Cal and Christa DeMercurio
Unlock culinary secrets with Chef Cal and Christa DeMercurio in this episode of Cooking Like a Pro. Learn essential tips for everything from pomegranate preparation to perfecting your roast beef.
- Discover an efficient method for extracting pomegranate seeds underwater.
- Learn the best cuts for tender roast beef and techniques to avoid toughness.
- Quick tip for thickening soups using instant mashed potatoes and cooking grains and pasta separate from your soup.
- Advice from Chef Cal on entering the culinary profession and becoming a chef
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Timestamp Overview
00:00 Culinary tips: pomegranates, roast beef, becoming chef.
04:47 Grenadine ingredient, salad topping, nutritious, edible.
06:31 Extracting pomegranate seeds underwater; colors vary.
11:03 Tough: undercooked; Stringy: cut incorrectly.
15:23 Cook tough cuts under pressure; family recipes.
17:55 Precious memories found in grandpa’s fingerprinted recipe.
22:22 You always got soup and salad there.
23:09 College-level soup class teacher for years.
27:39 Mashed potatoes quickly thicken dishes efficiently.
31:41 Passion for serving people and respecting food.
32:27 Careful lettuce storage, cooking requires stamina.
35:55 Finesse needed to endure mundane culinary tasks.
39:54 Passionate teaching separates you; excitement sustains.
42:14 Thanks; see you next week on podcast!
Transcript
Christa DeMercurio:
Hey, food fans. Welcome to Cooking Like a Pro with Chef cal and me, Mrs. Chef, his wife, Christa DeMercurio. We’re dishing out culinary intuition, insights and imagination to spice up your meals and make cooking more fun. On today’s episode, my Chef husband and I discuss pomegranates. We have a Q and A on roast beef. We’re getting ready for soup season, and we also give advice to those who want to be a Chef. Let’s dig in.
Christa DeMercurio:
Today’s episode was broadcast and recorded live on AM FM radio.
Chef Cal:
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Cooking Like a Pro. You have Chef Cal and my beautiful Mrs. Chef across the table for me. Good evening. Yeah, Mrs. Christa, or that’s what these call her school. Yeah, she used to cook it for I don’t know where. We fellowship a little country church in there.
Chef Cal:
The school, they have a K through eighth grade there, so she was known as Mrs. Christa. She actually Mrs D. Mrs. Was it Mrs. D. She took over the. Over the kitchen, over the food.
Ben:
Yes, I did. You taught me. And you left me to take it over and run with it.
Chef Cal:
And you did fantastic. You did fantastic. You know, today I want to start off with something that’s an interesting fruit. I know I knew something about them. I know a lot more now after playing around with them for the last couple weeks. And. And that’s pomegranates. We got two huge pomegranate trees in our.
Chef Cal:
In our property. There’s got to be a hundred and fifty pomegranates.
Ben:
They are ready to go.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, I think I’m gonna put them in my little red wagon and go stand on the street. But, you know, in looking at some of the mythology of pomegranates and then their healing properties and so many other things, but they originally were known as the holy fruit, and they are a natural aphrodisiac. They literally elevate your testosterone. So if we need any more of that.
Ben:
Well, they originally, well, they said Adam and Eve didn’t necessarily partake of the apple tree, that it may have been a pomegranate tree.
Chef Cal:
It might have been a pomegranate tree that got him into trouble. And I know that I feed those things to our chickens and they’re pretty excited about it. So maybe that’s why it’s raising our chickens. Testosterone. Testerone. Does that mean they’re going to start laying eggs faster?
Ben:
That’s guy. That’s guy. Chickens, honey, not girl chickens. We have girl chickens.
Chef Cal:
Oh, so they have. What do they have something Different. Okay.
Ben:
It’s not guy chicken parts.
Chef Cal:
So we got to get a rooster now. All right, folks need a rooster. We are outside the city limit, so we. We can get a rooster. But anyway, it was. I looked up. Mentioned many times in scripture, actually, always in the Old Testament. So it was just something that was apparently available.
Chef Cal:
And it can grow in so many places because it’s got such a hard exterior. So we have a deer problem now. The deer season is over where they’re coming up and they’re eating our. Our herbs. They’re eating our cherry tomatoes or. Yeah, I’m getting ready to fend them off. I’m not sure.
Ben:
Well, at this point, I think we’ll just let them mow down the rest of the tomatoes. I think we’re done.
Chef Cal:
Let them mow down the rest. Okay. All right. Well, hey, you know it’s last supper. Well, we know it’s something tall because actually me. Is that. Oh, is that what you’re. I’m sneaking over and eating all your.
Chef Cal:
Ben’s coming over and. Are you a tomato fiend? I just listen to the show. I get hungry and then I follow you guys home. Eat your food. And then. Well, they are delicious there. I mean that. We have the sun.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, sun.
Ben:
We got the sun. Gold sun.
Chef Cal:
Gold sunburst, something like that. And there’s more of a pear shaped one. Yeah, Great big one. We had the big deal.
Ben:
That was a beef steak. Yeah, my. My 30 tomato. Yeah.
Chef Cal:
30 tomato.
Ben:
Yeah. All the dirt, all the water, all the time. I get one tomato the entire year.
Chef Cal:
Well, it. So it’s pomegranate season now, so you should be seeing pomegranates in your stores if you’re not seeing. They should be seeing them soon. They also increase. And I just went down this list of things and it was. They increased athletic performance. The Greeks used to eat them before, you know, they went out in the Coliseum, I guess. And really, I don’t think it saved them from the lions.
Chef Cal:
I’m not overly sure of that. But the thing about it that most people, I think, have a challenge with is that they are a seed that I.
Ben:
So you had one open tonight just before we came over. I popped one. Oh, I forgot these have seeds in them because I love juice. Yeah, the pomegranate juice, a little bit pomegranate flavor. But I’m not partial to the seeds.
Chef Cal:
Well, the juice itself is often used in what we call grenadine, which I love. Yeah. So, you know, which I would have, you know, a simple syrup of Course added. But if you sprinkle me out in a salad, I mean, they are extremely good for you. And you put them in a salad, it’s almost just like eating croutons. There’s certainly nothing wrong with them. You know, they are. They are edible.
Chef Cal:
You can sprinkle them in your yogurt. A variety of things. Ice cream toppings, one of the things I came across. But a cereal. Even put them in your cereal, like if you have, you know, oatmeal or something in the morning. But what you do is you want it. You want to cut the. They call it the crowned side.
Chef Cal:
So that’s the side that is not growing from, from the, from the tree.
Ben:
That’s the smooth side. That’s not where the little flower.
Chef Cal:
No, no, that. That is the flower. Because the flower looks just like a crown.
Ben:
Oh, okay.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. So what you do is you cut that off. And again, that’s really one of the challenges is that you get everything red. You know, you got to figure out what you’re not to do that. So. So I cut the. The end of it off the crown end maybe about a half inch. And then I put little.
Chef Cal:
Just scored side, almost like you would if you were doing orange wedges. But just through the outside, just through the exterior. And then you just face it down in ice cold water, let it sit there for about 10 minutes and underwater. And then you just start picking it apart. And what’s great is the seeds go straight to the bottom because of the weight.
Ben:
And then all the pith floats.
Chef Cal:
Any pith or any of the exterior, they had another name for it. I don’t know what it was. It started with an A, but anyway.
Ben:
So you don’t have to like bang on them because, I mean, I’ve seen so many things online, different text.
Chef Cal:
I watched that on YouTube a while back where they just kind of bang on it to bang them out. But. But this literally, I just. And from underwater, using my fingers, I was able to just pry all the seeds off. They all went to the bottom. Then I took a little skimmer, skimmed off all those little particles, and then just put them on a towel so they would dry. And another thing to remember too is when all the pomegranate seeds are together in there, they look very, very red because that’s their dominant color. But when you take them out, they can be anywhere from, you know, a light pink to really white color.
Ben:
Yeah, the ones you had there today that I saw, I was like, I thought pomegranate was red.
Chef Cal:
Yep. They still have all that fruit. Well, they’re inside of, you know, that, that red, I think, just kind of, you know, pulls itself itself through. But they’re delicious. They’re delicious. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with those again. You know, pomegranate martinis. We mentioned beverages.
Chef Cal:
Using them when. For things that you would normally call grenadine in for sweet, juicy. But they have that tartness. That tartness comes from the seed. It’s similar to what you would have if you. For a grape. A grape seed.
Ben:
I’ve never sat in, ate grape seeds.
Chef Cal:
If you’ve eaten grape, you’ve never had a grape that had a seed in it.
Ben:
Oh, the seeded ones, I try and stay away from those. Well, they’re too much work.
Chef Cal:
You do the same thing with watermelon, you know, I mean, she’s spoiled.
Ben:
Yeah, I am.
Chef Cal:
Literally, she’s spoiled. I remember coming home and I brought this beautiful watermelon on the side of the road. Brought it home. It was a crimson. I remember that was a crimson red. And it was a beautiful watermelon and it had seeds in it.
Ben:
And I just, I forgot that they had seeds because we always buy seedless.
Chef Cal:
I thought we were gonna have to go into this couples therapy or something because it’s work.
Ben:
It’s work.
Chef Cal:
Well, I know, but. But that. When I was a kid, that’s. They didn’t have. I do not remember. Seedless.
Ben:
No, they didn’t. When we were little and my dad would, you know, cut off a big old slab, you know, straight through the entire water. A big old plate size round slab. Like a, you know, you cut off a tree and it would be full of seeds. But as a kid, it was fun to kind of pick them away and move them around.
Chef Cal:
Spit them out. You have to spit them out your mouth.
Ben:
I always flaked them away with a fork. I never.
Chef Cal:
No.
Ben:
Okay. Different upbringing.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, apparently. But spit them out was one of the funnest things about. About the watermelon.
Ben:
You probably spill the sunflower seeds too.
Chef Cal:
Well, of course. No, no, you spit out the shell.
Ben:
The shell. Yeah. Okay.
Chef Cal:
Shell. So. But very nutritional. Extremely nutritional health benefits. They also, because they are this natural aphrodisiac. They. They’ll help your mood, you know? Yeah.
Ben:
All right.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. So if, if you hear me say something, sweetheart, like, you know, could you just go grab a pomegranate? Well, then you know that I’m. That’s more of a mood swing. All right, that’s needed.
Ben:
Code for a pick me up.
Chef Cal:
Code yes. Code or a safe word.
Ben:
Okay.
Chef Cal:
Pomegranate. Yeah. Well, don’t ask me how spell, but they will lower your blood pressure. I mean, they fight off cancer. They’re what? Well, mainly the. It comes down to the fact they’re an antioxidant.
Ben:
Okay.
Chef Cal:
You know, so that’s a good way. And anyway. Oh, and you know what? You’ll like this, too. They exfoliate your skin. So when you scrub your skin, like how women do, you use it, like.
Ben:
The loofah kind of.
Chef Cal:
The loofah.
Ben:
It could be a loofah. We’ll have to look that one up.
Chef Cal:
Okay, well, we’ll come back as people are looking up loofah and pomegranates and. But again, we appreciate you listening to Cooking Like a Pro. Back in just a moment. All right, well, welcome back again to Cooking Like a Pro. And we really appreciate you folks tuning in. It’s. It’s a thrill for us to be here because, you know, food is our passion. And we have a question from that somebody sent to our podcast, which is cookinglikeapro podcast.net/cookinglikeapropodcast.net and the question was, what kind of a roast do I get in order for it to become tender?
Ben:
And she’s been married, you know, she’s like, cooking the roast for 45 years, and she says, I have never had a not tough, not stringy roast. She says, I bought chuck roast, bottom rounds, rump roast, and I caramelize them, and I sear them, and I put them in the crock pot, and no matter what, they still come out tough and stringy. So what am I doing wrong?
Chef Cal:
Well, the. There’s two words there, tough and stringy. Tough would just mean that simply isn’t being cooked long enough because eventually everything gets tender and it falls apart. Stringy would lend me to believe that it’s being cut the wrong direction. Because, you know, all beef is. Is muscle fibers, and they’re held together by connective tissue. So they’re long strings of muscle which the animal gets more of as it moves and works and runs and sleeps and whatever it is that it does. So you have to kind of think about the animal and think about where on this animal can I buy pieces of meat that don’t work so hard? We call it working muscles and writing muscles.
Chef Cal:
And the muscles that work are the ones in the front. It’s where you get your chuck roast that comes off your shoulder, and then the ones in the back where you get your rump roast, you get your Sirloin. And you can’t get a good steak out of sirloin as well. But, but that middle part are all the end with the loin, the tenderloin, the strip loin, prime rib, you know, rib eye, Those all come from that center of the animal that just kind of hold the animal together. So you want to get a more tender piece.
Ben:
But what piece should you get? If you go to the store and you, you’re not thinking about what part of the animal is. If you’re looking at a label, what label should you be looking for?
Chef Cal:
I would get something that it sounds like what she said was were good ideas. I mean, a chuck is fine. Anything that comes from the back, sirloin. So basically anything that’s a large piece of meat, cut it into about 1 inch to maybe 3 quarter inch squares or about the same size pieces. Brown those off, throw in your vegetables and then cook it till tender. And nick, I mean, if you talk about a crock pot, something that’s slow cooking, what the cooking process is melting down that connective tissue that’s holding together. Right. That’s what makes it chewy.
Chef Cal:
So you have to break that down. That’s why you have to use a wet cooking method, a dry cooking method. You know, those items in the middle of the animal. You got your filet mignon, which comes off the tenderloin. You got your New York steak, which comes off the strip loin. You got your prime rib and your rib eye that comes out of that area. So those are all attached right in that middle area. So those, you can do dry cooking, dry cooking, char grilling, sauteing, roasting.
Chef Cal:
But if you’re going to cook something in liquid, the cooking process is what breaks that down. So I would just cook it, cook it longer, you know, cook it in a crock pot, put a lid on it and then say, okay, it might take eight hours, you know, it might take four hours. I mean, when people say something that’s tough, well, I don’t know how heavy their pot is. That’s a big thing. Yeah. You know, the bottom of the pot has to be heavy enough. But on a crock pot where surround cooking, same thing with instant pots. You know, they’ll cook it faster, they’ll break down that connective tissue faster and.
Ben:
You leave the entire thing whole. Should you ever cut a roast to a smaller size so it cooks faster?
Chef Cal:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Matter of fact, that’s what I would recommend. So you basically make it more of a stew. If you wanted to keep it whole, then it’s just going to take longer to cook. And that’s where I probably bring pressure in. You know, again, like an instant pot or something that’s going to, you know, or if you put something in the morning, you know, when you head to work, you know, and it cooks all day, it’s going to be.
Ben:
So if you’re looking at making actually like a whole roast, you know, you go and you get the carving station, you get a slice of roast beef. So you just need to cook that longer.
Chef Cal:
No, no, that’s never talking about something different now. We’re talking about something that’s going to be on the, maybe on the upper rump area where what they call it top round, which is that whole back butt in. It’s got, you know, it’s got two sides of the butt there on the animal. You can take that there. And it doesn’t have as much connective tissue. So you can roast that off and that’s going to give you something tender. If you want, say, like make a roast beef sandwich.
Ben:
So that’s called a top round. Top round, as opposed to a bottom round.
Chef Cal:
Bottom round is going to be a little bit lower.
Ben:
So round is not around this top round and a bottle. I did not know that.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, so just, you know, I mean, I think you can, you know, cook it under pressure. If you’ve got something that is a, from a area of the animal, the anatomy of the animal, which is going to be tough. I mean, that’s going to be muscular. So think about it that way, you know, and I’ve been working on this, this cookbook, but the first chapter is actually all family recipes. And so I was excited about that. We got my, like my mom’s Mac and cheese, that white Mac and cheese that my son Joshua loves. You know, this is like favorite thing in the world. And of course, dad’s biscotti holidays are coming up.
Chef Cal:
Dad’s gonna have to get going on his biscotti. He’s really nailed that biscotti.
Ben:
Yes, he has.
Chef Cal:
Well, except for the time mom mixed in. Well, I don’t know if it was mom, and she’s probably listening, so I apologize, mother, but somebody mixed the dried beans in with the pistachios.
Ben:
Oh, I didn’t know about that one.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. So instead of getting a nice pistachio, you got this rock hard bean.
Ben:
Whoops.
Chef Cal:
My Aunt Dare, when she was alive, she gave me a recipe for a spinach strawberry banana avocado salad with peppercorn poppy seed dressing.
Ben:
Yeah, you talked about that one a couple of weeks ago.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, I’ve done that in several restaurants. So it’s just a great combination and it’s unique. You know, you don’t want to get spinach anymore. About the only time you see spinach is like maybe, maybe with a, like a warm bacon dressing or something. Or after that it’s probably cooked, sauteed, creamed, whatever.
Ben:
But now you got me thinking. I see sometimes, you know, regular spinach and baby spinach. Spinach, what’s the difference? Just a younger growing.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. Once it’s younger and like anything else, the older it gets, the tougher it’s going to get. And then, of course, Grandpa’s barrel chicken. My dad showed me how to make that when I was so young. So young. And I recall, oh, I don’t know how many years ago it was. Grandpa, I remember he passed way back in the late. Well, it was 1980s, 9 and.
Chef Cal:
But he used to barbecue sauce and he never wrote it down. And I remember my mother giving me a cookbook once, Better Housekeeping. I think it was something like that. I was going through it.
Ben:
It was a sunset.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. It tells you how to fix your washer and dryer and you know what to do if your breaker goes out. And you know how to, you know, make how to knit mittens for kids.
Ben:
And then it’s how to build a barbecue.
Chef Cal:
And it’s got some food. Yeah. It should not only shows you how to cook on a barbecue, how to build it, but anyway, there was a page there with a barbecue sauce recipe and it literally had grandpa’s fingerprints. It must have been 50 fingerprints from him using those two pages and having the barbecue sauce on his fingers. So that was something that was very precious, very precious to me. And there’s those blessings in life. If you look for the blessings, you’ll find them. They’re out there.
Ben:
So speaking of barbecue sauce, going back to making a roast, would you use the barbecue sauce when you’re cooking a roast?
Chef Cal:
No. No, I wouldn’t. You know, if you want some acid in there, you do want some acid. So you can use anything from tomato to. Normally would be tomato paste, like what we used when we. I showed you how to make the stock the other day. I mean, but you could use anything. Tomato ketchup would work if that’s all you got, or, you know, in barbecue sauce.
Chef Cal:
But as a flavoring afterwards. I wouldn’t do it beforehand. And it just, it would again, it will give it that caramel amber look to it instead of that flat you know, brown board color. But, you know, you can make the same meal at home for about 25% of what it is costing you to go out and. And get it. And then. And that adds so much more to the. To the cooking and to the.
Chef Cal:
To the atmosphere. You know, you end up. It’s better for your mental health. It’s. It’s. It’s always gonna be healthier for you to buy your foods and cook them for you because, you know, you know the source of where they came from.
Ben:
You’re in control of the process, too, and all the additives and stuff like that, better nutrition.
Chef Cal:
Just a lot. A lot of things that, you know that. One of the things that I see was, like, even manners, you know, social behavior, you know, just. Just getting the family together at the table. That’s what we need to start doing, folks. You want to get the country back in shape? Let’s get the family back at the table. So cooking like a pro. Back in just a moment.
Chef Cal:
There you go, folks. There you go. We are supposed to be having fun, right? This is the only life we get. Let’s live it. Let’s have some fun. And food is where so much of that is, comes from. Just tail gaining a little bit on our previous discussion in the last block that, you know about food and being fun, having fun and enjoying family together. And our family, you know, we’re loud Italian family, so there can be all kinds of discussions going on, but.
Ben:
Well, I had fun last night. I made your mother’s enchiladas. How did I do? Did I do okay?
Chef Cal:
You did. You did good. You did good. You did that for the Boy Scouts.
Ben:
Yes, I did.
Chef Cal:
Is there an enchilada merit badge or was. What was.
Ben:
No, that was. It was kind of an addition to the cooking merit badge, and they already wrapped that up, but they still. They wanted to learn how to make enchiladas. So I made those last night and took some Costco chicken and broke it down, made it into that, and then took the bones and made a stock.
Chef Cal:
Yep, I seen that. You did that? I left it alone. I didn’t touch anything. I caramelized some onions and kind of just stood out of your way. Had the chili Brick. Chili Brick’s always something. It’s a frozen chili concoction that you can get. It used to be made by Denison’s.
Chef Cal:
I’m not sure.
Ben:
No, it’s not Denison’s. It’s Johnson’s.
Chef Cal:
Yeah.
Ben:
Wherever Johnson’s is.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. So anyway, you can get it in the frozen section. So if you want to make a chili, go to the freezer of your store and tell them you want chili. Brick. They might not know what it is, so.
Ben:
But I’ve got a quart of chicken stock leftovers. I only use two cups for the actual enchilada, so I got a quart chicken stock. What can I do with it?
Chef Cal:
Soup. Just right into our next category. Soup. Why? Because it’s. Fall falls in the air. I was cold this morning.
Ben:
When you’re down in the 40s.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, yeah. And it’s just, it’s. It’s a great thing, but it’s a great thing for a lot of things. One is it’s, it’s communal. It’s something that, you know, you just put a pot out there and people can just help themselves. The more great way to use up your leftovers. I mean, that’s what I did at dematerials. I’d walk in every day and I’d open up the freezer and open up the reach ins or refrigerators.
Chef Cal:
I’d look around because every day we. You got soup. Everyone that came in got soup and salad. In fact, if I look back, that’s the, that’s the probably the only advice I really remember my dad giving me when it came to the restaurant. When we first started, he said, make sure people get full. So we were Dean McCarroll’s restaurant. We were there for 18 years and you always got soup and salad. And in writing this cookbook, I’m going back and I’m looking at these multi course, you know, just extravagant meals for like $30, including wine or something, or $15.
Chef Cal:
And it’s five courses. And what’s your favorite soup?
Ben:
I mean, you can make any soup. We can literally make any type of soup. But do you have a favorite?
Chef Cal:
Well, I taught a class in soup making for college level for, I don’t know, a decade and a half or something. So it’s really kind of hard. Depends on the mood, of course. Thinner soups in the summertime, you know, good gazpacho that’s made real well. Use a little like Bloody Mary mix for the background flavor. Little, little spice in it. But going into the fall right now, you really want the thicker soups and cream. Cream of anything.
Chef Cal:
Cream of cauliflower, cream of broccoli, butternut squash, you know, and most of those are made. Yeah, butternut squash is a great one. But most all cream soups. In fact, if you’re a vegetarian and you go to a restaurant and you’re Having. And the soup of the day is cream of, you know, carrot. Make sure to ask them whether there is any protein in there in the sense of animal protein, because a lot.
Ben:
Of times they’ll use a chicken stock as a vegetable stock.
Chef Cal:
Chicken stock is almost always used. And it’s used in your minestrone. It’s used in a bunch of them. But I’d have to say probably French onion. Cream of seven Onion is a good one. And I know we actually put that one on.
Ben:
That one’s on YouTube. YouTube.
Chef Cal:
You can go to YouTube and you.
Ben:
Can try to search at YouTube. We’re not in the algorithm. Very good. So if you just go to culinary yours.net that will get you to use.
Chef Cal:
Well, if you. If you go to YouTube and type in, you know, cream of seven onion.
Ben:
Soup, it will come up.
Chef Cal:
Because it’s like, the only one on there.
Ben:
Yeah, it’s the only one on there.
Chef Cal:
The normally French onion soup is what it is. It’s a beef broth enhanced with tomato. Your bouquet garni, of course, like we talked about stalks last week, your parsley, bay leaf and thyme. And then just as many onions as you can put in there. You cannot put too many onions in French. Yeah.
Ben:
Because it’s all about the onions. Yeah.
Chef Cal:
And then you might tighten it up if it needs it. But a slurry would work. Little cornstarch would be fine. Cornstarch and water. Get it to the right consistency. Because one of the best things, of course, that makes the soup is having all that melted bubbly cheese on top. Now the French. And then usually some croutons between the soup and then some toasty croutons.
Chef Cal:
So they don’t, you know, soak up into the soup. They should stay nice and toasty. But generally it’s going to be a combination of some kind of Swiss cheese. Usually that’s Gruyere, and then Romano and Parmesan. It’s usually three different cheeses. And they can be whatever you want. It depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for something that melts like it’s real stringy, if that’s your look, then you would go with mozzarella.
Chef Cal:
That’s why they use mozzarella on pizza, you know, because it holds everything together. So when you get that big stretch, and there’s actually a term for that stretch, I don’t know.
Ben:
Cheese pull.
Chef Cal:
It’s the cheese.
Ben:
The poles, it’s the pole.
Chef Cal:
Is it the pole?
Ben:
Yeah, it’s a cheese pull. So with the French onion Soup. I’ve heard some people say they put a big, giant crouton on top, but you’d have to cut through that. Some put small croutons, and some do souffles. I mean, can you vary the type of bread on top?
Chef Cal:
Yeah, anything. Basically, the idea is just to keep the cheese on top while it melts. So usually just a couple thin slices of crostini on an angle, and you put a couple pieces on there. And because you want the consistency, it’s like I was over visiting mom and dad today, and mom was making clam chowder, and it was a little bit thin. So I’m gonna put you on the spot here. What’d she do to thicken it up?
Ben:
Did she put a roux in it?
Chef Cal:
No, it was already cooked.
Ben:
It was already cooked. Cream?
Chef Cal:
Nope. Okay, definitely bring it out. I know that you know this.
Ben:
Okay. She’s thickening a clam chowder.
Chef Cal:
That was already made.
Ben:
It was already made.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. How many times have I said, where are the mashed potatoes? Oh, you did trick me on that. Our potatoes actually in clam chowder.
Ben:
Ye. And potatoes like potato buds. Potato.
Chef Cal:
Potato buds, potato flakes, potato pearls, whatever type of potato. Potato. We used to use those all the time, especially in a vegetable soup. You know, you get done. Maybe your broccoli cheddar isn’t quite where you. Where you want it as far as consistency. You know, you don’t want it, you know, sticky or really even stringy, for that matter, but you want it, you know, to be tighter. Of course.
Chef Cal:
And, yeah, some instant mashed potatoes. Instant mashed potatoes.
Ben:
There you go.
Chef Cal:
I always kept them around because you never could tell, because when you’re in a hurry and all of a sudden it’s like, gosh, that needs to be thick. Like I said. You mentioned cream. Well, the cream would have to cook down for a while. You mentioned roux, and the flour would have to cook out for a while. So when you’re in a hurry, it’s almost like using a xanthan gum as a cold food stabilizer. You can use mashed potatoes as a warm food stabilizer.
Ben:
So I’m thinking of another soup that I have not had in forever my mom used to make when I was little. It’s a beef barley soup.
Chef Cal:
Beef barley, then that falls into thin. So soups are basically broken up into just a few different categories. Generally there’s five. But you have thick soups, like we talked about, maybe cream of broccoli cheddar. Then you have thin soups like a beef Barley chicken noodle would be certainly.
Ben:
One of them because you leave a more brothy.
Chef Cal:
Then you can go to a national soup. You can also use a bisque. A bisque is very similar to a creamed soup, like a creamed vegetable soup. But a bisque would generally always signify that there was shellfish.
Ben:
Okay. So it is seafood. So seafood bisque of some sort.
Chef Cal:
Lobster bisque would be probably the most popular. Most popular one that’s out there that you’ll see. But, but there are, There are a lot of them. Minestrone, you know, it’s. That would come off of a broth base. Right. Because a minestrone has a broth, it’s not thickened up. It might get a little bit tighter because of pasta.
Chef Cal:
You know, and here’s one thing. When I’m making soup, if I’m using a starch, and you mentioned barley earlier, I cook that separate and then we add it as it goes out. In, like in a restaurant, we might say, okay, here’s some barley right next to it. You throw in a tablespoon of barley and then you put the nice hot, you know, broth soup over it, kind of like you would in a consomme. The consomme is named after it’s garnish. So basically it’s the garnish that’s in there. Then you pour on this super, super flavorful, completely crystal clear liquid.
Ben:
Yeah, because a lot of times I’ve, you know, in the past, I would make a minestro. It’d be fantastic flavor. And then I’d put in the potatoes and the pasta, and then all the liquid to disappear, all the flavor would disappear. So then I start thinking, okay, what is the pasta? Separate?
Chef Cal:
Yeah, yeah. Star soaks it all up. So that’s the whole, the whole purpose. Mind if you’re putting even chicken and chicken rice soup, I do the same thing and keep the rice separate because for one, you know, it’s getting the right portion. And you’re also not getting this just bowl of like, you know, starchy, you know, noodles or rice or some other kind of starch instead of a nice, well rounded bowl of soup.
Ben:
Now do you do just a plain rice or plain pasta, or can you cook them in a stock just so they get a little bit of flavor in them too?
Chef Cal:
You could cook them in stock, but I wouldn’t worry about it because you really kind of want. I mean, if I’m adding barley, for example, to something, then I’m adding that because I want that nuttiness. I want that Earthiness, you know, I don’t need it to taste like, you know, a particular type of protein. So I would be neutral with that and appreciate you tuning in. And we’ll be right back to talk a little bit more about food. Cooking Like a Pro. Chef Cal and Mrs. Chef Christa, welcome back to Cooking Like a Pro.
Chef Cal:
I really wanted to let out a, you know, kind of a James Brown scream there. I wasn’t sure in the middle. Yeah, I can’t do it for one. You’re the singer, you’re the one, you’re the one with the vocal cords. But yeah, I don’t know, my wife did. She kind of chastised me off the air. So I just want, since she did it on, off the air and I don’t have it on tape, I have to say it. And it was this segment I wanted to talk a little bit about a question I get a lot which has to do from people that want to be a Chef, you know.
Chef Cal:
And I know I brought this up a couple weeks ago to Charlieu and it’s like, what would you tell your 20 year old self?
Ben:
My response was, don’t do it.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, yeah, run. Yeah. But you know, well, it is, it’s difficult. It’s.
Ben:
You have to have the passion first.
Chef Cal:
You have to have a passion for two things. You have to have a passion to serve people and you have to have a passion about food, about loving food, about, about treating it right, about respecting it. One of the things that really, I don’t know, I get it just. I get taken back when I see it is people mistreating, you know, the food. Like carrying a fish by the tail. You know, I, I know when I go up to pier. Was that Pier 51? What’s one of the one up. Is it Seattle? Seattle where they throw the fish, you know, And I’m just thinking how they’re breaking all the vertebrae and, and is pulling all those fillets apart, you know, and, and, but yeah, you need to take care of it.
Chef Cal:
And you know, especially we talked, we mentioned and talked about lettuces last week. And you know, these are things that bruise things that you have to be careful of and careful with. And that’s why storing is such a big thing. But I do have a lot of people get a hold of me and this happens quite often and say, you know, my son wants to be a, you know, a Chef. Yeah. I mean he really likes to cook. I said, well, if he really likes to cook, you know, it takes some stamina. It is certainly the Atmosphere is different than it was.
Chef Cal:
You know, I don’t think you’d have to worry about getting hit, you know, in this day and age. But those European Chefs were pretty mean. When, I mean, you. It was. Everything was kind of like when you see, like, Ramsey tv, Gordon Ramsay, and Hell’s Kitchen, that kind of stuff. I don’t really watch that stuff, but it’s that type of command. It’s like an army. It’s a begrad, but it’s like an army for God.
Chef Cal:
I mean. And there is only one person in charge of the army. Well, that’s where the Chef.
Ben:
Yeah, that comes from. The military. Military is where the current kitchen was designed from us.
Chef Cal:
Yes, Chef. Yes, Chef. I’ve been trying to get her to just to dress me that way and around the house. Now we’re coming up on, you know, 20 years of marriage, and she’s. She’s never said, yes, Chef. Yes. I don’t know.
Ben:
Yes, Chef.
Chef Cal:
Yes. There you go. Funny. I’m gonna. I’m gonna. I’ll get the.
Ben:
I’ll get the.
Chef Cal:
I’ll start, and I’ll get the next producer. Dressing you as such. Yes, if you splice that out, yeah?
Ben:
Yes, Chef.
Chef Cal:
Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Ben. Yes, Chef. Yeah, so. So. But find a place to go to. Basically.
Chef Cal:
There’s a couple different ways to do it. And if you want to do a journeyman or an apprenticeship, you can get on with an organization that’s nationwide called the American Culinary Federation. That’s what I did back in 1978. I graduated my apprenticeship in 81. And it’s just very well rounded. But then you’re actually. It’s more of a journeyman style where you’re getting a paycheck as you’re working, plus, you know, you’re going. You’re finishing high school, going into college.
Chef Cal:
So you. There’s always. You always got to eat, which is always a benefit. But I. I just really loved it. I don’t. I don’t know that the servanthood part of it, you know, was there at the beginning. It certainly became that when.
Chef Cal:
When touching tables became such a big thing for me. And that’s one of the chapters in my. My book. Touching tables is. It’s just. That’s how you connect with people. That’s how you see someone, and you enjoy yourselves, and you have conversation and you have a community, because food is community. And in order for it to be community, you can’t be by yourself.
Chef Cal:
So that was a big part of it.
Ben:
Well, I found an interesting quote as I’m writing these smaller cookbooks that we’ll have for sale here in a few weeks, one quote I found, but it’s Chef Elaine Chapelle. He said, you have to love either what you’re going to eat or the person you are cooking for, then you have to give yourself up to cooking. Cuisine is an act of love.
Chef Cal:
There you go. I remember Charlie Trotter signed one of his books, after Love, There is only Cuisine.
Ben:
It is. It’s a passion project.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, I got a fair. Well, how am I going to sign my book now? I’m first off, I got to get the thing done. But I remember Thomas Keller was, it’s all about finesse. And finesse is one of those things that, you know, when I talk about being in a kitchen. First off, we talked about the tyranny of a recipe last week. Well, I wanted to mention the tyranny of mundane tasks, because you have to be the type of person that does not mind doing something that’s mundane, because if you’re going to cut an onion or onion soup, you’re cutting a 50 pound bag, okay? So you’re cutting onions for an hour. So you better not have a problem with doing the same thing over and over and over, because that’s.
Ben:
I was literally thinking about this yesterday as I’m pulling all of the chicken meat off of the bones. And that took quite a while to do. Pulling each little piece off. And I’m going, but what got me through it, I had a podcast going. So able to kind of check out on what you’re physically doing, but then, you know, still keep your mind going with, you know, some sort of learning elsewhere. So to be able to kind of not see it as something that is mundane, but something that you are accomplishing for family and for friends. But you can also take your mind off of it.
Chef Cal:
Was it a food podcast?
Ben:
Actually, it was. I was listening to Gordon Ramsay.
Chef Cal:
Oh, man, oh, man, I feel violent.
Ben:
I was learning how to make lobster ravioli.
Chef Cal:
Well, fine, I can teach you how to make lobster ravioli. You don’t have to go to another Chef. Wow. You know, I don’t know. Hey, Ben, we might need to get into couples therapy. Yes, Chef. Thank you. Very good.
Chef Cal:
But anyway, but when they asked me this question, what advice do you have for young. For some of this young that wants to do it again? If they love to do it, they love to work with their hands. It is, you know, high temperature in long periods of time on your feet. But imagine, you know, a lot of jobs are and again, you know, it’s not like, you know, 12 hours in the dungeon peeling potatoes like, you know, Michelle, Richard told me back when he was in starting off, when he was 12 years old and own France. But it has evolved and modified to what it is today now.
Ben:
So before you go signing up for the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, which is probably one of the biggest ways to go to learn in the world. Just go work in a restaurant, experience it, shadow someone. I mean, you know, these schools are expensive.
Chef Cal:
Find out something that if it’s something you want to do. And again, and I didn’t go to Chef’s school, you know, and I made it to, I would have to say, the epitome of my profession. I mean, I think if you can get all the way to winning a gold medal in the World Cooking Olympics, that you’ve, you know, what you’ve done to train yourself and the people you’ve surrounded yourself with, that you’ve been. That you’ve been successful.
Ben:
Well, and you went all the way to certified executive Chef, which, you know, executive Chef is one thing, but he’s certified by the American Culinary Federation. It is a lot of work. You have to go through testing. You have to prove yourself.
Chef Cal:
That was 25 years. I was a certified executive Chef for 25 years. There’s only one step higher, which is certified master Chef. And yes, we were able to bless to speak with Chef Bert Coutinho down at the Sardine Factory. You go down to the Sardine Factory, you definitely tell them that Chef Cow from Reading, California, said, said hi to Chef Burt. He’s 85 years old and he’s still there.
Ben:
He’s running the show.
Chef Cal:
And he is. It was one of them, I would say, not one. Probably the most emotional experience I’ve ever had with another Chef. And I’ve had a lot of them. I’ve been very blessed to work with a lot of people that are and that are no longer with us and.
Ben:
Many that are, because he’s passionate about the restaurant business. He’s passionate about people, passionate about serving.
Chef Cal:
And we keep coming back to that word passion. You know, it has to be something that you’re excited about doing because it is a lot of work. And there has to be something that kind of separates you and. But, you know, I’ve taught everywhere from kindergarteners all the way through, you know, fairly elderly folks when, when I was teaching adjunct out at the college and other, going traveling to schools and teaching etiquette and teaching manners and like, which fork to use and you know, when it’s prom season, we. I used to go out because restaurants hate prom season because the kids just don’t know how to act. You know, they put their gum under the table. They all get up and go to the bathroom at the same time. They don’t know to hold the door open for someone.
Chef Cal:
Just crazy stuff.
Ben:
I think we have one of those tables with a gum underneath it still.
Chef Cal:
We do. We actually have a table from the hatch cover.
Ben:
Yeah. And I looked underneath it one time. Oh.
Chef Cal:
Oh, my. Yeah. So that. There’s some serious DNA under that table and that. And that DNA that is from. That’s 50 years old. So I don’t know. We might have to.
Chef Cal:
Maybe we should auction off just the gum. I don’t know. It was. But anyway, it is one of those few things we have left. But as far as finishing up, just advice to young culinarians. Again, you know, it’s. Food’s about community. You need to serve.
Chef Cal:
You need to have a passion for it. You need to like to work with your hands. You need to be creative, you know, not creative until, you know, I remember the Chef, when I came up and said. I said something to him. I said, Chef, I got this great idea about, you know, how to. We could tweak this item. And he said, well, great. When you become Chef, we’ll look at it.
Chef Cal:
I said, yes, Chef. Yes. Yeah. I wasn’t about to. He said, you know. You know, because it is. There is a hierarchy, and there needs to be, because there’s so many moving parts, you know, in a kitchen, it’s just things are flying and things are moving, and, you know, there’s people all over, and somebody has to kind of, you know, be the leader. To ring out.
Ben:
You have to get to be mentally tough at a point. For me, for me, learning from you, I said the one word. Also, fascination. Food can be so fascinating in how it works and how the flavors meld.
Chef Cal:
There’s just.
Ben:
You gotta learn it, understand it.
Christa DeMercurio:
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.
