and it goes by how many shrimps are in a pound? So there’s 16oz in a pound. So a 16 shrimp is going to be 16 pieces in a pound. 25 to 30 will be 25 to 30 in a pound. So about half the size. And you can go up to a 40 to 45.
Cal:
Or you can go like a u ten, which means that there’s under ten. The u stands for under. So u 16 or u ten would be under 16 a pound. I, which would be just under an ounce or just about an ounce, maybe even a little bit more than a u ten. And a u ten shrimp would really be something. When I get u ten s, it’s something that I would. I’m going to stuff. I’m going to be.
Cal:
I’m going to devein it, cut it, shell it, devein it, flatten it out, put a piece of plastic on it with the cut side up. I’m just going to lightly, lightly pound that out and get it to the, you know, the point where it’s maybe, I don’t know, size of a wallet or something. Maybe by, you know, two by three inches. Then I might put some nice fresh crab meat in there and then roll it up. So then I might even bread it at that point. Flour, egg, panko, and just do a quick fry on it. But you, it’s just such a, such a larger shrimp.
Christa:
So if you can’t afford lobster, could you use one of those u ten s as kind of a something else you could buy that’s a little more inexpensive to kind of mimic lobster?
Cal:
You can roast it. You’re going to want to use some clarified butter on it. That’s going to do a good job. Lobster, of course, poached in clarified butter is one of the more most succulent things. I mean, I’m never going to end up on death row and be able to say, hey, here’s my last meal. But if I get the last meal thing, I think butter poached lobster is going to be there. I’ve had that down at the french laundry a couple times, and we’ve made it. I had it on the menu at one of my restaurants.
Cal:
Succulent. You take lobster and you just poach it like 134 degrees, and it takes about seven, eight minutes. And it’s almost crunchy. I mean, it’s that, you know, especially if you’re going to go fresh, then, you know, something like that, then you want to go from the east coast, that’s fine. But when you get ordered lobster, you want lobster from an area where the water is cold. So just ask your monger when you’re sitting there at the counter, say, where did this lobster come from? If it came from Mexico? It’s not cold water. The water’s not cold there.
Christa:
You want Maine lobster, right?
Cal:
Maine lobster for fresh. But cold water is australian, Australia, New Zealand, even alaskan. So you want it to come from water that’s the colder the better. So I always got rock lobster from Australia. You know, the best flavor, the best texture, a couple other things. Paella. We’ve done that a couple times. We did that with our friend Julie over on the coast the last time we were over there.
Cal:
And it’s just, you want that crisp rice on the bottom, but you take your paella pan, and you cook off your chicken, and you cook off your sausage, and you cook off your seafood, and you remove these. You cook off your vegetables, remove these cooking, and you’re doing all this in the same pan. So you got all that flavor, and then you’re throwing your rice in there, and then you’re gonna cook that rice. Do it like you do risotto. Continue to add stock until it gets that nice crust on the bottom and the rice is cooked all the way through. Throw all your proteins that you cooked and your vegetables back on top. Sometimes I’ll drizzle that with a little aioli. But, I mean, that’s one pot cooking.
Cal:
That’s like, you invite people over and you want to just say, hey, I want to do something. We want to do something fun.
Christa:
And what’s unique about a paella pan? What’s, what makes it so conducive to this particular type of cooking?
Cal:
It’s got a heavy bottom. It’s got handles on the side, and it’s just one pot. It’s kind of like, imagine if you took a wok and just flattened it.
Christa:
Flattened it?
Cal:
Yeah, flattened it down. And you have a great dish there. But even cedar wood, you can just be so creative. We did the cedar plank salmon. We just take the plank, oil it, and you always want to use an untreated cedar. So make sure you get untreated cedar. You cook the wood until that oil comes out. And you set a piece of fish on there.
Cal:
We used to do salmon or halibut, and then just bake it right on the wood in your oven. It’s not going to catch on fire.
Christa:
No parchment, anything like that? Just straight on wood?
Cal:
Well, you can put it in parchment. You put it in a paper bag, but I would just generally put it right on there. And it’s just amazing flavor. And something about that cedar flavor. Garlic, shallots. You know, another thing we mentioned also is you want to encase it with flavor. So one of the things you do is an aioli flavored mayonnaise. Mayonnaise doesn’t sound like you’d go with fish, but when you coat it, it locks that flavor in.
Cal:
And the mayonnaise completely changes texture and flavor.
Christa:
Okay, so what starts between aioli and tartar sauce?
Cal:
The tartar sauce is going to have dill pickles in it. And an aioli can have any variety of things like capers, garlic, shallots and stuff. So a little bit different. So. All right. So. But anyway, cooking like a pro. We’re going to take our last break here.
Cal:
We appreciate you listening here.
Cal:
Mollusks, such as scallops and oysters contain zinc, an element that keeps your skin healthy and pink. Crustaceans and mollusks, sephora pods, and fish are different types of seafood that make a tasty dish.
Song:
Give me a big diamond ring and a shotgun seat. If it comes with a good old boy, I’ll pick a five star dinner floating down on the river. If I really got to have my choice, I put the extra in the f 150. My big downtown sitting pretty. But I like my wine country.
Cal:
Wine country. Wine country. Hannah Ellis. I just. I love the wine country. I’ve been very blessed in my life to have been able to be a big part of it, living down there and running a winery for a couple years. And I proposed my beautiful wife, Christa, about 20 years ago.
Christa:
Birthday, anniversary.
Cal:
It was yesterday, huh? Just like it was yesterday. Oh, you know, speaking of family stuff, I gotta do a shout out to my son, my oldest son’s birthday. Happy birthday, CJ.
Christa:
Happy birthday, CJ.
Cal:
Now, junior. Yes. Happy birthday to you. We don’t need to say how old he is, but anyway, just a wonderful, wonderful young man. So speaking of wine country, you know, we’ve been talking about different varietals. Again, the varietal is that type of wine, a cabernet, a chardonnay. So we’ve talked about a few different ones, and I want to talk about Sauvignon blanc because it’s a wine that you just. It’s out there, but you don’t see it get a lot of attention.
Cal:
And depending on what you’re eating, it’s a fantastic wine to match with food.
Christa:
I think it’s more specific for pairing. It seems like.
Cal:
Well, it’s. Yeah, the acid that it has, it’s going to cut through things, especially creamy things like, you know, cheese dish. It’s. It’s fantastic. Match with goat cheese.
Christa:
It’s not sweet. It’s more of a. Probably a refreshing type of wine.
Cal:
Yeah, well, refreshing, but in the acid in. I mentioned goat cheese. I want to just throw a shout out. The Chev company down, they’re down outside in cottonwood. They make a chev. I took a couple of trips. I took my students down there to do a, you know, kind of a tour. So they do a.
Cal:
It’s right out. Bob Bowman road out there by. By the school I went to. I went to that school. What was that school?
Christa:
Clear evergreen.
Cal:
Evergreen, yeah, evergreen. Right out that way. But anyway, yeah, just, they make a wonderful, wonderful chev. They’re not real acidic like a lot of the ones are of. So, Heidi, I looked that one up, folks. But, yeah, you know, herbaceousness, grassiness. It’s going to have, you know, those herbaceous qualities. You can pick up any number of herbs in it.
Cal:
So it tells you right away that whatever you’re going to cook, you know, generally fish or poultry would go with the white wine or even pasta, but. But you throw all the herbs you want in it, and it’s just going to almost always be a really nice match.
Christa:
Is it more of a french wine? Is it South America?
Cal:
Well, the grape originally did come from France, from what I understand it, the actual word sauvignon comes from a french word that means wild. So it’s like wild grapes, wild vines, things that were growing also. We talk about laying things down, letting them sit for a while. Sauvignon blanc does not fall into that category. You really, if you’re gonna drink a saablanc, you wanna drink it within a couple years. That’s when it’s gonna be its best. It’s kinda like beer is made. You know, beer is cooked and made to drink right away.
Cal:
Wine, something. Some wines are made to drink quickly, and some are made to lay down, and they get better as they sit there because of the general. That’s gonna be the tannins that allow that longevity.
Christa:
Now, would this be something to be done with in a stainless steel instead of an oak?
Cal:
Yeah, some. Some sauvignon blancs will see some oak. Not as much as a Chardonnay might, but you’re right. Mostly stainless steel. We’ve been down there and seen the big stainless steel vats that they use that for, but it’s generally. It’s going to be low tannin, going to normally be drier. You can maybe get one with a little bit of fruit, like, you know, like maybe white peaches, kind of those kind of flavors that you might get out of it, but, you know, maybe apple or green apple. Green apple is something that you can get out of a dry white wine as well.
Christa:
So this would probably be best in a salad course, an appetizer course.
Cal:
Well, you know, even like, a nice salad with blue cheese, and then maybe some pecans. So you’re getting that combination of the creaminess and the highest acidic wine, and then you’re getting a little bit of, I guess, out of the picanha, kind of like an earthiness. So, yeah, you know, just, again, look at the back of the bottle, and in this day and age, we have cell phones to go online and just see what they have, you know, see what the winemaker says, and then try to. Try to replicate that. But when you go through, do the same thing. You know, pour it in. Your glass does not need to breathe because it hasn’t been in the bottle long, but you want to swirl it. And why are we swirling it?
Christa:
We’re looking at the legs.
Cal:
Looking at the legs. God. Yep. That’s what the sommeliers do. They’re looking at the legs. They actually have that little friend of mine who was the chef, chef of the San Francisco 49 ers for a long time, my buddy, sal compana, he had a taste of, in which you have a, like a, you know, a rope around, you know, around your neck, and you have this little, small, shiny, kind of is multi indented. And you pour the wine in there so you can see the clarity of it.
Christa:
Oh, that’s what that little silver mini pan is for. I’ve seen it.
Cal:
I’ve got one around the house there somewhere. I’ve got a lot of things, but that’s called taste of it. And they’ll do that to kind of just to check the wine out. So there’s so many ache and make sure those characteristics are where they need. But then you want to smell it. You don’t want to just drink it. Get that nose. Get the aroma.
Cal:
Enjoy it. Enjoy your wine. Swirl it. Look at it. Notice the legs, the viscosity, or the body of it. Get the aroma. You know, get those. Those esters going in your nose.
Cal:
And then when you taste it, that first taste again, draw some air over that. Over your. Over your tongue. Is that, you know, well, my mouth is dry. I don’t think I can do it right now.
Christa:
But it’s kind of like slurping soup. We talked about soup earlier. It’s kind of like slurping.
Cal:
It’s a slurping sound. Yes. But again, chicken, goat cheese, cucumber and dill would work great for this. You know, if you wanted to do something like a tazigi, you know, with a cucumber sauce, and do it with some, you know, with some. Some pita bread and some other things, you know, even hummus, it would even cut through.
Christa:
Would you ever deglaze with sauvignon blanc?
Cal:
I would what I deglaze with meaning what I add to the pan to get all those particles back into the. Into the flat. The final dish, whatever I deglaze with is what I’m going to drink with it. So that’s a great way to make it a similar match instead of a contrast a similar match by taking, you know, if I’m doing a halba dish and I hit it with some chardonnay, that chardonnay is what I’m going to drink. If I’m doing a veal dish and I hit it with a little bit of, you know, pinot, that’s what I’m going to drink with. I’m barbecuing a beef dish, you know, and I’m doing a cabernet mushrooms with it, and I’m going to drink that same cabernet with it.
Christa:
How about scallops with this de glaze? Well, making scallops.
Cal:
Scallops is, I almost always go to Chardonnay because scallops are just already so plump and juicy, and they already have a kind of a creamy. As long as you don’t overcook them, they have that creamy component. Sweet and creamy, yeah. And Chardonnay has that same cream, especially if it’s been, you know, had some lactose, you know, introduced into the process. If there’s been a lactate introduced, where it gets that. That dairy component. But again, so, you know, the sauvignon blanc, it’s going to cut through the dairy. It’s going to kind of clean your tongue.
Cal:
Some of the things. Again, white wine, I always just figure 50 degrees for white wine. So if your refrigerator should be for 40, 41, 39, somewhere in there, let it sit out. The longer you let it sit, the more flavors are going to come out in it.
Christa:
But not too far.
Cal:
Well, not until it gets warm. You want to drink it between 50 degrees, give or take five degrees. So no cooler than 45. No warmer than 55. Very seldom will you go over that. Maybe with a really nice chardonnay, you might want to get up to 60, but for the most part, you want to keep around 50 degrees, give or take five.
Christa:
And should you pour it into a room temperature glass or into a chilled glass from the fridge?
Cal:
Generally, you know, it’s going to depend if it’s a hot day and, you know, it’s gonna, you know, maybe need a little help to stay cool. Yeah. Then you can go with the chilled glass. We keep our glasses in a wine refrigerator, which runs around 54. I think we have to keep it at 54. That’s where we keep our wines at, so, you know, when they come out, they’re ready to go. But you definitely don’t want to drink wines at refrigerator temperature because they’re just too closed in. You’re not going to get all the flavor.
Cal:
You’re just going to slurp it down. Now, there are wines that you might do that with, I should correct myself, because if you’re drinking what we call Kool Aid, which falls into that white Zimmerdell, comes in a box kind of a thing.
Christa:
The wild vines that I love.
Cal:
Yeah, yeah. Because you’re. But there’s nothing wrong with that. But you’re drinking it for refreshment. You’re not drinking it and saying, wow, you know, I mean, that’s the kind of wine that you’ll take and make a sangria out of it or you’ll do something that’s a. Maybe you’ll chill it, maybe you’ll do a sangria float and put some ice cream on it. I don’t know.
Christa:
But anyway, okay, what about people that put ice in their wine?
Cal:
People that put ice in their wine, there’s a special place for them. But, yeah, you know, but again, to each his own. You know, we always say, drink what you like, and if you want ice in your wine, make it a little cooler. You know, we’re not talking about ice vine, which is an actual bridal that comes from allowing wine to get very cold, being harvested and late in the season, maybe into September, even into October. Germany, of course, is where you get the best ice vines in the world. And they’re absolutely delicious. But they’re like dessert by themselves. You compare them with something, but they’re dessert.
Christa:
I love it.
Cal:
Yep. Yeah. Well, also has no preservatives, so it’s kind of hard to get ice vine out of the country. But I think that, you know, I’m sure there’s a way was, you know, you can get tuna and tomorrow from, you know, Korea. So I think you can probably just, you know, ship things. But. Yeah, look it up. But ice vine is a wonderful, a wonderful treat, you know, and I know my, a friend of mine that when we get together for greek food, he has the retina.
Christa:
No, no, no.
Cal:
Yep. Retcna can’t do it.
Christa:
I can’t do the retina. I tried it once.
Cal:
I can’t do it. It’s a wine that, you know, as the story goes, is, I remember being told to me that when the Germans invaded Italy, I’m sorry, Greece, they didn’t want them to take all their wine so they threw a bunch of tar pitch in it. So it’s a wine that really tastes like chewing on a pine cone.
Christa:
It tastes like pine salt, if you ask me.
Cal:
Yeah. But, you know, hey, you know, there’s a lot of things out there, folks, and all we do is say, you know, hey, give things a shot.
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.
