Cal and Christa DeMercurio
Join hosts Christa DeMercurio and Chef Cal as they dive into essential kitchen practices and food safety tips in this episode of the “Cooking Like a Pro” podcast. Get chef advice on everything from poblanos and mole, to couscous, and clams.
KITCHEN TIP:
Storing your spices near the stove might be convenient, but it’s not ideal! Heat and light can degrade seasonings. Keep them in airtight containers in cooler, darker places to maintain their quality and flavor.
- Insights into Mexican cuisine, what’s popular
- Efficient cooling techniques and guidelines
- Understanding grain-to-water ratios for various grains
- Don’t overcook your clams
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Timestamp Overview
00:00 What the internet says about Mexican food.
05:18 Evaluating Mexican restaurants by chile relleno quality.
08:44 Proper food temperatures: cold 35-40°F, hot 140-145°F.
10:55 Ice wand used to cool sauce.
13:09 Wash hands, prevent cross-contamination, replace tools.
17:05 Efficient food use, safety crucial during holidays.
20:25 Rice and polenta.
25:28 Alternatives available other than traditional potatoes.
27:26 Chef Cal and Christa discuss shellfish allergies.
30:59 Cooking method determines choice of clam.
32:35 Types of clams.
36:07 Frozen seafood often better; thaw overnight in fridge.
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 Mexican cuisine. Cooking a variety of grains, cooling your leftovers safely, and shellfish and different types of clams. Let’s dig in. Today’s episode was broadcast and recorded live on AM FM radio.
Chef Cal:
Welcome, welcome, welcome, one and all, to Cooking Like a Pro. You have found us Chef Cal and Mrs. Chef Christa here to talk about.
Christa DeMercurio:
Hello, hello, hello.
Chef Cal:
You know, Mexican, Hispanic food, it’s just something that always goes good when it chills down outside. Spicy, spicy, warm, warm. Remember? And they always say, don’t touch the plates when you go to Mexican restaurants.
Christa DeMercurio:
That’s true.
Chef Cal:
Which, of course, I always touch the plates because I can’t feel anything at my fingertips anyway, you know, But I.
Christa DeMercurio:
Remember the very first time I had heard, experienced, tasted, smelled, sizzling fajitas.
Chef Cal:
Oh, yeah.
Christa DeMercurio:
They’re walking by, literally sizzling. And it was. It was. Everybody would stop and look. Yeah, that was like back in the 80s. Those became popular.
Chef Cal:
Very festive. And. And again, we talked about last week that, you know, 80% of what you taste, you’re actually not tasting, you’re smelling.
Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. You get those bell peppers and onions.
Chef Cal:
I mean, and unless you have the non ability to smell. I want to smell. I want to taste.
Christa DeMercurio:
Okay, well, that’s what happens when you’re sick and you have a cold. That’s why you can’t taste your food. And you go to crackers and chicken noodle soup.
Chef Cal:
There you go. So, okay, so Mexican food. So I thought this would be fun. So I went online and I’ve got proof. And you’re going to want to. We’re taping this, right? The Internet is not right about everything. I found that out today. Yep.
Chef Cal:
I went to it, I said, okay, top ten Mexican food items in. In the United States, number one was nachos.
Christa DeMercurio:
What?
Chef Cal:
Yeah. Then it went down to burritos and quesadillas. But I’ll tell you, in the top 10, you know what, wasn’t there tacos. A taco. So then I go, and I thought, well, that seems kind of strange. So I googled, you know, the top 10 foods in Mexico, and number one was taco. One of the biggest chains, you know, restaurants like, in the history of the United States, you know, besides McDonald’s, you know, it’s probably Taco Bell Right. It’s a taco.
Christa DeMercurio:
Maybe it’s because nachos has become popular as an appetizer in a lot of the big family restaurants like Applebee’s. And maybe that’s it, the nacho, because now they got nacho fries and.
Chef Cal:
But what I like is I like soft tacos. You know, soft tacos, the fish tacos. I know we had some great. I had some red snap rice season, and we made those fish tacos a couple weeks ago. And really, if you can barbecue it, then you can get that added flavor, smokiness, and you don’t need to add a lot. And actually, this was something else I looked up again. It’s the number one food item was a mole poblano, and there’s literally between 25 to 30 ingredients in it.
Christa DeMercurio:
Oh, yeah, all moles. People’s mole is not a chocolate sauce.
Chef Cal:
Well, it’s peanut, and chocolate is two of the big contributing factors. And there’s also, like, eight different chilies. I mean, it goes on and on. There are seeds in there, and there’s looking at several different recipes. And I was thinking, see, when I. When I take a bite of something, I want to be able to enjoy a balance of all those flavors. Okay. So I take a bite of a chicken pot pie.
Chef Cal:
I want to taste the chicken. I want to taste the carrots, the celery, whatever. You know, if you got, you know, diced potatoes, whatever you’ve got in there, I wanted. When I take a bite of that. Well, if I want to take taste of salsa, you know, And I found something out. I was talking to mom today, and I didn’t know this. I literally thought. I did not look it up the Internet, but we have something in our house, and it’s just a simple.
Chef Cal:
We were raised on this, and it came from my grandpa. Grandpa Gross. And it was just tomatoes, onions, and jalapenos. And grandpa used to go down and visit with family in Mexico all the time, him and grandma, and they put it on everything. So grandpa coined the term Mexican butter, and that’s where it came from. So I’ve always just called this Mexican butter. And basically, it’s just a super simple salsa, and you put it on everything. Like, in America, we would use butter.
Chef Cal:
Down there. They put what they call Mexican butter. There’s no butter in it. It’s just used like butter.
Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. Spread across the top. Yeah.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. So we got to make sure that grandpa gets. Gets. Gets credit for that. Yeah.
Christa DeMercurio:
But did you know that mole actually translated English just means sauce? So guaca mole. It’s a sauce. It’s an avocado sauce. Guaca is avocado, mole is sauce.
Chef Cal:
I don’t know. I’m. For me, I judge a Mexican restaurant on its chile R because my mom makes the best chili Reload. And I was. I was raised on it. And what it is, is it’s most of the time they’ll take the egg whites, which is with the batter they dip a chile relleno in. They’ll take the poblano, you know, throw it over the heat, and then put it in a bag or put it in a covered bowl so you can peel the outside exterior off. And then you stuff that with jack cheese, which you hardly see jack cheese anymore.
Chef Cal:
And then you just dip that in an egg battery. But it’s really just whisked up eggs. In a Mexican restaurant, they do it in with whip. They whip the eggs and the egg whites until it’s just as foamy. And what you end up getting is this pillow.
Christa DeMercurio:
So it’s an egg white batter. It’s not got flour in it.
Chef Cal:
I don’t know what they do. They whisk it up and imagine. Well, you flour it first. Got to be wet, dry, wet, but.
Christa DeMercurio:
And then are they deep fried? Because I actually never. I’ve never eaten them.
Chef Cal:
Well, they deep fry them, but my mom doesn’t. Japan fries them. And they’re so good. But there’s a lot of substance. There’s chili and there’s cheese. There’s a little bit of an egg coating. You don’t have this massive thing. Just you have to dig through to get to the good stuff that’s in the center.
Chef Cal:
So anyway, mom, thank you for everything you do. Chicken enchiladas and chili rianos. And we know now that grandpa’s the one that coined the term Mexican butter.
Christa DeMercurio:
So I need to talk to your mom because she was talking about when she learned how to make, she would take like cans to chop things up with and cut things.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, it was different. There used to be only one size can of tomato, so it’s been different. A big change on that, too. So we’re going to go and quick. Take a quick break here, but you’ve got Chef Cal and Mrs. Chef Christa on Cooking Like a Pro. Be back in just a moment. Welcome back to Cooking Like a Pro and Chef Cow with my wife, Ms.
Chef Cal:
Chef Christa. And you know, with that, they had a commercial in the. In the middle there with Black Bear Diner. And I was their corporate Chef for a couple years. And I actually ran into their corporate Chef. He’s been doing it since a different title. I think that’s what he is. But anyway, Jeff, Juan ran into him the other day.
Christa DeMercurio:
They just keep growing and growing and growing, expanding.
Chef Cal:
I think they’re 160. I think they were there. I think they’re at 60 when, when I was a part of the team and, and now they’re, they’ve just blown up one season. 160, 170. You know, good home style meals, you know, and, but it’s just, it’s the thing that’s so cool is that it started here.
Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah.
Chef Cal:
You know, it started Mount Shasta. Right, Mount Mount Shasta. And then also after that down here in Reading. And that’s where it, you know, it exploded, you know, but, you know, homegrown. Homegrown and great variety. So. Yep, they got my endorsement. Black Bear Diner.
Chef Cal:
I always check it out. And I talked to the health department the other day. So what we have is we have something called the danger zone. And when you’re in a restaurant and you need to be aware of this at home, it’s not complicated. But for food safety, you know, standards, just certain things you need to know. And basically there’s what we call a danger zone. And food either needs to be under it or over it. So that danger zone a number of years ago was 45 degrees on the bottom side.
Chef Cal:
So refrigerators generally run right around 40, 38 somewhere there. And then if it was hot, it had to be above 140 and held 140, 140, 145 is what’s considered hot. If you take a bite of soup and it’s nice and hot, but it doesn’t burn your tongue, then, then it’s right around that, that 144, 145 area. If you’re tempting your soup, that’s, that’s what you want to serve it at, or serve it maybe a little hotter. Make sure your bowls are warm and make sure you get it to them quickly. But, but, but that, that lower temperature has now has dropped. And I think it’s because you see, I know there’s an E. Coli, listeria.
Chef Cal:
There’s, you know, a lot of things are going on. There’s different things like salmonella and trichinosis from pork. So there’s a number of different bacteria contamination. So things can be contaminated in basically three different ways. Right. Physically, something physically drops in there, or chemically, then you use bleach or something like that in there, you’re not supposed to and the other one is being contaminated by bacteria.
Christa DeMercurio:
So the Easy number of 40 to 140 is gone now because it’s going to drop down to 35. So now we get another 35 to 140.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. So I don’t know if you need to turn your refrigerators down, but one of the main things that people I would say focus on is cooling your food down quickly. Whatever your leftovers are, cool them down quickly. The recommendation is to cool it within two hour period. Cool it down to 70 degrees before you put it in your refrigerator, then.
Christa DeMercurio:
Wrap it and put it away.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. Because if you make a gallon of something and you stick it hot just off the stove and then that means everything in your refrigerator the entire temperature goes up to whatever goes up to 120 or whatever. But it goes up into that danger zone and then bacteria is.
Christa DeMercurio:
You can do is if you have a big pot of soup is start breaking it down into smaller containers so that they can cool down faster, more surface area. And then even ice. The restaurant they got the ice wand. I don’t know if you can get a hold of something like that for home use.
Chef Cal:
I’m sure that they can. Basically it’s just a plastic device. Let’s just imagine something like a small baseball bat and it’s hollow, it’s heavy plastic and you fill it full of water and then you freeze it and then you just stick it in there. It’s called an ice wand. I generally what I used to do, like if I was going to make this, I was making a cream sauce and I was making like 40 gallons of it. I would just make it a little bit tighter. I’d make it a little bit tighter and I would enhance the flavor of the cream sauce. And then when it was done, I just dump a bucket of ice in it.
Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah.
Chef Cal:
And you and it. And it goes down. You don’t need two hours. It goes down in like two minutes. And get it down to that temperature and get it and get it in the box. But the bet, one of the best ways I think that you can tell is if there’s anything in, if you ever see anything in your refrigerator, it as condensation underneath the lid. You know, then, then it, it was covered and it went in there. Too hot.
Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. So try and get down to get down to at least to room temperature.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. Before you put it in. And then, and then. Or you can cover it and leave a little opening, you know, because again you need to let that heat out. That’s that’s the whole idea with it. But the temperature range is good. You know, everything they, they recommend getting everything up to 160 degrees to eat it. But then again, that’s really unnecessary.
Chef Cal:
For one, seafood is only 145, but beef goes anywhere from, you know, 120 degrees to 100. 120. 125 is rare. And then 160 is well done and basic. Basically it goes up about 8 or 9 degrees. You know, for rare, medium rare, medium, medium, well, well done. So, you know, if you need to buy from purveyors that you trust, because if not, you know, because you can’t cook all your steaks, you know, 160. If you had a prime rib house and you cooked everything 160, nobody would come, right? Because everything’s well done.
Christa DeMercurio:
So then you need to get things out of the fridge, cooked, served, and then cooled back down faster because you’re never going to get up to that 140 range if you’re staying under 140. Like 120.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. So keep it down. Keep it cool down. Best practices for sanitation safety. Let’s see. Wash your hands. That’s always the first thing to do, right? Always wash your hands and just be aware of cross contamination. You know, if you’re using, if you’re cutting on a cutting board and you’re cutting a protein, especially something like poultry, then get rid of that cutting board and use it entirely.
Chef Cal:
Different cutting board for cutting your vegetables.
Christa DeMercurio:
And sometimes just have, you know, a cutting board that is a vegetable cutting board. Another cutting board that is the poultry cutting board. Another one that is your seafood cutting board.
Chef Cal:
No, that’s a great point because in the restaurant business we have a different colored cutting board. So, you know, yellow board is for chicken, green is for cutting up produce, red is for cutting up meat. So it’s easy to do. So, you know, at least you know the same things being cut on that. But then again, you always have.
Christa DeMercurio:
And that’s if you have plastic cutting boards and plastic cutting boards, you can sanitize heavily with bleach and run through the dishwasher and get that extreme heat to clean them, which is different than a wood cutting board, which can’t go through the dishwasher. So it’s a little different process to care for.
Chef Cal:
I can, I can confirm it. Odell’s. The plastic ones go through the normal.
Christa DeMercurio:
Dish and they get sanitizer, but you can’t put the wooden one in sanitizer.
Chef Cal:
Because it’s bad for the wood.
Christa DeMercurio:
Correct. It will dry it out.
Chef Cal:
Well, to dry it out. Also, it will soak in the sanitizer. It can as well.
Christa DeMercurio:
So it will absorb the flavor and the smell and the.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, yeah. I think the bigger thing on the wood. Wood cutting boards, though, is they literally. They just start falling apart. You know, you start running them through a machine, they’ll just start falling apart. Wood and water. Wood and water. Don’t.
Chef Cal:
Don’t work. But. But just think about the best practices. Think about the cross contamination. Make sure you’re cooling stuff down. Look at. Sell by dates. You know, these are very simple things.
Chef Cal:
You just gotta get in a habit when you buy something. Know how long, you know, I mean, I’m not gonna buy something that has, like, you know, four days left on it when I’m not gonna use it until, you know, next week, a week later, because it only has four days of what we call shelf life before it needs to be cooked.
Christa DeMercurio:
And I think we have, you know, kind of changed the way that we buy, especially with Costco and with COVID We try and stock up. And I think we have way too much food in our households, to be quite honest, to be safe, because they’re going to expire before you can actually get to them and cook them.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, yeah. I think that being in control on your inventory. But you don’t really think that. I mean, in a restaurant business, we think about it all the time because that’s what we do. And we do inventory. We see what we have and everything rotates, you know, you can find. I remember the other day, I was looking through some. Some box of seasonings that.
Chef Cal:
That I had kind of set off. I don’t even know what restaurant they came from. One of. One of ours. And I mean, there. There are seasonings in there that were like, from the Reagan administration, you know, I mean, so, I mean, you’re thinking that it’s probably not going to. But so. So just.
Chef Cal:
Just keep an eye on it. And also with your seasonings, make sure that they’re. They’re in airtight containers. Because almost always in a kitchen, you’re going to have. Yeah. Which is humidity. And that humidity does not help anything when it comes into your seasonings.
Christa DeMercurio:
Well, that’s why usually you have the dry storage in a restaurant. It’s away from the humidity. It’s kind of the cooler back part of the kitchen.
Chef Cal:
But at home, your seasonings are just.
Christa DeMercurio:
Generally next to the stove.
Chef Cal:
Fairly close.
Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah.
Chef Cal:
You know, and so the heat, the humidity, and then Also, the, the color, the darkness. You really want to get seasonings that are in a darker container because light will help, will destroy things as well.
Christa DeMercurio:
There’s another thing that you probably should take care of is if your seasonings are in a cabinet that has under counter lighting or under cabinet lighting, the light will emit heat. And sometimes you can reach in those cabinets and they’re warm. If you got your seasonings on top of those cabinets with those lights, that’s not good for them.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, kitchen design, well, we’ve done enough of it. But, you know, again, so food safety, real important. You don’t want anyone getting sick, especially the holidays coming up. And you got Thanksgiving and there’s just so much food, you know, and you got to start divvying it up, you know, because just no room in the fridge. But, you know, portioning. Think about, okay, how much do of this do I need to make? And then also secondary uses, you know, I get a roasted chicken, you know, and you have it with mashed potatoes and gravy, and then you slice it up, the breast up, and now you have a great protein for a sandwich. And then by the time, you know, maybe you cook some up in an omelet, something along those lines, and then finally you throw, make some chicken noodle soup. So you’ve taken one item and been able to find multiple uses for it.
Chef Cal:
So when you’re buying something, kind of think about that. How much am I buying and how much are we going to literally eat?
Christa DeMercurio:
And, well, if you’re not going to use it a few days, just go ahead and go, you know what, I’m going to break this down and freeze it so I can use it for future applications. If you can’t use an entire whole chicken within a week, go ahead and freeze it.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, but the thing about freezing, remember your freezer is not a hospital, okay? Freezer is not a hospital. Food doesn’t go into a freezer and come out better. It goes into a freezer and comes out the same as it went in. So if it’s not good, don’t freeze, throw it away, you know, so just be sensitive to that. But anyway, I think that if you just basically have an open mind and take a common sense approach at it and look up information if you need it, but just make sure that you’re keeping your food safe. And then when there’s recalls, be aware of those. And that’s an important thing to know too, with. I know that they’ve got a few of those going on now.
Chef Cal:
Well, there’s always recovery calls going on in the food industry. Anyway, we’re going to take a quick break, and we will be back in just a moment. You have found us on Cooking Like a Pro. Welcome back to Cooking Like a Pro. And I swung by, I mentioned this to you, Morris. Flour. I started thinking about the grains are so simple, but I think they get complicated because you all of a sudden, you start seeing, okay, yes, we’re familiar with rice, but, oh, I’ve heard of couscous. Well, how do you make polenta? You know, and farro and quinoa.
Chef Cal:
There’s just, you know, oats, wild rice. There’s a lot of things that are out there, but it’s really the ratio that you’re looking at. The ratio is how much liquid or stock, you know, which is just flavored liquid, the actual grain, you know, and like couscous, for example, it’s just two to one. It only takes, like five minutes. You know, you got a simmering stock, two cups of stock, you throw in a cup of couscous, stir it around, shut it off, five minutes. Your. Your grain. Your grain is done, your starch is done, and it’s a great flavor.
Chef Cal:
And you can add vegetables and flavors and seasonings and spices.
Christa DeMercurio:
So in general, it’s two parts water to one part of the grain or starch. Now, what’s interesting is, you know, it’s different rices, though. You know, like calrose rice, I need a little bit more water to get to the doneness level I want. But a jasmine or a basmati rice takes less water. So you kind of kind of play around with it.
Chef Cal:
Well, the less rice on the basmati or the jasmine really has to do with. Because those are used in Asian applications, they want the grains to stay separate. So all you got to think about is the more moisture you put in there, the more that grain is going to absorb. And I know that when it comes to polenta, for example, you know, some people say two to one. Well, if I wanted to make polenta and put it on, like, a cookie sheet when I was done and cut it in pieces and fry it in butter and, you know, do something like that, I’d want it thicker. But if I want a creamy polenta, I know I made that sea bass dish once with the Roma tomato relish on top, and it was a smoked Chilean sea bass with this Roma tomato relish. But. And underneath it was a soft polenta.
Chef Cal:
It was actually made with gorgonzola cheese. So that was three to one. So it does depend on the use. But, you know, but practice. But you’re right. Generally it’s. It’s 2 to 1. And when we say 2 to 1, we mean parts.
Chef Cal:
So a part is just a volume or a weight doesn’t really matter. It’s just that if it’s two of something, then it’s one of something else. So it’s two cups of water. It’s one cup. If it’s, you know, four pounds of a weighted product, then it, you know, it would be £2. Would be. Make it 2 to 1.
Christa DeMercurio:
Now doing a risotto style where you’re just continuously adding little bits of water. How does that change things other than just one big old bulk pot of water that you dump something into?
Chef Cal:
Well, the thing about risotto is that that’s one that’s a little bit more unique. That will take real close to 4 to 5, 4 to 1. Real close to 4 times stock to 1 part rice. Because a boreal rice has more starch in it, and because it has high starch, it absorbs more. Plus it’s a short grain rice, so it absorbs more. And then you cook it slowly. And you know it for you because you add the stock to that. You’re not just saying, okay, I’m going to throw in one cup of rice and two cups of stock and I’m going to make rice.
Chef Cal:
If you had vegetables in there, it actually be what they call rice pilaf. That’s what the French would call it. But you really want to get arborio. I mean, you probably use anything for like a creamed rice dish. But arborio is going to be creamy. That starch that’s left in there is going to be creamy. A lot of people also might rinse the rice.
Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. Get rid of the starchiness or the.
Chef Cal:
Stickiness, rinse it to get some of that out of there. But, you know, there’s sometimes there’s particles in there. It can remove impurities. Also, rinsing your rice will make it more fluffy, you know, because once that, that, that starch is rinsed out. And basically when you rinse it, you just rinse it in a sieve or colander that, you know, that’s fine enough so your grain doesn’t go through it. You know, I wouldn’t. You don’t need to rinse. And we’re talking about rice now.
Chef Cal:
All right. I mean, you don’t need to rinse. Couscous or Poland or barley is a good one. You know, quinoa, those things don’t need to get rinsed. But when you rinse your rice, actually there is an amount of arsenic actually in rice, and rinsing it will remove that. Not enough to be harmful. I mean. Well, I guess, put it this way.
Chef Cal:
If you’re an American, you average. Now, again, we’ve already proven that the Internet is false, but according to the Internet, you, the average American eats 27 pounds of rice a year.
Christa DeMercurio:
Really?
Chef Cal:
So, yeah, and it varies that. That’s the average. And then so I looked up, you know, China, of course, because, you know, they’re a rice nation. 221 pounds a year.
Christa DeMercurio:
Oh, my goodness.
Chef Cal:
221 pounds.
Christa DeMercurio:
I don’t think I eat 27 pounds of rice.
Chef Cal:
Well, you might not.
Christa DeMercurio:
I definitely eat more potatoes.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. But, you know, it does have a great nutritional value. There’s. There’s all kinds of essential minerals and vitamins in rice. But just, you know, just be careful and you know, make sure that you got your ratio correct. Again, if I want something that’s more of probably what I’d call like a. Like a porridge consistently consistency. Yeah, a porridge consistency would be, you know, that’s what I would do with the polenta.
Christa DeMercurio:
So here’s something interesting I learned. So I grew up with oatmeal, and my grandma used to call oatmeal mush because it’s mushy. And usually like on the Quakers, it’s usually about the two to one more water. Well, I grew up and I learned from a friend’s mom, her name was Mary. So I call it Mary’s oatmeal. She had a completely different way of doing it. She would bring her water to a boil, then add her oatmeal. Old fashioned oatmeal, not quick oats.
Christa DeMercurio:
And then just shut it off and let it absorb the water. And that completely changed my life. I’m telling you. I don’t like mushy oatmeal. I love this flaky oatmeal that comes out, but it’s half the amount of water. So it’s a completely different preparation, but it’s still cooked. It completely changes the flavor profile and texture of it.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, I think that. Yeah. And there’s so many different variations that are out there. And it’s a healthy alternative, you know, because basically what you’re talking about is something to be different than just eating potatoes in whatever form that you want. And they’re much more healthy to go with the grain. And most time in a potato, you know, they say that up to 95 or more percent of nutritional value of a potato is an appeal in the skin. And if you eat a baked potato, you generally, most people don’t eat the exterior. So the vitamins and minerals, the nutrients that are in the potato are not even being consumed.
Christa DeMercurio:
But you also have to be careful of potatoes because if the potato is grown too close to the surface and there’s that little hint of green that there’s this bitter biting taste and it is actually toxic to you. You should not eat those. I can pick it up so quickly when it took potatoes too close to the surface. It’s totally different flavor profile.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, my dad grows potatoes. Yeah, I don’t know too many people grow potatoes. I don’t know why he grows potatoes, but he does and he. And they’re delicious and you can tell the difference. Maybe that’s why he does it.
Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah, but so we have Farro and I’ve been wanting to cook it, but I’m scared of it.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. Faro is about 3 to 1. Again, it’s just stock in product stock and grain. And again, so for all you three to one, you can always, you can also cook it like if you’ve heard the term converted. Converted just means that they cook it and then they shock it in ice water.
Christa DeMercurio:
Par cooked.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, so it’s par cooked and so it’s going to cook a lot faster. You see, like Uncle Ben’s has stuff like that. But anyway, we’re going to be coming back for a moment. We’re going to take our last break here, but we appreciate you tuning in here. Cooking like a pro. And we’ll be back in just a moment. Welcome back. Hey, we’re already to the final segment here.
Chef Cal:
Cooking like a pro again, Chef Cal and Chef Christa. And I was going through this health thing regarding, you know, the change in the danger zone and stuff. And for some reason I got off on this tangent about allergies and I was looking up the number one thing that most people are allergic to and it’s actually crustaceans. Crustaceans. We’re not talking about things that they just don’t like to eat, but crustaceans and outer crustaceans. So shellfish again is separated into two categories. Crustaceans and mollusks. Mollusk has either one or two shells.
Chef Cal:
Right. So oysters, clams, snails, you know, scallops. Crustaceans are multi segmented. So there three of your shrimp and your crab and your, and your lobster. I am so glad I’m not allergic to crustaceans. I would, I would well, we wouldn’t have been able to eat at the sardine factory.
Christa DeMercurio:
There you go. So if you. If you have a seafood allergy or a shellfish allergy. So seafood and shellfish are technically different, Right. Fish and shellfish, I mean, are different allergies or there different things?
Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, there’s shellfish, and then there’s. The second category of seafood is called fin fish.
Christa DeMercurio:
Right, okay.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. So that’s your salmon, trout, halibut.
Christa DeMercurio:
But are there. Are there categories of allergies within those, or are you just allergic to seafood, period? Or is it the shellfish specifically?
Chef Cal:
Usually you just use the shellfish. And my thought on it would always be that it’s because of where it came from. But if a person is allergic to it, they’re allergic to it. And one of the things that a lot of people don’t realize, because one of my sons. Allergic. Deathly allergic to shrimp. Yeah.
Christa DeMercurio:
All of a sudden we found out.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. But there’s a reason that they don’t find out until later in life, because when you’re young, you don’t try these things. All right. And I think it has to do with. With processing and all kinds of stuff that’s going on out there, because I don’t remember people having allergies. I really don’t. Yeah, just like I don’t remember people having, you know, all kinds of things that people. That people seem to be, you know.
Chef Cal:
Yeah. So a lot of things have changed. But. But crustaceans. Yeah. If you don’t eat them till you’re older now, you know, I started eating well when I first was able to start eating when I was young, we ate everything. You have to remember, when you go back into the. In the Midwest, you know, it’s not.
Chef Cal:
Seafood isn’t something that’s normal. You know, I talked to a Chef back in Tennessee, and he had literally never even heard of abalone, which was, you know, stranger surprising to me because we’ve been around abalone our whole lives. Way before I was ever born, you know, I looked at, you know, abalone. They. They closed the abalone season back in 2017, and they’re actually right now, if they don’t change it like they have been. It’s set to open April 1, 2026. April 1, 2026.
Christa DeMercurio:
So it might be able to be gotten again.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, it would be. I don’t know if we can. If, you know, if the world survives till then.
Christa DeMercurio:
Are they still farming abalone?
Chef Cal:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s how you can get in restaurants you can get a farm raised abalone, but they’re much smaller and I think there’s not. You never get wild, caught stiffer. You never get the same flavor out of something that’s, that’s done on a farm.
Christa DeMercurio:
Okay, so what is a steamer clam? Is that different than the clams that you get in the can that goes to clam chowder?
Chef Cal:
Well, it can be but a steamer clam that I use and you can, the term is just is how it’s cooked, it’s the cooking method. But there’s. You can use little necks, cherry stones. There’s a lot of clams you can use but I always use a manila because a manila clam is like a medium sized clam. A lot of them come from up around Washington. When I’m talking about shellfish, I go for the item that came from the coldest water. Remember the coldest water is going to produce these things. The only problem you might have is if you get something that’s really big, like you get a, you know, whatever five or six hundred pound tuna.
Chef Cal:
Because something that grows in the ocean that long just gets a lot of mercury. So it can be really high in mercury. Which of course isn’t good for, for females to eat. Probably not overly good for men either. But it’s definitely one of the things you want to want to stay away from. So I look for at the size, I look at where it was caught, I look at how it was treated.
Christa DeMercurio:
And do they have sizing like you know, like shrimp. You got your U10s and your U8s. Your different size, other different size clams.
Chef Cal:
Oh no, though gender, they’re about the same size of what that, like if you got, you know, cherry stone clam each time they’re going to be about that size. A manila clam is probably about the size of a bigger, little bigger than a quarter maybe about size of a half dollar silver. Do they have half dollars? So anyway, but what I was getting at here was razor clams because we used to sell so many razor clams at D Materials restaurant.
Christa DeMercurio:
Now what are they different?
Chef Cal:
Well, it’s a larger clam. It’s similar to like a gooey neck which we used to get geoinecks out in the bay when the water went down. You could go out there and the geoinecks they shoot, they suck in the minerals and they spit out the sodium into the impurities. So if you get your head down on the sand where the water went down and you’re just looking at sand or a beach when you see the spray coming up, you know that’s a guinea. And you need. They can go fast. I don’t know how they do it, but they can go really fast, you know, so when you sneak up on one, you stick your hand down that small hole and you start digging. And matter of fact, you can grab a gooey neck and you can have its neck in your hand and it will break off and the clam will just keep going.
Chef Cal:
But getting back to razor clams, the thing about it is how you treat it. And you have to be careful. It’s same as abalone. You really need to know what you’re doing. You have to, you know, there’s certain parts that you pound out, and there’s certain parts that you don’t. And then there’s a certain way of breading it again, dry, wet dry. Usually flour, maybe seasoned flour, an egg mix, and then. And then, you know, a panko breadcrumb, a bigger breadcrumb.
Chef Cal:
It can be an Italian breadcrumb, but you want something that’s big because you want to get a real crisp product. And then, you know, three minutes on the top side, maybe two on the other. And they are delicious. We sell so many of those because it was unique. People didn’t really hear razor clam. What’s a razor clam? But they’re big. They’re kind of filleted out. And, you know, they’re the size of a.
Chef Cal:
I don’t know, whatever. What kind of size would you call that?
Christa DeMercurio:
Softball.
Chef Cal:
The softball. Maybe a little bigger.
Christa DeMercurio:
So.
Chef Cal:
Yeah, yeah.
Christa DeMercurio:
But I didn’t know you could bread clams. I thought clams were little bits that you put in a soup.
Chef Cal:
Well, they can be. They can be. If you’re. If you want to make a clam chowder. And that’s a really key point, too. If you don’t learn anything from today’s show. When you make clam chowder, the clams go in last. They go in last because you open up a can of clams that are chopped, they’re already cooked.
Chef Cal:
All you got to do is bring them up to temperature. You know, the idea isn’t we want, you know, clam flavored bubble gum, right? We want just a beautiful, tender clam. And I’ve seen people, they start with the clams and they make their chowder. And those clams are in there. They can be in there for two hours, and they were already cooked. It’s already dead.
Christa DeMercurio:
Clam jerky.
Chef Cal:
It’s dead. You don’t have to kill it. A Second time. Okay. You just gotta bring it up to temperature, so throw your clams in towards the end. But you take a breading like, you know, oysters on the half shell, you know, things like that. Scallops. I mean, there’s a lot of different things, and they’re real versatile.
Chef Cal:
With seafood, it is going to be a little more expensive. You have to be careful. You know, I try to lean towards snapper because red snapper is one of those things. You can used to be able to get snapper for like two bucks a pound, you know, and now it’s probably the least expensive fish you can get, and it’s eight bucks a pound. You know, it just really, just shocks me and. Well, obviously that’s why we don’t go out to seafood restaurants. It’s much easier to grab it and bring it home yourself. But again, most of these seafood items, we’re talking about these, whether it’s crustacean or mollusk, remember, they’re always going to be very high in sodium.
Chef Cal:
Okay. They’re also all protein, like 98% protein, but they’re always gonna be high in sodium. So if you, you know, if you’re eating shellfish, you generally want to stay maybe only once a week, you know, have shellfish once a week.
Christa DeMercurio:
One and very important question, okay? Frozen fish versus fresh fish.
Chef Cal:
You know what? A lot of times frozen’s better. The key, you just have to take care of it. It’s thawed out overnight in the refrigerator, so you’re not losing all that flavor by letting it sit out or having it, you know, water running over, which is called potable water. But basically, no, you want. Because a lot of times they freeze it on the ship, out on the ocean. So it’s, you know, you’ve thawed out and it’s hours old. Well, how long has it been in that cabin?
Christa DeMercurio:
So basically, if you fresh caught it yourself. Yes, fresh fish, but you’re getting some from somebody else, and it’s traveling frozen.
Chef Cal:
There you go.
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.
