Cal and Christa DeMercurio
We’re back with a brand-new episode of Cooking Like a Pro podcast and this one is bursting with flavor and fun! Join Chef Cal and Christa as they delve into the world of unique culinary experiences in food and wine.
- Discovering a crispy melon called a Hami
- Comparison between homemade and store-bought butternut squash soup
- Cal’s hunting family background for eclectic meats
- Par cooking vegetables and finishing in the oven for roasted flavor
- Paso Robles TIN CITY as a food and wine destination
LISTEN ⬇️
Timestamp Overview
00:00 Excited chat about food, reach out online.
04:27 Homemade soup saves money and tastes better.
08:33 Tracking fruit origin and impact of climate.
11:50 Father’s upbringing in scarcity and hunting food.
15:23 Caring for wild meat is crucial for taste.
18:37 Grandpa’s canyon, hunting, and cooking memories.
21:07 Mom’s stew was tough, even dog refused.
24:02 Cook vegetables carefully to preserve nutritional value.
26:36 Preserve vegetable flavor by quick cooking and shocking.
31:43 Test oil heat before adding vegetables carefully.
34:15 Tips for cooking vegetables evenly and perfectly.
37:17 Zinfandels from Paso Robles are preferred.
41:07 Exceptional wine, enjoyable with great food pairings.
42:54 Elevate wine experience with barbecue duck.
46:25 Embrace life, savor food, enjoy every moment.
48:38 Grateful for your time, see you soon!
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 butternut squash soup, hunting and cooking wild game, organic vegetables and enjoying a glass of zin from paso robles. Let’s dig in. Today’s episode was broadcast and recorded live on AM FM radio.
Cal:
Welcome, welcome, welcome to cooking like a pro with chef Cal and my beautiful wife Christa DeMercurio. We are here at Casey and our. You found us. You found us at 16. I’m sorry. 40 1640 60 1460 yeah, that’s Am. And what’s FM? 96.5.
Cal:
There you go. I got my glasses on now so I can start seeing this. So we really appreciate you tuning in to hear us chat and ramble or however you want to describe it about food. It’s our passion here. You can reach out, find us at culinaryyours online and there’s a lot of stuff on there. And then if you want to send a question, or if you have a question, you can call, you can call down here at the station at 530-605-4567 again, 530-605-4567 or you can, if you just want to type a question in and have us answer that, you can go to cookinglikeapropodcast.net. cookinglikeapropodcast.net dot anyway, we’re here to chat about food. Excited about that first segment.
Cal:
We’ve been doing fresh updates on things that we find, and I’ve got a couple different things we want to take a look at and chat about today. Butter squash is one of them. I love butter squash and it’s one of those things that you really didn’t see used at all not that long ago. And now sometimes you’ll see it as a diced vegetable, but it’s great for you. Super high in vitamins and minerals.
Christa:
Of course, it’s much more popular. And you can find butternut squash ravioli. Butternut squash soup.
Cal:
Yeah, soups are good when soup. Matter of fact, I actually went down to the store and bought a organic and folks, we need to go organic if there’s one. And I’m sorry, I’m going to go off down a rabbit trail here. The challenge that we have with the food that we eat is there’s just so much of it that’s being presented to us is being processed. And we really need to get away from that. It’s because it’s a process that’s taken away the vitamins and minerals and nutrients and fiber and all these things, and it’s replacing them with other stuff.
Christa:
Well, they’re trying to get longevity and shelf life.
Cal:
Yeah. So you’re going to. So here we enter in anything from caking agents to, you know, just things that are going to extend their shelf life. You know, you get preservatives and a variety of things. So anyway, we want to go organic. We want to visit the farmers market. We want to spend time to make sure, you know, it’s really true. You are what you eat.
Cal:
And so, you know, it’s kind of garbage in, garbage out. So, you know, just, it’s something to keep in mind. It’s something that we want to make sure we keep it on the.
Christa:
The butternut squash has its own little keeper. It has its own little protective packaging. Because it’s a winter squash. It has a harder outside exterior and they last a really long time.
Cal:
Oh, yeah. I don’t know what shelf life is. We’ve got some that I had, my friend Mark gave me some, like, I.
Christa:
Don’T know when that was back early in the winter.
Cal:
Yeah. It’s like beginning of summer or something. Yeah. So the nice long shelf life, but it’s just a beautiful flavor and it makes a really velvety soup. I got this butternut squash organic soup. It was. And I only got this for cost perspective because I do want to talk about that as well. And it was $6 or $5.99 for a little box of this soup.
Christa:
Like a quart.
Cal:
Yeah. And for this, I made the same soup. I mean, I adjusted it to where I wanted it taste a little bit different. I happen to be a fan of white pepper, but either way, it was less than $2. So in this time, where we’re looking at the economic concerns of food, prices going skyrocket, especially if you’re going out to a restaurant. Remember, if you go out to a restaurant and just keep this number in mind, if you go out to a restaurant, folks, you can make that same thing at home for one third of.
Christa:
What you paid, sometimes even one quarter, depending upon the market.
Cal:
Yeah. So, and even make it better, you know, I mean, and if you’re not sure how, then give us a call. Give us a call. Or go on to, again, cookinglikeapropropodcast.net and give us a question. We’ll be happy to show you how. Or go to the website. There’s a lot of really helpful information on culinary yours, and we’ve got that.
Christa:
New spaghetti squash pop up on there, so we can show people how to do spaghetti squash.
Cal:
Yeah, we got this.
Christa:
We talked about last week.
Cal:
They say you’re not supposed to call it this. And in the business, they call it lead magnets. Not supposed to say that. But anyway, we’ve got, like, a half a dozen of them on there. We got one on barbecue, one on wine pairing. I want a beautiful grocery list, and all you got is print. It’s free, you know, but good stuff. But anyway, and then we had that melon.
Cal:
Today. We got this melon. It’s a hammy. Okay.
Christa:
I’ve never seen it. Never.
Cal:
Yummy is the same. It’s a category. The same as honeydew or cantaloupe or watermelon or cassava or ambrosia.
Christa:
Where did you get that hammy?
Cal:
It’s like. Like a. Like what they used to call sandwich, you know? Yeah, I want a hammy. But anyway, it’s a hammy cantaloupe. I got it at the. Down at the market. No, no, no. I picked that one up at Julia’s.
Christa:
Oh, the fruit stand.
Cal:
Fruit stand on the side of the road over there. Highway 99.
Christa:
Yeah.
Cal:
And one of the first things I thought about when we tried that today. Cause it’s. I’d compare it to a cantaloupe, but it was firm. Very firm and crisp. To where a cantaloupe, you’re really getting, like, sweet, juicy, and tender from a hammy looks the same, basically. It’s got that orange color, but it’s firm, sweet, and crisp.
Christa:
It was almost more like a cucumber.
Cal:
Yeah. Well, the first thing that Christa said when we tried it was, oh, this would be great if you cooked it.
Christa:
Yeah.
Cal:
You know, and that’s one of those things. We had a wedge salad at one of my restaurants, and we cooked the wedge. And what it does is now you got this salad with this infusion of what we now call umami flavor. You know, this earthy flavor, this kind of a meat flavor from the chart. And there’s nothing wrong with it. Yeah. So it just. It takes your fruit into a completely different category.
Cal:
So if you want to do, let’s say a nice, maybe tossed spinach salad, instead of tossing it with some of this. Just raw fruit hammy, imagine tossing it in with some diced up, you know, fruit that’s been char grilled and what, what that. How that’s going to change the flavor profile.
Christa:
Now, if you don’t have a grill, can you put that on a cast iron skillet to get a little bit of it?
Cal:
You can sear it. Yep, you can sear it. You can cook it just about any way you know that you can. You don’t want to cook it long, of course, because it’s obviously very, very tender. It’s like when you cook lettuce, you cook lettuce very, very quickly. It’s usually 20, 30 seconds. And the griddle has to be real hot cleaned. You want to make sure you scrape it and get rid of the soot.
Cal:
And all of that information is available at culinary yours. We did. We have a barbecue.
Christa:
Yeah, the barbecue sauce cheat sheet.
Cal:
Yeah, barbecue cheat sheet. It’s got sauces. It’s got exactly how you prepare your barbecue, which, of course, is very important. But I thought it was good, you know, and I pulled off the label. Remember, all the fruit that you get will have a label on it. That label is going to tell you a variety of things, especially if there’s something wrong with that lot that the fruit came out of or the vegetable came out of. You know, things like E. Coli.
Cal:
And sometimes we have these things that creep up on us and, and hit us. Then they can trace it back. So there’s a lot number on there. There’s the name of the actual fruit. There’s the country that it came from. Did it come from in particular? This came from the USA, but if it would have come from, you know, Mexico or Canada or further down south where, you know, because remember, when it gets cold here in the winter, it’s still warm down south.
Christa:
Yeah, we have opposites.
Cal:
Yeah. So, you know, and sometimes completely opposite, like Australia, which, of course, is the completely opposite of us. But anyway, so, yeah, you know, you can char grill it. You can do something, you know, kind of cool with it that maybe you couldn’t do with, with a cantaloupe because it would be more of a tender fruit.
Christa:
Now, could you put melon as a sweetener into, like, a butternut squash soup? There are, you know, two totally different worlds.
Cal:
Yeah.
Christa:
Is that something that you could mix?
Cal:
Well, the thing is you can do anything, you know, and that’s a good point. I mean, if you wanted to add a little sweetness to a butternut squash soup, let’s say your butternut squash wasn’t quite where you wanted it to be in your flavor profile. Yeah. Go ahead and put some fruit in there and puree it in. They’re not even going to know. And you know, but that’s the point. We want to get people, folks, to start being able to pick up these true natural flavors, because that’s when food becomes fun and exciting, and it just. It kind of enters a different dimension, you know, because you’re just more excited about.
Christa:
That sounds good.
Cal:
All right, so anyway, yeah, so, you know, we’ve got a hammy and we’ve got butter and a squash soup, and you’ve got cooking like a pro. We’ll be back in just a moment. Let’s make some fruit salad today. It’s fun to do. It’s a healthy way. Make all the fruit that you want to. It’s going to be a fruit salad tree. The first step, peel your bananas? The second step, you make my heart sing? You make everything to bed? Wild things wild thing wild thing welcome back to cooking like a pro with chef cal and misses chef Christa.
Cal:
And, you know, there’s. I’ve been reminiscing a lot lately, and that’s one of the many words because I’ve. I finally jumped off the bridge to see if I hit the water. And I’m writing my cookbook, my first cookbook. I’ve been. People been on me that for decades now. So, anyway, as I’m in the process of that, there’s a lot of things that you want to kind of collect, you know, past stories and things like that. And one of the things that I share a lot is my inspiration from my culinary inspiration that came from my upbringing, from coming home and having a little post it note on the refrigerator from mom saying, take care of the casserole or dad in the morning pretty much frying anything with a tortilla.
Cal:
Bologna and spam were always. Hon, did you eat a lot of spam when you’re. No.
Christa:
No, I had Cheerios and lucky charms.
Cal:
Oh, okay. Well, you know, we. Yeah, well, you know, you have to go with what you got. But anyway, Fox food group, I wanted to share something just really dear to me for a few minutes here about my father’s upbringing, because, you know, when he was a kid, it was back, like, in the forties and fifties, and food was hard to come by. And I think. I mean, I think I know a lot of people just don’t understand that. They don’t understand that, you know, I mean, when the war is going on. And in my father’s case, he was a hunter, and somehow you had to get food on the table and food was scarce, and being a hunter was just the perfect way of being able to collect those things.
Cal:
But because of that, growing up we had a fairly, I’m going to mess this word up. Esoteric. What’s the kind of the. Just variety and very eclectic. Eclectic. We’ll go with eclectic on this. But anyway, because dad started hunting, I know that he started when he was around twelve. He told me that he got a pellet gun and then he would just pretty much nail things.
Cal:
There you go. Oh yeah. Spaghetti westerns. Thank you there, David. I felt as a perfect, perfect intro there to this, but really hunting anything from rabbits to squirrels to quail, pheasants and. But just whatever it is that he could bring home. And I remember eating squirrel, I remember eating rabbit and I remember bringing it up in culinary conversations later on in life. And people would look at you like you ate what? I’m like, yes, it was meat.
Cal:
It was good. Remember, you are what you eat, but you have to look at the animal and getting these animals when they’re young because I know that my father mentioned that he shot a guinea hen, but he shot a bigger one and a bigger one’s going to be tougher because it’s been around. So you want to shoot a guinea hen? You want to shoot one that’s a little bit smaller?
Christa:
Well, it’s a little different where you live. We live in California and I didn’t really experience this, but my dad was from Idaho and elk was huge.
Cal:
Oh yeah, dad talks about elk from, from Colorado and it’s just a beautiful meat.
Christa:
Yeah, it’s a fantastic venison.
Cal:
Yeah, well, we spent so much time on venison with deer and you know, that was just what mom just, our freezers were always full of deer and I mean, it was just something that was, you know, stewed, seared, pan fried because you ate the whole thing. You could make soup. I remember mom making like, we call it a venison pie. Sometimes they call it minced meat, but they use the neck of the animal because there’s a lot of meat in the neck and it’s real high in gelatin. So it just makes a great pie and holds.
Christa:
So deer and elk, they lean more on the beef side of the spectrum.
Cal:
Oh, yeah, yeah. I would definitely, I would put it in the category of meat. You know, when you start getting into, I know that dad talks here in his writings about bear, then you’re getting into something, an animal that really has quite a different flavor profile. But again, you are what you eat. What are the animals eating? And I know he talked about getting jackrabbits and cottontail rabbits. But the jackrabbit is a very active animal, so it’s going to be tougher where a cottontail rabbit would be a little more tender. And when it comes to squirrels, you don’t want to eat ground squirrels. You want a tree squirrel.
Cal:
So basically, you want the ones with the nice fluffy tails. No, you know, I can’t do that. Oh, well, come on. Don’t. Don’t get all. Well, anyway, so I know that, you know, the quail and the pheasants, you cook them just like you do chicken, you know, and dad talks here about when he got older and he got his 22 rifle, and then he can start getting deer and he can start getting elk, you know, and just, again, those are the meats that you cook, just like beef. And I know, I read here where dad says that all this wild meat would be very tasty and if it was taken care of the right way. So it’s always a matter of how you care for it, you know, how well the animal is killed, how it’s cleaned, how it’s, how it’s slaughtered.
Cal:
And there’s a process, and you want to make sure rigor mortis, you know, sets in. And some things needed a little bit longer time to hang. But I know that he, it was one of his, you know, treasured things of being able to hunt and provide for the family. I mean, we raised our own chickens, and, you know, I remember those things when I was, when I was younger. Again, dad goes on with his stories here about deer and elk liver. Now, those are excellent. And I remember that, and I know that when I cook liver, it’s something that most people don’t really care for.
Christa:
Well, it’s an older generation. Like liver and onions.
Cal:
Exactly. But again, honey, it has to be treated correctly, right. You want to make sure that it’s sliced thin, lightly floured, and seasoned. Fry it up. Fry up a bunch of bacon. You can’t put too much, too many onions in. There you go. We get that frying sound.
Cal:
We’re frying bacon and. Oh, I like that. It makes my hungry here. But again, you can’t have too many onions in there. So these onions and bacon goes on top of your liver. Again, whether it’s elk or whether it’s deer, in our family, that’s the way we prepared it. One of the things I’ve seen a lot of people do is they put, like, a gravy on their liver, and I’ve never been one for that. No, I want to taste the liver.
Cal:
I want to taste the onions. I want to taste the bacon. I want to taste everything. I don’t want it to be matted with the gravy where you just add some flour and water to it. That’s high in iron, right? Oh, iron content. Extremely high. Very, very. Liver is great for you.
Cal:
But I know that when dad, especially his brother, his brother Nick, dad spent a lot of time with his brother, who happens to live out in Colorado, still does. And they traveled out there numerous times. And they, you know, when you’re in different areas, you have different animals, of course, that live in, you know, in those that live wild in different areas. And back there, you could get antelope and you could get, of course, elk more prevalent. And the rabbits would be. Be a little bit different as well. But we. We were raised up in an area outside of northern California, a place called Gazelle.
Cal:
And grandpa had this whole canyon that he had, and it was five or 6 miles deep. It was several miles deep and about in a mile across from top to side and steep sides on both. And we would go up there hunting, and that was called Buck camp. And that’s one of my earliest memories of buck camp, because remember, I’ve said this before, my family, you either killed things or cooked them, and I happened to be the worst shot. So I ended up in the kitchen with mom and mom’s mother, my grandma Marie. Just. Those were just some of the most special times ever of being able to spend time cooking with family.
Christa:
Now you’re talking about things that we have fairly locally accessible. What about bison and moose? Has he ever hunted those?
Cal:
Oh, yeah. Well, the thing is, these days, so many things are farm raised, so you can get a red tailed deer from New Zealand. You can get, you know, different varieties of any animal you want. You can buy, you know, you buy rattlesnake. I’ve done a lot of rattlesnake. I’ve also done rattlesnake, which goes good in sausage because it’s just a lot of cartilage. You don’t get a lot of meat out of a rattlesnake. But I just remember Buck camp.
Cal:
Buck camp. Lot of just fun, fun times with family and remember just enjoying ourselves up there a lot.
Christa:
So with all of this wild game, how would you prepare it? I mean, what you make into tacos, would you make it into tamales? Would you make it into stew?
Cal:
Well, again, squirrel and rabbit. Just think about eating chicken. Think about eating fried chicken. And it’s the same thing, except it’s squirrel, rabbit, and then you can also braise it, which would be a moist cooking. If you did moist cooking, then you could stew it. You throw in, you know, celery and onion and carrots, your basic mirepoix. Throw in some potatoes, thicken it up with a. At the time, you know, you could use flour and any type of liquid.
Cal:
Sometimes they used water, which would be a slurry. We used butter, which, of course, is a roux, which is going to taste better because butter tastes better than water.
Christa:
And then you would get these through like a special wild game distributor because you obviously can’t get Safeway or Costco.
Cal:
Or just go on your phone. That’s why we have cell phones now. I mean, we didn’t have that, you know, so we had to, dad had to go out and kill it. But now you can pretty much buy what you want. But these things are pretty expensive as well. But, yeah, I remember dad talking about killing a guinea hen. Like I mentioned earlier, a bigger one. And it’s just so tough.
Cal:
He said that mom just stewed it for, like, hours, and it was still so tough that not only could they not eat it, the dog couldn’t, you know, so when your dog can’t can eat it, you know that you’ve gone a little bit too far. But I remember again, back at D. Mercurio’s restaurant, we did wild game dinners quite often, and people were always very excited to come in. And I think a lot of it was, you know, maybe going back to work the next day and saying, hey, I had kangaroo last night, or I had fascination alligator, you know. I mean, a lot of things is just most of that stuff tastes like chicken anyway, you know, I mean, because chicken’s just got that neutral flavor that everyone’s used to. So you can say, oh, what’s kangaroo taste like? Well, it tastes, you know, tastes a little bit like chicken, you know, chicken or beef. Chicken or beef. But again, those are the flavors we get.
Cal:
But there’s a lot of things that are out there, folks, and I know we have meat stores here. Talk to your meat mongers and see what it is that they’re willing to bring in. Venison again, hunting season is open. I think it’s open for bows right now, and it will soon open for rifles. But we got a lot of, we got deer, we got bucks right on our property, and they’re, they’re eating our grapes and they’re. What did they eat last night? Or tomatoes?
Christa:
Oh, I didn’t go look. I hope they need tomatoes.
Cal:
Yeah, maybe I need to have dad come over and work on that, because, again, you know, well, you can even get.
Christa:
I’m looking right now at Trader Joe’s. You can get buffalo burgers from Trader Joe’s.
Cal:
Buffalo burgers. Well, you know, anything they can grind up, you know, that’s one of the ways they can use these. What about more head cheese? Head cheese? What is head cheese? It’s everything from the head that’s put in, and it’s kind of a gelatinized, and it’s wrapped up and baked off and sliced. So it’s pretty much anything in the head. So, you know, anything you can. And there’s a lot of stuff in the head.
Christa:
So I think I’ll become a vegetarian at this point.
Cal:
All right, cooking like a pro. We’ll be back right after this break at the bottom. Thank you.
Christa:
I don’t want french fried potatoes, red, ripe tomatoes. I’m never satisfied. I want the french French with the R’s. And they wish up for. And we got a show for you.
Cal:
Veggie day. Veggie day. Veggie day. Veggie. Well, I tell you. Welcome back. Welcome back to cooking like a pro. Chef Cal and my wife misses chef Christa.
Cal:
And, yeah, I know, veggie tails. I mean, I know that our son is 15 years old, so we probably oughta probably lay off the veggietales. But for a while there, that was it. You know, I mean, for a decade, it seems.
Christa:
Well, even when I was in college, we used to wash the littles. All the college kids were sitting watching veggie tails.
Cal:
Veggie tails. Veggies. Vegetables. Because cooking vegetables is one of those things that it’s so easy to use an incorrect cooking process and destroy the nutritional value of it. So it’s something that you really want to think through. You want to, of course, always use items that are in season, that are in peak season for a variety of reasons. One, they’ll be the most healthy, but they’ll also generally be less of a cost because supply and demand, there’s just more asparagus available or whatever it happens to be. But again, you want to be careful because when you’re dealing with something that’s very, you know, tender and sensitive and, you know, can pretty easy to ruin, you know, I mean, if you take asparagus, for example, and, you know, it becomes army green, you’ve kind of ruined it, right? So you want something that really falls in the category of al dente.
Cal:
So you remember Al dente, right, sweetheart?
Christa:
Al dente means to the tooth to the tooth.
Cal:
So a little bit of bite. Yeah, if you’re biting into something. So let’s say we’re talking about cooking vegetables now. So you’re biting into a piece of broccoli. There’s the definition of to the tooth means that there’s a slight resistance between your teeth, and then your bite breaks through. So it’s not crunchy, it’s not soft, it’s al dente. So that’s what you’re looking for. But, you know, cooking vegetables, a lot of ways to do it.
Cal:
I know that you did some. You did some homework on this today.
Christa:
Yeah, I did a little bit of homework. Steaming is fantastic. And if you do it in the microwave really quickly, make sure you put in a glass dish.
Cal:
Yeah, I’ve been seeing, you know, I’m not going down a conspiracy theorist of food just yet, but, you know, folks, we eat way too many credit cards each day. You know, there is plastic everywhere. It’s in the air, it’s in the water. It’s covering our vegetables. So for a long time, I’ve just taken asparagus and put it in a ziploc baggie with a little butter, salt, pepper, and it creates its own moisture because most vegetables are 60% to 90% water, and it just comes out perfect. But trying to get away from plastic, you know, and it’s something that is. Seems to be everywhere. So I’ll jump off that soapbox for, for a minute.
Christa:
But they’re even trying to create these instant bags at the freezer. Just really pull it out of the freezer still in the bag, and cook it in the bag. They’re making these microwaveable bags, and I still take it out and put it in a glass dish.
Cal:
It doesn’t need to be something that, you know, doesn’t have that’s not real porous, you know, something that’s going to has a fairly tight seal on it. But for me, generally, it’s sauteing them. But one thing that I’ve always used from we, when I was we small was shocking. You know, you shock the vegetables, you drop them in boiling water for a matter of anywhere between, you know, 30 seconds to, you know, six minutes, depending on whether you’re doing large cut carrots or, or tender pencil asparagus and get it to the point where it is just under al dente. And then you go take it out and pull it straight into ice water. You don’t want to overcook because the water is going to taste like, well, in this case, broccoli if you did broccoli. And so that there’s been a flavor transfer. So you’ve lost some of that, some of that broccoli flavor.
Cal:
So you want to do it real quick. And now you’ve got a product that is ready to go. All you got to do is bring it up to temperature. So, you know, saute pan, right? Saute pan. A little garlic, a little shallots. Get a little sear going there, and, and then throw your vegetables in and bring them up to temperature. Remember, I always have a squirt bottle. We always have a squirt bottle of water next to the, to the stove, and you just hit it with a little water, you get a little steam, put a lid on it.
Cal:
Your vegetables are done in, in literally less than 60 seconds.
Christa:
You can even use wine. You could use a little bit of.
Cal:
Vegetable broth, anything you want to flavor it. But remember, we’ve talked about this before, when I know that you’ve looked at, you know, responses that we’ve had through, through doing the website and things where one of the bigger questions, or most frequent, frequently asked questions, rather, is that how do I get all my food to come up at the same time, you know, and that’s one of the ways. Have your vegetables ready where they’re going to take, you know, a minute to do so. Your meat comes off and it’s resting. Your potatoes come out or your pasta, whatever your starch is, you know, 60 seconds on your vegetables, and now everything’s nice and hot and comes up together. So, so shocking. Your vegetables. I would par cooking might be another term, you know, that might be understood more.
Cal:
We called it shocking, but, you know, par cooking, but get it to the point where it’s just under al dente.
Christa:
Well, that’s something I do with the microwave. I’ll par cook even a potato, a vegetable just to get it to that. Not even quite al dente, still, just a little bit more firm. And then finish roasting it, because roasting takes a really long time and a lot of oven energy and gas. So start at the microwave, finish it in the oven to get that caramelization, get that roasted flavor.
Cal:
Yeah. You know, and that, and that’s a great point, because if you take just raw cauliflower and you want to roast it, for example, it’s one of those things that’s a, it’s a great dish. It’s a great way to prepare it. But if you do it from the start, it’s firm enough that there’s a good chance that it could sear a little more than you want it before it gets tender on the inside, because cauliflower is fairly dense. Not as dense as a carrot, but certainly it’s more dense than broccoli.
Christa:
And you’re trying to get that roasted flavor. It can be going too far.
Cal:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I see, I’ve cooked, cut cauliflower and cooked it into like a, just cook it like a steak. You know, if you got someone that’s a, that’s a vegan and they’re looking for something like that, or you just want kind of a nice, healthy alternative to, or maybe you’re using a nice steak of cauliflower that you slice into that, you know, one inch thick piece, and then barbecue it, season it, barbecue it, and maybe you’re adding something to it.
Christa:
Well, Portobello marshams, they are fantastic for that, too.
Cal:
Portobellos are great. Yeah. I mean, you can do so much with vegetables on a barbecue, and it adds such a great change in flavor than just having butter, salt and pepper on your peas. You know, I mean, you want to get out there and, and try something that’s going to be a little bit exciting, that’s going to add a little bit of flair or difference or more enjoyment. Now.
Christa:
So we talked about if you don’t have a grill, because I have a client right now, we’re talking about the grilled portobello. And she’s like, I don’t have a grill. So if you could do it inside, how would you do it? How would you get that smoky flavor?
Cal:
Yeah, well, you’re just going to sear it. The only way to sear it really would be in a pan. If you, you can get a pan that has grill grate marks or grill marks on it, that would help. But if not, just sear it right in a pan. The thing about searing in a pan is just have to make sure that the pan is correct. You know, the pan is, they’ve got to be the right temperature. It’s not too hot, it’s not too cold. It’s just got a light amount of oil in there.
Christa:
You talk about like 300, 5400 degrees.
Cal:
350 is a perfect size. But, you know, in order to check your temperature on, in a saute pan.
Christa:
You need to have a temperature.
Cal:
Yeah. You would really need infrared. You know, it’s kind of hard to.
Christa:
Check that for most for $25.
Cal:
Yeah, well, that’s what we use. But, but, yeah, no, basically, you hold your hand about eight inches above the oil and it should feel nice and warm. And you can also just dip your fingers in a little bit of water, but be careful. And you could flick just a couple drops of water in there. And if that water starts kind of splatting right away, again, be careful doing that. But that tells you how hot your oil is. But again, you. What you want is you want that vegetable, in this case, talking about vegetables, to start cooking immediately when it goes into the pan, you don’t want to soak it up.
Cal:
Oil. And you also want to stick with the good olive oil. Stick with. Try to start staying away from the seed oils. The seed oils, they’ve been so refined and processed.
Christa:
So look for extra virgin.
Cal:
I know they’re inexpensive. Yeah. And if you’re doing that, then you’re just being a little more careful with the amount you use. We’re not trying to deep fry the thing. So you just need enough to coat the bottom of the pan. What is that? Maybe a couple tablespoons, you know, so you really don’t. Yeah, if that. And you don’t need much.
Cal:
And you want a pan that’s flat, but you want to, again, get something that’s heavy bottom, you want something that’s really holding that heat. Sear it on one side, sear it on the other. If it’s not quite done inside, hit a little bit of water. Not a lot. You don’t want to, you know, we’re not trying to steam it. We’re just trying to, you know, bring it up to a temperature where it’s, you know, authenticated. You could.
Christa:
Now, if you’re vegan and you are going for that smoky flavor, what about a mesquite seasoning or a liquid smoke? Anything like that? Would that help?
Cal:
I wouldn’t use liquid smoke. I mean, liquid smoke can. They used to use it a lot when I was being raised in this industry. It would seem like it went in everything, but no, I would kind of try to stay away from that. But they do have a mesquite seasoning and a variety of action mesquite seasonings that are. They’re really flavorful that you can put on. I use it a lot on light dust. Yep.
Cal:
Use it a lot on duck. I like, you know, even if you took, you know, like, the different, like they have. What’s that one from Trader Joe’s? It’s got all the everything thing in there. I mean, again, depends on which direction you want to go. Yeah, it just depends on which direction you want to go. But grill mates, I know that, McCormick, I worked with those chefs and decades ago, and they do a great job on their flavors and their seasoning. So we got a question. Yeah, sure.
Cal:
Okay. So Mike is saying he’s trying to make a veggie medley in the oven, but he’s having trouble timing out. The different vegetables cook at different times.
Christa:
Correct.
Cal:
Any suggestions about that? Perfect. All right, Mike. Well, Mike, thanks for. Thanks for calling. We appreciate the question. And basically what you want to do is you want to add the more dense vegetables first. But what I would do to make it a little more, you know, foolproof would be to take those more dense vegetables, like your carrots or maybe your cauliflower, and chalk those, maybe your green beans, chalk those in boiling water for two minutes, chalk your carrots for four or five minutes, chalk your cauliflower, you know, for a minute or so, cool those down, and then throw them all in the oven. What you want is you want all those vegetables, Mikey, to come up at the same time to be the same degree of doneness, and it’s not going to work when you’re using something that takes 30 seconds, like asparagus, maybe, and something that takes six minutes.
Cal:
So you have to get a process, and there’s two ways to do that. One is to shock them. The second way, Mikey, would be to just, you know, add your carrots and then add, you know, let those go for a few minutes, and add your cauliflower. Let those go a few minutes. Add your green beans, add your broccoli, add your asparagus, you know, which is.
Christa:
The same way that you would do red bell pepper.
Cal:
Yeah, but that’s just a little more of a pain because you’re opening up your oven or you’re throwing it in in stages.
Christa:
And that’s the problem with sheet pan When you buy through any affiliate links on our site (i.e. Amazon), we may earn an affiliate commission. Happy shopping! dinners, which are very popular right now. But unless you know how to put things in the oven by timing, sometimes they get overcooked and some things are undercooked.
Cal:
Yeah. Just always kind of think about how dense is it and what’s going to take the longest. Start off with that stuff, and again, shocking it or pre blanching it by far, is a great way to go. But if you got it on the stovetop and you got a lid for your frying pan, it’s a great way to do it.
Christa:
And like I said, par cook it in the microwave, too.
Cal:
All right, we appreciate you calling in on that one. That was a great one. So cooking like a pro. We’ll be out for our last break here and back in just a moment.
Christa:
I got beans, creams, potatoes, tomatoes.
Cal:
Lambs. Creams.
Christa:
Potatoes. Tomatoes.
Cal:
Chicken.
Christa:
Chicken. Ghost in my.
Cal:
He makes me forget. Oh, red wine. Red wine, yes. And, you know, we’re going to talk a little bit about a variety. Not so much. Well, we talk about wine, but we want to talk a little bit about a, an appalachian area. And it’s just a place that does a beautiful job with both reds and whites. But, but I’m a fan of reds from this area.
Cal:
And we’re going to be talking about paso robles. Paso robles is just a great area that gets some of that, that breeze that’s coming in for to have cool nights. So, yeah, the grapes have a more time to mature and to develop. So I’ve had just starting to rival.
Christa:
Napa in some ways.
Cal:
Yeah. Well, in certain varietals. I know that for me, if I want a zinfandel, I’ll get one from pastor Robles before I’ll get it from Napa or Sonoma. Not that they don’t make some great wines in that area. I mean, you’ve got William Salem up in Hillsburg, and, I mean, some, obviously, some amazing zins come from there because there’s a lot of, it’s, it’s got a lot of old vines. Old, old vine. And a lot of times they do, they don’t do trussing like the long rows. They do it in kind of a circular way.
Christa:
So it’s like a bush.
Cal:
Yeah, yeah, exactly like a wine bush. But, but those stalks are huge. I mean, they’re like, you know, big round is your leg, you know, but, but they’ve been there so long. And what you get out of that is you get more of a character. You got a wine that’s. Grapes are going to be more, more mature. They’re going to be going to add some different complexities that you won’t get out of certain things. They’re just more developed, I mean, refined.
Cal:
And the tannin, it’s almost controllable.
Christa:
So an old vine versus a young vine.
Cal:
Yes. The older the vine, the more mature it is, the more mature the flavor is going to be, as opposed to a new one. But again, a lot of that has to do with the varietal. I mean, a cabernet or a zinfandel, a wine that’s going to be a little more, a heavier wine, a little more robust wine. If you’re looking for something that’s going to last a long time, you’re really going to want something that’s built to be able to do that. One of the things I wanted to touch on, too, is in pastor Robles is this beautiful little pocket community, and it’s called Ten City. Ten Tin, ten city. And it’s because all the roofs are ten.
Christa:
Yeah, yeah.
Cal:
And, and it. But it’s just a beautiful place. And it’s got a. Down around that area. You got Lona Madrone. I’ve had their wines before, and tables. Creek and Union. What was that union wine tasting that we did with my Uncle Mike? Union Sacramento, union soccer.
Cal:
Oh, the. I think that was whites, but. Oh, those were just, just delicious.
Christa:
We’ve also done monochrome.
Cal:
And you know what that was? That, that was an online tasting, folks, with the winemaker. I mean, there’s some great, great opportunities out there if you go online and get into a winery and find out if, if they offer these sort of packages where you can get a group. We’ve done that several times, and it’s always just been fun. It’s like a zoom thing. But, you know, you can ask questions, which, when it comes to wine, I’m a question asker. I’m just. I’ve always been fascinated by it. I think my grandma Marie being at the top of the hill when we came up, when we were like, you know, maybe 910 years old from abalone diving.
Cal:
I wasn’t diving. You know, everyone else dove, I think, but me and Grandma, we’d pick rocks and stuff, and me and my brother Ben. But when we get to the top, there was this, you know, the bottle of caberias is like this big kind of round. I don’t even know if they have it. I’m sure they got to have it somewhere. I don’t know. But anyway. But what the, but the purpose was it just got you warm because it was so cold, because you were going down at four or five in the morning, and it was just freezing the oceans cold, and just, you know, a little swig of wine and boom, warmed right up.
Cal:
And I, you know, they didn’t have, you know, child protective services back then. And, you know, I mean, we weren’t getting, you know, drunk on the cliff. We were just, you know, something to warm you back up. So that’s. So. Anyway, but being italian, it was something that was probably going to always be a part of my heritage. But again, so I think that pastor oval is just a great place to go down there. We did have a really nice wine that I got allocated.
Cal:
It was a turley Zen, which certainly one of the best sins in the world. I think we sold it for three or $400. A bottle. I mean, it was, you know, if you want a wine that is just superb, you know, you might spend $75 on getting it shipped to you. You know, $75 for the wine. But I’ll tell you, if you really want to sit there and enjoy everything that wine has to offer and just take your time sipping it and have some food choices, you know, that’s what was the fun thing about what we did with Mike and Carol is that, you know, we had, you know, like some cheese and crackers and. And some dried meats and some dried.
Christa:
Berries and had all the cheese and.
Cal:
The meat, you know, read. Now you have that again, the Internet. Read the back of the bottle. You know, maybe a blue cheese, dried cranberries. Any dried fruit is going to be great, actually.
Christa:
Prunes, persimmons, pomegranates.
Cal:
So. So if you want to just come up with a like items, then look at the back of the bottle. I mean, the, you know, they create, the people that create the wine are going to be able to tell you what is best to match and pair with it. I mean, that’s their job. That’s their passion.
Christa:
And actually, Zinfandel is very well paired with barbecue and barbecue sauces.
Cal:
Yep, it does. I mean, it’s got, you know, some spice to it. You know, it’s got heat. Well, he comes from alcohol, but I was thinking more along lines of pepper.
Christa:
Black pepper.
Cal:
Yeah. Yeah. Black pepper is just something. You get a lot out of that. And again, and you’re sipping it and you’re sipping it slow and you’re enjoying it, and maybe you take a little bit. And this is the perfect way to make a match, a marriage with that. It would be to add a little bit of the wine to the barbecue sauce.
Christa:
That’s what I was thinking.
Cal:
Lamb or whatever it is you got on the. On the grill. Duck, you know, barbecue ducks always been, especially duck breast, you know, one of my favorites. So. So, you know, enjoy it again, having, you know, drinking a glass of wine versus drinking a glass of wine and having something to enjoy with it. Why not elevate the experience of that. Of that glass of wine? Kind of like when you go out to a restaurant, maybe, and you order a glass of wine and you look for an appetizer that might go well with that. So you just, you know, again, it’s your.
Cal:
You’re making a better celebration enjoyable.
Christa:
Instead of traveling to, say, napa, go down to Paso robles and go to Tin City. It is. It’s a maker’s market.
Cal:
Oh, yeah.
Christa:
It’s more about food and wine. It’s. It’s just a lovely location for people to travel to now. It’s becoming a destination.
Cal:
Yeah. And I know as I was looking up this, about that, lone madrone, just a beautiful place, just like a resort area. And they have places where they have cabins or, I don’t know, cabins or if it’s a motel, but they have a variety of places where you can stay there. They’re all. And they’re family friendly. You bring the family, they got a place. Bring your dog.
Christa:
Bring your dog.
Cal:
Yeah, they’re dog friendly. I like that. I see that they have a hope on the park. They have hope. Family wines also was named winery of the year by wine enthusiasts. So just, you know, you want to take a little trip. Certainly it’s cheaper than, you know, jumping on a plane, going to burgundy or, you know, or Tuscany if you want to go somewhere in Europe. But lone madrone, it’s lone.
Cal:
Second word. M A D R O N E. But go online, take a look at that, and if you get a chance, if you’re a wine person like I happen to be, then that’s a good place to go.
Christa:
What was this bottle you brought home last night? It had an interesting label on it.
Cal:
You know, it did. And I enjoyed the. I think I. Well, there’s still some left. I think I had a cup. I didn’t get any. It was called purple Cowboy, and I thought it was just hilarious. It was.
Cal:
So. It was really, really nice. I think it was only $7. I got it at, I think, grocery outlet.
Christa:
Did you buy it for the label?
Cal:
Yeah. Well, no, but I bought it because it looked interesting, because I was looking for blends. So it’s a blended wine. It’s a red wine, but it. But it’s blended with a variety of grapes, and I just want to read what the back label said here. It said that this purple Calboy, again, is the name of this wine. Legend has it that there was a group of winemakers who loved to ride rodeo on the weekends while putting. Good job.
Cal:
Our engineer is on top of it. Anyway, while putting together their blends, the red wine turned their teeth purple, so they became known as the band of purple Calboys. I thought that was it. You know, there is so much in life that really comes from a story. But anyway, so the purple Calboy wines are a tribute to these winemaking, Calboy riding Calboys. And they’re from pastor Robles. Yeah. And.
Cal:
And I love that they’re. They’re a supporter of, uh, think pink they had that on there that they have the western community grassroots campaign for the battle for breast cancer. So again, go down to paso robles and you can, and you can try out the purple Calboy. Um, I I, you know, so many things come out of a story, right?
Christa:
Yes.
Cal:
So, especially as you know, again, as I’m working on this, this cookbook, there’s a lot of things that are just, just cool and unique. But I think that we, you know, we have this, this one life, we go around this one time, you know, again, why not enjoy it and enjoy everything? And again, I’ll mention this probably almost every show, that very few things will do more than eat, perhaps sleep, you know, not in my case, but, you know, we eat and why not enjoy it? Why not take it to that next level? Why not practice being able to taste things? Practice being able to pick up things in different parts of your tongue? You know, your tongue picks up that sour and sweet and bitter and.
Christa:
Okay, talk about the sip. Bite. Sip. The technique for taking a little sip of wine, taking a bite of food, and then a sip of wine, how does that change flavors? What should you be looking for?
Cal:
Yeah, that’s exactly what you’re looking for is the experience of how that changes. It is positive or negative. You know, you might take a sip of stronger red wine, maybe a zinfandel. Then maybe you eat a small piece of blue cheese. So that’s going to be a creamy texture. It’s going to coat your tongue. Then you go back and drink the wine. And now all the tannins are gone because the wine has been softened and it’s been softened by what it is that you just ate.
Cal:
A. So there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of depth a person can go into. I mean, you know, we always say in the restaurant business, you drink what you enjoy. Okay, but why not if you’re, you know, into it, just. And if you’re into just enjoying things to a greater degree, why not just take these, these things and experiment with them and enjoy yourself?
Christa:
You took a sip of Zinfandel and you had a peppercorn steak, and they went back to the Zinfandel. If there’s any peppery notes in it, you should pick that up and bring that forward.
Cal:
Yeah, pepper would be accentuated, but what it is, that’s what the food does. It’s going to accentuate those flavors that we have and then we pick up more. So.
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 with you again next week with food, flavor and fun right here on cooking like a pro podcast.
