Wine & Spirits

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Speaker 1: Welcome to From Scratch. My name is Michael Ruhlman. I've spent the last twenty years in professional kitchens, writing about and with the world's best chefs. From Scratches a podcast about cooking. In each episode, we'll talk with one chef and one non chef about the same theme. In this episode more than one. The great thing about the cooking life is that you never stop learning. In this show, I want to go to the edges of what I know and then go beyond together with you, with all chefs, home cooks, and everyone who cares about food and cooking. Today's theme is wine and spirits. Wine is a great tool for cooks. It adds flavor, acidity, complexity. It's also a culturally important partner to food and to a great meal. Wine and spirits are likewise a pleasure to share with friends and sometimes to cook with. Will be speaking with a wine producer and three chefs on the subject making a traditional wine reduction sauce and also one of the most loved and by me maligned cocktails on the planet. I've known Brian Poulson for more than twenty years. He's a former chef owner of numerous award winning restaurants in the Detroit area and teaches charcuterie at Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Michigan. We've written three books together. We do hog butchery classes around the country and generally like to have a good time. I've invited him into my small Manhattan kitchen to cook because it's a blast and he's so smart and articulate about cooking. He'll be joining me for a number of episodes. Today, we'll be making a classic chicken ju lier, a fancy term for sauce liais simply means it's thickened with something a liaison it's called in French, and it's flavored with a white wine reduction using an inexpensive chardonnay. I asked Brian for his thoughts. I'm cooking with wine, okay, So for me, my my philosophy is that I don't cook with anything I wouldn't drink. That doesn't mean I'm gonna drink. I'm gonna cook for the Chateau la Tour, Okay, I'm not gonna cook with that, but I'm not gonna generally use u um, you know, really really cheap box wine because there's a reason it's cheap. The flavor profile is what you're looking for is the red wine, white wine, sherry, madeira wine, brandy, kogniac. Whatever the alcohol the item is, he has a flavor profile. So I mean lighter wines with lighter foods, heavier wines with every food. So red wine reduction for a beef and white wine reduction for chicken and fish right removed red room with white remotely, you know, the same same principle. Plus, so the way I the way I cook with alcohol is I want the essence, the flavor of it, but I don't want to raw alcohol flavor. And there's you know, there's schools of thoughts on everything, like where I teach us school crap, you know, all the guys I teach with this masterchefs, we'll have week long discussion. It's about when do you add wine to risotto? Do you add it in the beginning so it burns the alcohol or do you finish it? Say want that raw alcohol? Me? I like it to burn it off. But we've had heated discussions in the hallway. Not no fisticuffs or anything, but it's been heated. Like, well, okay, I've been traveled all the word and I've tasted it both ways. Personally, I like to have things they alcohol burnt off. So we're going to be making a very basic sauce, simple to make it home and especially good if you have your own or can buy good stock. I got ours from Hudson and Charles on Hudson here in New York City's West Village, which makes their own. We're simply going to cook flavorful vegetables and aromatics, pour wine over them, cook it down, add stock, and thicken it. That's it delicious over sauteed or roasted chicken. It's so simple. I'll put a description of the sauce and how to make it on my site roman dot com. It's so simple, that is, until Brian gets his fat hands on the pot. First of all, we're making a we're making a ju for a roast chicken. Do you you brought bacon again? Do you ever travel anywhere? So this is just a Juliet right you? Is the natural flavor whatever item as a liais lightly thickened, so chicken Juliet. So we have you have some bought chicken stock. I haven't tasted it, but I can tell we need to fortify it in order to add wine. To it. We just can't take it the wine, raw and chicken brought together and bring it to a boil. It's that's too pedestrian. So we need to start with a bass. So I'm gonna use bacon. You would use bailey fresh thyme, garlic, onion, and carrots. I usually put seller, but you said you don't like seller in And I want to kind of caramelize these vegetables a little bit. I could use just a pinch of butter to um to maybe help this bacon render a little bit. And there you go, thank you, So you can hear the sizzlings I want to get. I want to get that vegetables to caramelize little bit. And then I'm going to do what's called pin se add a little tomato paste to it. I'm gonna put it on that, let it cook a little bit, and um, I'm gonna add a little tomato paste, and then let that tomato paste kind of caramelize with the vegetables in the base before I ad any liquid to it. Once that occurs caramelization, of course, it's flavors. There's natural sugars and the onions and natural sugars in the carrot, The bacon has a sugar in the cure, but we don't want to burn it. Get a little bit of black on the edges or like a skid, it's called on the pan. Not just a little bit of black when you're when you're adding the tomato paste is good because when you add the liquid, in this case white wine, you're doing what's called the glazing, right, you know, lift all the particles that are stuck to the bottom of the pan. That becomes part of the base of the sauce. Sauce make it is one of the more complicated parts of the kitchen because you have to find balance in everything. So again the principle applies. This is the chicken juliet, so it should taste like chicken. But we're taking these other ingredients to enhance the natural flavor of the chicken without overpowering it. So we don't want to taste like wine. We want the wine to be balanced. The wines acidic, you know, in the elements of taste, salt, sugar, acid, these are important parts. So you've got your veg caramelizing. I want to turn the flame up just a little bit to get a little a little softer. Of course, the lid at this point is trapping the steam, which is softening the vegetables, and that's what we want. In order to get caramelizations. You have to extract the natural sugars found in it, and you do that bike softening them because vegetables are even more water than protein water, so you get it soft, the sugar migrates out with the liquid. The liquid then evaporates and the steam and you're left with the essence of flavor. What the ingredient is carrots and celery in this case, garlic, Bailey fresh time peppercorns would be appropriate with this, and again and sauce make it. It's all about balance. You know. You use time and peppercorns, but you don't want to really taste it immediately. But when you taste it, it does its job. Everybody works together. The marriage of flavors is what makes a great sauce. I should clarify here. Brian means the vegetables, unlike protein, have even more water in them. And sorry for you no carb but people out there. But vegetables of course are composed of carbohydrates and water and a lot of other tasty elements as well, which the water pulls out. Here the cracks on going the way getting some color. They're certainly color on the bacon a little bit more, and then we'll put the tomato paste in there. Okay. Now, Also with making wine sauces, my personal philosophy is usually add the wine in three stages. So if for this, I hear that a lot, because I want quicker evaporation, I want the flavor. So if I add, like, I'm gonna use maybe a cup of wine in this little bit of sub we're making, what two cups of sauce. I'm gonna use a cup of wine, but I'm gonna reduce that wine to maybe two tablespoons. Uh. To do that, I'm gonna add, you know, a third of a cuple it reduced down SEC is called in the French kitchen dry. Then you add another third cup SEC, another third cup SEC. This is really the key to developing great flavor, the multiple reductions. Each time you reduced to SEC or dry, the liquid is gone, but that liquid has pulled out the sugars and flavor of the vegetables and cooked off, leaving the sugars to brown on the bottom of the pan. You then add more wine, lifting those sugars off the pan, pulling more out of the vegetables and reducing again, this is how you deepen the flavors, flavor developments with what do we do as cooks. We're always searching for waste to get flavor. And as you know, good cooking is hard. If it was easy, everybody would do it. So if you understand great cooking, to me, great cooking is good cooking. You know, let's say that's what it should be. But you know, if you understand cooking, to me, if you understand the principle, if you understand the method you're trying to do, it's so easy. I mean, cooking is not a chore to be. It's like you know, it's like breathing. I have to do it, you know, it's impossible. Okay, look look at the night. You're getting a little color and the bacon. That's good. I want to let this go a little bit further. So getting a little browning from the letter too, Yeah, it's okay. That gives it a nuttiness, which I like. So the ratio for this amount, you can see I cut too many onions and carrots. But um, you don't want to taste vegetably either, you know, Remember, what we're doing is a chicken, Juliet. We're not making an onion Juliet. We're not making carrot or tomato. It's a chicken. We're using these other flavors to enhance our original idea. Same with the wine. How important is the stock to use? Can you use? Can you use box stock from the grocery store? Yeah? I have to say yes, I mean you can. But is it as good as if you made your own stock? No? Uh, will you die if you eat box stock stock? No, you won't die. But I'll tell you what if you did a blind tasting chicken stack that I make in a box stack taken side by side, every single person in that blind taste would be able to identify the one I made, just because I mean, it just tastes better. You know. I have found myself in kitchens and somebody asked me to make a stock or something, and they all they have is this box stuff. And you can't enhance it by putting some onion and carrots simmering that to at least give it a freshness. That's done. Otherwise, half box stock has more flavor than Chateau Fossett. You know, Fossett is water. So if your choice is water box stock, I would go with the box stuck. One of the major differences between real stock and boxed or canned broth from the store is that more than lacking in fresh flavor, it lacks gelatin, which gives a stock body. Reduced stock from two cups to a quarter cup, and that stock will be like a super bowl when it's cold from the gelatin. Gelatin comes from the collagen in bones and cartilage. Box stocks just don't have it. So if you do use box stock, simmer some carrot and onion in it and add a tablespoon of powdered gelatin or a sheet if you use sheets. The collagen makes all the difference. It makes a difference between friends as well. You know the collagen collagen's flavor. Collagen comes from connective tissue. Yes it is. It's not flavor, it's body. It's delicio. Yeah, well that's flavor. Yes, no ju head cheese. This is all you know, Everything has a purpose. Collagen does not have flavor. Oh my god, we're gonna argue about this all right. So it's looking nice, I guess looking really nice. It's got a nice light golden color. Now it depends. If I was doing a red wine sauce, I would take it further. They'll get more caramelization. But there's gonna be a white wine. We don't want it to compete too much. So I want to put a couple of debts of tomato paste in there. And this is called pin say tomato. Yeah, the tomato paste is going to kind of you say a little bit that too. Will it off flavor? Yes, so it's coating the vet dobles. It's um happily. Look at the color changed too. You turn the flame up a little bit. Letter. This is the pense part. There's a short window between pinsey brown and what's called burnt. Okay, can fix you can't fix burn. But there's that just that moment I'm starting to stick right here. You can just see that. That's that's the skid. You know. It's like you know, when I'm from Detroit. So taking your car or a motorcycle and making skin, I mean, it's pretty pretty cool. So cooking that's what we call it. So look at the color of the vegetables. It's like very uh it's browned. Yeah, it's a little fatty. We added that that that butter. But I think I'm gonna take a look at it. Look at it right there. That's gonna take a little bit of this um the butter fat out because I don't want the en sauce to look like the Exxon Valds was there, you know, like an oil slick. And then so there there's good color. Now take the wine. I'm not gonna measure. I'm gonna do roughly a third. You can hear that, So I'm gonna let that go down. Think about it. What color is they have? Bro, that's that white wine, that's Chardonnay that we put in there. What color it's brown? Right? I mean there was pure white wine. You know what white wine looks like. So it it's got its color from the caramelization. So we're going to reduce this and this is going to make our chicken Juliet a brown. Also, because you said this would be served where they roasted. So if I was I probably wouldn't do this sauce with a poached chicken. I would do a whitter sauce, but a roasted chicken with the caramelized the rich flavor that we're developing right now, but the one we haven't in me out of the stock. Yet already looks good, right, so you can take that all the way down. So about half inch of put more than a third cup. So I'm gonna add less. I'm gonna get a dry and add less and a third cup because wanted to be too acid it. So the flavor, the flavors that are going to stick here, the flavors of that wine. Right, So if you think about if you drink a glass of wine roughly seven or eight ounces, you're gonna be tasting the whole thing. You're gonna be tasting the whole thing with two tablespoons. So that that's a chardon ay. It probably right now has you can taste acid, right. I don't think it has maloact of permentation because it's a screw cap top, which doesn't mean it's a bad wine. By the way, it does not mean it's bad because it doesn't have a core. But it's not aged for years. I'm sure it's young too inexpanded, which is fine. So even the viscosity of the broth the brusket home, I would you know you made a burmagnet, which for those of you don't know what a bourmagne is that mixture of raw flour and soft butter that's used as a thickening agent because the flowers in the fat combined thickens the broth. That's fine to do, but it makes a heavier sauce. Another way to do this with just a simple dissolved arrowroot of corn starch. Just a little dollop in there gets the viscosity right, because you just want to be able to nap a your protein. Napa means just that the thickness of the sauce should just be the point where it covers, like if you dip a spoon in there. If you coat the spoon, you can take your finger just run through it like that. There are a number of ways to thicken a sauce reduction, but that can make it gluey depending on the gelatine. There are now new modernist thickeners, but we're sticking to traditional methods here. Starch meaning corn starch or arrowroot, a pure gluten free starch or flour. I like a flower thicken sauce. If it's done right, you have to cook the flour so that it doesn't taste heavy or the flour or gritty on your tongue. It can be a rue or as I like to do for small batches Bermonnier that's French for needed butter. Basically, you simply need a table spoonful flour into a table spoonful butter, and that's Burmagnier acorns to arch. Slurry also works corn starch with water mixed to the consistency of cream. That's the fastest way to thicken a sauce. So this is getting kind of dry, you see it. A little more wine. That's a halfy sound in the kitchen right there. Even on Twelfth Street and a little ford Burner apartment you know. Incidentally, one bay of my garage at my house in Michigan. It's bigger than your whole apartment where I parked my car. Yep. Now, I gotta disagree with you on the Bermonde. I don't think it makes a heavier sauce unless you use too much of it. I like the the the the both the thickening of flour and the enriching with the butter. The slur. There's no fat, Yeah, there's no fat. And we've got we've got a lot going on here. But the one thing I will caution, I'm not against bermondy. But people don't know how to use it. If you don't cook it enough, you have a rough flower taste to it. You have to cook it. You have to cook it where it's corn starch, your airbood. Once he comes to a boil, it's dune so burmina. You have to watch it. Then you run the risk for a novice cook it's sticken. Does it stick? Do they have the right size with the right thickness pot. If you're not using a thick bottom pot, you haven't run a chance of scorching. Did all this work and he end up burning it? It's not a good king hunky. We'll see if you can handle burnin. Oh, I can handle it. I can take on burnman a little bit. One more, one more, Okay, So that was about the first one was a lot in the last two were a little bit less. When we turn the flame up a little bit. Now, another thing about sauce making two is the right pot, right pan for the right job. Now in this case, you see that you have really nice looks, like an all clad pan or something like that. Uh, you're burner being gas, which is better than electric because you can trolly heat. But you have to watch the flame, so we call it tuning the stove. Right. If that flame comes over the sides, comes around the pot like that, the naturally evaporation their sugars. You can see I start to get a little brown here. That will start to turn burnch and you'll have a little black specks. So you know, black is beautiful man power to the people. But you don't want expects in your food. And that's burnt. So you have to watch your stove. And there's a short window between reduced properly and of course burnt. In this case, you can't just you have you have to watch this cook. The flames underneath the pan. It's not reaching up the side, it's not coming out the sides because that that steam is coming off the size also carrying residual sugars and that's what runs. So that's beautiful color. We've got the stock melting. Let me have a spooner when it taste this stuff. Where did you get this from? Some local? We got this from another great meat prover, Hudson and Charles's pretty good. That make all the stock that's good by itself right there. If you add salt and a squeezing lemages. You can make chicken, little soup out of that. Nice So this will make a very good, very good stock. Smell the smells. First, you get the alcohol coming right off when you first add it, and then the smell gets deeper and richer and you smell the acid. That's smell. It's very interesting. It's a turning into a very you know, deep gravy colored sauce. Vegetables are cooking. They've they've gotten quite small now because you're cooking all the water out of them. So tasting that broth I said you could make it. You add salt, pepper, lemon, juice and noodles and you have a chicken. That's how good this brought this. But we're taking that already good foundation and what we call Fonda cuisine right the foundation of cooking um and enhancing the flavor with this caramelization, the pin see and the wine. We've got all the components of making a really good sauce here. It's not overly complicated. So right now you can see, you can hear it. You can hear the bubbles. Look at that's about right now. I'm gonna add the bra So we're adding about what two cups or copings. So now we go to a full boil. Now, since there's more liquid in the pot, I'm not as concerned about the flame coming over the sides because I want up boil, give it a stirt and I use. I like wooden spoons and sauce make I don't like metal against metal that much, even though it's a stainless steel and all that stuff. But me too, a flat edged wouldn't like that because you can scare the bottom. Also, you gotta watch, you know, you can't leave your your sticking the potto on because you'll burn the edges. Like I noticed, many of yours have nice burn parts on it. That's kind of funny, but I like that as a sign as someone whose cooks a lot, I like that. Um. Another thing about sauce making two is most sauces have some sort of acid. You finish it with lemon juice or vinegar, you know. And if you make a wine sauce, of course you have to use stand in the steel pants. You cannot use aluminum pants. A thick bottom pan is important too, because a thick bottom pan distributes the heat even and you won't give hotspots. So that's another thing to remember, um and what do we why why are we using wine flavor? Everything we do is predicated on taste, so you know the components of taste, salt, sweet, acid. This is an opportunity to introduce acid to the liquid. And uh, it's more complex than just squeezing or finishing with vinegar or something like that. Like a lot of good sauces that'll just finished with a little it have been here because that nice assid You don't taste it so much. You don't say, oh, that's apple cider, that's red wine vinegar or balsamic. You know, you might taste balsamic more than other vinegars because it's stronger. But it's there for balance. Everything we do is about balance and development of flavor. So it's gonna come up to a boil that we're gonna strain it into another pan. Now, at the liquid stage, the thickness of the pot doesn't matter because it's liquid. But once we thicken this, we're gonna have to pay attention to it after the boermonets added, so it doesn't have an opportunity to stick on the bottom. And we also watched the flame again. You know, we don't on this after we strain and thicken it. We watched the sides because that's where it'll start to stick. You see, it's starting to come up here. We're gonna give it a little taste just to see you eat salt, but we're gonna finish that later. It's got a richness to it. It's quite a cinic too. You want to put some salt in pepper? Do we have pepper? Look at how it bubbles my other se So do you like it a rolling boil like that? Well for just a minute, because I'm going to strain it into the pan for any reduction here you could, you could take it, but I'm gonna reduce it in there. So let's get the other goodies out of it. We've got a second small pan and a strainer to strain out all the solids, the bacon and the vegetables, which have by now given their flavor completely to the liquid. And we have nice brown sauce. But it's still not finished. It's a little liquid e So Brian's going to with skin the burmagne and also evaluate for flavor and finished seasonings. Got a nice color. Do you want to finish the sauce in this pan? Well, I would like that. That makes me happy, and let's do another taste and check if we need to reduce. This is the time before you think and if it needs reduction, and why would we reduce it more right now because it didn't have any flavor. Where it does have flavor because we started with good chicken stuck. It's got a nice balance of acid and meatiness to it. It's got quite a bit of wine flavor to it. Yeah, but it's not offensive. It's not a harsh wine and complain taste it now after the salt and pepper was in there. That changes everything too, it does. I'm really surprised by how cilic it is. I like that. It's it's good with you know, think of sauteed mushrooms with your roasted chicken and this juliet. That's uh, that's a nice combination. Or so now a full rolling boil. The bourmagne of course is uh roughly yeah, yeah, flour and butter. You soft butter and just massage enough flour into it gets a nice like not quite dope, but a paste. So we'll add you have to add the burmagna in small chunks so it has a chance to dissolve. I'm gonna whip it and whip, whip, whip, and I'm looking for consistency at this point. Once it gets to be started slightly thickened, we want to turn it down and let the flour cook out of the bermagna. This is adding fat to it, which is gonna rich and up. It will offset some of that the city that we tasted in the wine. See it's starting to get a little thick right now. Yeah. Story also thickens faster, very fat. Once it comes to a boil. That's is fast, you know, it's it's not gonna get anywhere thicker than that tore. So this is still liquid. Now, this is gonna go for eight minutes, eleven minutes maybe or something like that. We're gonna turn it down. So it's a little for tot and as it reduces it intensive by his flavor, but it gives that flower a chance to tighten it up. And this is a very simple, simple sauce. This is not over the kount. Anybody can make this sauce, anybody, even you out there listener. And there's also something quite therapeutic about cooking. You know, I love cooking. I mean I spend most of my time writing. But so I'm sitting at a desk a lot. And so when I finished the day, I loved. I loved the chopping and the cooking, the smells that you you know, they've even shown that the smells of food cooking the house relax us. I believe so helps. If you want to sell your property to bake some bread, people says, buy that house. So let's see the large bubbles evaporations occurring. I'm gonna turn it down a little bit. I want to just I'm not too worried about evaporation for flavor. I just want that flower to do its job. And you know, again as Juliet should be the coke. So we're gonna look at the thickness. But right now, that's that's a little bit thin for me, you know, but it's not quite thick enough to nape. But yeah, I took the rest of that a little bit there. So we rented Michael just took the little bowl with the fermagner and he put the hots sauce in it. To it's the last bit, which is a sign of a good cook. We don't waste anything, you know. I love the way you scrape every single oh my god, every bag, every bowl, every you squeegeet off your special everything. I wonder if it's because I was trained you know that way you're a peanut, or is because I owned my own restaurants for sewing. I just looked at it as money. You know, I can't I can't waste. I gotta make, I gotta I gotta make barrel there. Now, let's they cook a little bit in the lady to go. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, I've got some sweetest from the butter. You've got the acidity from the wine. You've got a good chicken base, you got the uh, the the sort of mommy from the bacon. Yeah, the sweetness from the vest. It was interesting you said that mommy part, because we could have made it without the bacon and it would still come out good. But that one little element, that one little thing night out of ten people taste that wouldn't even know bacon's in it. But now, no, boy, that tastes pretty good. Right. So now this, now, this is what we do in the kitchen. So now this is ready, and then I like card service, we take per order and the lays of pan. You know, roaster. You know, I would take my roasted chicken, take the juice to come out of the roust, add it back to this and let that cook down, because you don't want to waste anything that good. Jew you know, we love the juice. What would the sauce be without the wine? Uh? Meaty um? It would You would have to finish it with a couple of drops of lemon juice or something to bring it, you know, spark it up. It's something delicious you make. I make Julie all the time without wine. But it's definitely a complexity and have depth to this. It's because of the wine. It makes a difference because of the wine. And again, the right wine for the right dish. You know this again, color wise, caramelization good for a roasted meat. I would not serve this with a post item. You know what would I would? I would would white white, not colorized the vegetables and no tomato paste. White wine again, but finished with cream and a white chicken stock. Would be a much lighter sauce, maybe even a laison you know, egg, egg, yolk and every cream. So this I think we're just about the right. So I pulled off to the side of the pants, so one side is bubbling, and then you've got a convection sort of moving the starch granules over the other side, which you can skim. That's it. Look at it tastes. I mean, now you taste the Now you have the viscosity from the collagen in the stock. It's on the side of your tongue. That that's the right texture because that will cope to the meat that you eat. The juiceness comes out of the oven, the juicy meats warm, the crispy skin, and then this juice with the acid bounce. I mean, there's goodness in life. So what we're left with here is a beautiful brown sauce just right for roasted chicken, easy to do with basic ingredients at home. It's got a thick nap, a consistency, deep flavor, and acidity from the wine. When we come back, we'll sit down with one chef and one wine producer to talk more about wines and spirits. Because wines and spirits can be such a casual pastime. I set up a casual roundtable discussion with two guests that know a lot about the subject. I met with wine producer Dave Finney and chef Peter Kelly at Kelly's X two oh on the Hudson. The restaurant overlooks a stunning view of the Hudson River. The dining room features two seventy degree views, which stretched to include Manhattan to the south, a huge tree topped ridge to the west, the Palisades, and the Tapanzee Bridge to the north. So beautiful here get you can get lost in yonkers Um, the George Washington Bridge in the distance, the sparkling Hudson, the Palisades. It's it's it's an amazing, gorgeous this time of year. Yes, that will be just a blaze. We got started by hearing from Dave Finney. Dave came dressed in a windproof vest and clean but well worn boots. He's straight out of the Napa Valley. He also brought a dozen beautiful bottles of wines and spirits. But we'll get to that. It's allowed me to do is kind of get back to the fun part of the wine business. I get to be in vineyards. I get to you know what, what is the fun part for me? It's vineyards. I'm this is about his dressed up as you're gonna see me I'm you look like a California wine guy. Oh well, I'm much more comfortable in the byrds. That's to me where I really add value. Um, and that's still I mean, I have a huge, huge respect for all farming. Part of Phinea's mystique because that he has famously been prevented from making any zinfandel after getting stuck with an unusually brutal non compete clause from a previous business venture. Then you re emerged with a um eight years in the desert wine, that's correct, And that was another's in. Yeah, so um it was kind of like a fuck use in to them. It was I like to say, it was kind of the British way of saying tuck you. Um uh. The sort of longer version of this story is when we sold Prisoner in two thousand and eight, I entered into an eight year noncompete on zinfandel, and it was so punitive that I, like, I don't even think I was allowed to say the words infandel, let alone touch a grapevine or make wine from it. There was no no one had a gun to my head. I signed that, and whether or not it was the right thing to do, it doesn't matter. And the way I was raised, if you shake a man or a woman's hand and you say you're gonna do something, then you do it. And I felt that felt great for about four minutes, because you know, I got my puffed up and here I am doing the right thing. I also don't like being told what to do. In a sense, I was being told what to do because I was told, you know what I can't do. And so that started what ended up becoming a little bit of a unhealthy obsession. Dave would wake up with ideas for his next sin, call his I P. Lawyer and tell him his new brand names and shake his head after reading them aloud. He was in a strange place, in fact, quite lost, and didn't know where to go next. You can't will yourself out of an existential jam, but you don't have to be passive either. He started doing what I've been doing my whole life. I write to figure things out, and that's what he did. Dave began writing short stories, and fact it was his first story, Eight Years in the Desert, that pointed the way to his comeback, Wine, which he named after the story. In fact, eight Years in the Desert was kind of a my interpretation or continuation of one of my favorite short stories by Hemingway Hills Like White Elephants. To continue his creative fit, he and a photographer took a trip. We ended up going down to Joshua Tree shooting a bunch of you know, iconic cacti. Because then it became okay, well it's it's eight Years in the Desert, the first vintage. Let's do an eight pack with this, you know, highly stylized box and with a first edition of the book, and it talked about obsessive, it became very obsessive and um so that was the first vintage of eight Years in the Desert. And what you heard there is something that Finny has a particular genius for merchandizing and marketing his wines. There's a lot of wine out there, and if you're not cake Bread or Decoy or Jordan's, how do you get noticed? He realized that the label can be just as important as the wine. But you've also got to have the wine. Zimfandel is my favorite grape. It's my favorite kind of wine. Tell me about Zen. Why you got into Zin? What is it about Zin that you love? How does it distinguish itself. When I first came to the Nap Valle, uh, two things. I was right out of college, so I didn't have a lot of money, and I was drinking a lot of infandel because it was less expensive. So I was those were the days. Yeah, no, it was. It was. I mean, looking back now, was amazing what you could buy for less than you know, fifteen bucks. And then also I had a buddy guy named Dave Brown who has a zinfandel vineyard, and he agreed to sell me two tons of infandel, and which was my first harvest, was like this love fest and everything came in, you know, logistically perfect. There was no fighting over tanks, fruit got ripe. You know, it's it was one of the seminal vintages in the Napa Valley, although it has an age very well. So I was like, oh, this is great. You know it's gonna be like every year. Well was the opposit, cold, wet, rainy, and totally got my ass handed to me and realized, no matter what we did, once we got the fruit into the barn as we call it, there's no silver bullet, there's no alchemy. You know, you can you can very easily turn a great vineyard or great grapes into good wine, but you can't turn a good vineyard into grape wine. And that started the sort of the ethos that we still, uh you know, live by is that we try to do of our wine making in the vineyard and select good spots, get you know, good aspects, farm it correctly, kind of bring it in the winery and don't screw it up. And then also accepting that sometimes you have this beautiful vineyard that's southwest facing rocky soils and it should be amazing and it's good, and then there's this thing that, as my friends in France would say, that's where you should grow potatoes, and it's this nasty looking vineyard and ends up making the wine of the century. So what is it about this grape that is appealing to you? You know, it's it's as I mentioned, it was the first varietal that I made commercially. But it's I think by definition, your first love has to kind of break your heart, and I had my heartbroken by it Zinfandelda at first year, and then it kind of makes you want to keep coming back. It's funny because we're gonna be talking about peanot no wire. But coming up in the wine business, you always hear how hard it is to make peanut peanuts, this, peanuts that, and it's like this unicorn and I'm always I would tell my buddies that are peanut makers. I was like, well, come on over here, and fucking makes in because it ripens unevenly, it gets rot. You know, it's like so temperamental, and you can have in the same cluster, you know, four degrees of bricks difference. You know, regularly it can have high acid, high pH and high sugar all at the same time. Like how do you deal with that? And most of the mines, you know, in the past and still our old mines, so they're like temperamental, you know, in and of themselves. So it's it's a challenge every year and it continues to be. And and that's I mean, I think what draws you back, you know, just when you're like I'm never gonna fucking makes in again, You're like, get a good night's sleep and you can't wait to get back and like try to not conquer it, but to make it. So I asked Dave what he thinks about when smelling a wine in a perfect world. It's that balance of the right amount of oak with the right amount of fruit, with the right amount of of almost confected perfumeness that seems like it's artificial. If you're getting all that, then if it's not artificial, then you've done something right. And a lot of the time when the riper you pick grapes, to me, it's always been nuts, You're you're giving up the aromatics. So it's like, if you want that full body, if you want that alcohol, if you want like all those those good components, you're probably going to give up a little bit of the floral notes and the sort of beauty of the aromatics. And so that's what we're constantly playing with is trying to figure out. You know, we don't pick everything is super right. We don't necessarily want high alcoholis. We just want to achieve that balance. No one's offered me a glass of wine. Where's going on? We tasted eight years in the desert. First it was good. Then we tasted a new peanut noir that Dave is making and hadn't been released yet. You know, it's hard to describe. U Elegance is one way to put it. Um and versatile would be another. I mean, it's got nice fruit, it's got nice balance, it's got um, it's not as alcoholic, and as Peter said, it would go with a sturdy fish. You would go with like a nice piece of palibit or something like. Yeah, it's not you know, the the the peano. It doesn't have the ripeness of that and and the sort of over the top of the uh, the infandel wine. But it tastes less ripe. And so in some ways when you're drinking, when you're drinking just a glass of wine, you wanna sit down and just have a glass of wine. I would tend to go to the zinn because it gives you everything you want. But once you taste this peano, you're sort of looking for food. I gotta have some food at this piece to cheese something you. Peter Kelly opened his first restaurant when he was twenty three years old in Garrison, New York. He's since opened numerous restaurants and has been nominated for a Best Chef Award three times in a row. He appeared on Iron Chef Beating Chef Bobby Flay. Before there was a show called Beat Bobby Flay, and he was featured on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations the Hudson Valley episode. I began by asking for Kelly's thoughts about pairing wine with food. So there's two schools of thought on pairing food and wine. One is that, um, you want to choose a wine that is similar to the food you're so. So say you order a fish with it with a rich cream sauce. You're looking for rich wine. I say a Chardonnay, a overoaked, hugely buttery Chardonnay. That's gonna match that dish. I have to say, I love oaked, but old fashioned kissler. There's a lot of good ones, you know, lim marches, you know, overall off that very often, so I'm I'm a fan also. But the other way to look at it is with the same dish, you might say, let me go for a savignon blanc that's got this real tartnis there's no wood. It will cut through the richness with the acidic balance of it and um. And that's another way to look at food and wine pairing. It's more what you like and how you like to um and it. You know, what you have to do is you have to drink a lot to find out that's the problem. But there is the school to it, and it says that progression. So in the menu, say you would start, you wouldn't start with the lamb. You start with the oyster, and then maybe you go to a fish, and then maybe a rice or pasta dish, and then a bird and then a red meat and then what's richer than a red meat, a cheese, and then something sweet and the wines would follow in that sort of progression. So with that oyster, maybe we have a savignon blanc, something very light, and or maybe a glass of champagne with it might be fine. You go to the fish course and now you're going to bring in a chardonnay, and you moved to a pasta and you maybe do a light sanjo Vassy style Italian and then you're gonna go to a bird, and now is a time to let's get a peanut, no wah, that has some you know, some elegance and richness to it. And then you're gonna finish with a big fat um red with your red meat. So it could be this zin or a bordeaux, or you know, there's many options and then you wind up with cheese. Might be the time to bring in a fortified wine like a port or something over the top like an armorone mean that, you know, because it's very hard once you've um up the you know, up the game to go backwards. So if you had the peanut wah, you don't want to go to a savineon blanc next because your palette just can't deal with it. So, you know, progression is what I always suggest. You like to eat and drink, you know, talk about it. It's like I want this man, I want this man a cook for me because you know how to talk about it. Well, you just have to eat and drink a lot. I think so too. I asked both Peter and Dave for their tips unbuying wine at a retail shop. Go to a store. If you want to shop for wine in particularly, This is the same if you want to shop for chickens, or you want to shop for asparagus, go to a good food store. If you want a shop for good wine, you have to go to a good store and you want to speak to the people that are at the store. I could tell you right now ten wines that you go out and getting they're delicious, And then you go to your store and none of them are there, and now you don't know what to do. You have to choose a store, like you choose your butcher shop or your where you buy your bread. You have to choose the store that you feel comfortable and you and tell them what you like, tell them the flavor profile that you really like. Tell them if it's a gift and you want to spend twenty dollars because they're just okay, are you going to spend a hundred because you like them? You know? And yeah, I would be frank like, if you don't want to spend fifty hours on the bottle of wine, just tell them say don't don't be embarrassed about saying, I gotta keep it under twenty, because they're a good under twenty bottle of dollar bottles of wine. I mean those those six dollars bottles of wine that you're buying at the restaurant or twenty at the store. So you go to the wrong restaurant. But also, and I used to give this question actually from my mom a lot, and she's like, oh what should I buy? You know, I like, because she's not a big wine duringker I was like, Mom, you know, good to us store. Get someone and they introduce you to something you like, and you really like it, and it's priced right by case because it's not going to be there next week and it's going to be twice the price next year. Buy what you like, Drink what you like. Good advice, and you get a discount when you buy a whole case, and you're you're going to be buying these wines anyway. They're nice to have on a end. That's great advice. So now we have bourbon, we do the vodka. First, we have a vodka. We had vodka. Chef Peter Kelly, in addition to his restaurants, has a company called Slovenia Vodka. Believe it or not. He co owns it with Bill Murray and the famous dancer Mikhail Barishnikov. They're all neighbors up in the Hudson Valley just north of where we were seated. And this vodka project actually began with Chef Kelly seeking out interesting wines. I met this guy and he presented me with all these Slovenian wines that you know, and I've never heard of any of them, and but I'm chassing them, and I was like, I was blown away by the quality of the wines and from a country I had never even heard of. So I've got to go there. So I went to Slovania and I flew to Venice and drove two hours to Slovenia to Lubyana and then the wine areas and discovered met with a many winemakers, discovered these projects that they all had. But what I really discovered was that there was no vodka. This is Eastern European country that had no history of vodka. And it's funny because Sylvania was where Tito lived and so the wars never went through there. I mean it was I mean, it's so beautiful. But anyway, Um, so they had no vodka, and they had this buckwheat that grew everywhere. It was in there, every dish they served, it was just grew wild. I thought, you know, what if I make vodka with this buckwheat. So I was working on the project and I have a friend Bill Murray, the actor, comedian vodka drinker, and we started drinking and um, I said, what do you think I had all these samples, I mean, of all these different blends I was doing and he loved it sort of after we you know, by the seventh when he loved and he said, let's call up Misha, Mikhail Barishtakov, who was a neighbor also, and we called up he happened to be home, and I said, come on over because we need somebody to, you know, to authenticate what we're doing. And so he did. And so anyway, we started this project together and here we are you and it's fun, you know what I mean. It's nice, but no, absolutely not. And you know the buckwheat that we use in this. You know, buckwheat has a high sugar content, so we get a richness out of this, almost a viscosity on the palette. If you taste this next to anything. The only way to tell how good it is is to taste it really next to another vodka, and you start to see that. I don't like to ad mouth anybody, but there's almost a fennel finish on this. It's really good. It's really I'm not I'm not a fan of My wife doesn't drink very much other than good burgundy and an occasionals in yeah, um, but um, you know, we keep a bottle in the freezer. It doesn't need it. And what's great is the square bottle so it won't roll around. I haven't I have black bottles, so my wife doesn't know how much I've been drinking. I like that. I like that. Um, this is a really rich almost um aged that's like an aged quality. Yeah, I mean what it has is I I mean, I think and I was astonished by the it's rich rich. There's a viscons most writers have always done by like well, I think you know it's actually we use a vertical still and it's got to be cleaned all the time because buckwheat is so high and sugar. But anyway, but it's all about the water. I mean, the truth is it's really really about the water. Wow, I'm I'm as a sort of vodka skeptically. Uh, you know they kind of moved. The truth is that how much wine can you drink? Alright? Well, this is this is a vodka that I could actually make a martini. Well, I am I hate vodka martiniz I hate that they called vodka martinis. They should not be, but this is deserved. Well, this is this is up there with um, this is up there with the with the what's crazy you mentioned that the sucros are the futures, whatever the sugar is, because when I tasted it earlier with you, it has that like almost perception of sweetness. Yeah, there's there's things it's awesome. Yeah, and not coin or manufactured but natural sweetness. Um, what else you like about it? Dave? You know, I think vodka can get a bad rap as being like the most soulless there is because you can make it from everything or anything, and and so when it's really defined by its lack of flavor, so when it's really good by definition, it's a neutrals here. Well, and that's what I've been told about vodka that the more that it tastes like nothing, the better it's considered, you know, because it should just you know, but what I like about this is it actually tastes like something and tastes really good. It does you would be this would be a good um neat with just minor embellishments or just a twist a very small twist of lime live that's it anything, keep it? Keep it called a twist of lime is like you know you mentioned almost like an aged characteristic. Yeah, like I did pick up on that, Peter, do you cook with spirits at all I do, I mean, um, would you cook with your vodka? If you go to my website, any of the ka that com you find all kinds of recipes my vodka because you know, I mean, um, but we do on the on the website there's a recipe for poached eggs, crab meat, um glaze and tomatoes that are flamed with vodka. Um, tomatoes and vacca seem to go Williams right, this goes great. Um and bourbon. I love to cook with bourbon because and particularly um with beef. Tell me how you do that. It's just a reduction whatever stock you have in your house, whether it's chicken or even if it's canned. You so tell a little shallot, you add a good dollarp of bourbon and bring it down with a little stock, and finish it with a pad of butter and put it over your steak. You can do that with like a decent organic store bought stock. You can, I mean amatics. It's better. It's better than not having sauce. Right, that's great. I mean we you know lobster lobster stock as you do glaze with Konjak's so um. It certainly makes sense, but we don't think. I don't think to throw bourbon into my sauces when I'm making a chicken sauce. It's funny. The other night I had an open bottle of Basil Hayden on the thing and I was doing a chicken and some mushrooms with it. Whatever, I said, give me the you know, and I just put it in there. It was. It was awesome to be making like a chicken shoe with mushrooms. You threw some bourbon, Suburban, and we're gonna have to try that. You should. After the break, we make our way to the inimitable David Lebowitz to make some cocktails. Okay, this vodka was so unusual, I had to tackle one of my great peeves in cocktail nomenclature, the so called vodka martini. As everyone should know, martinis are made with gin and a splash of vermouth. Period. Other drinks change their name when the spirit changes. A Manhattan becomes a rob roy when the spirit changes from bourbon to Scotch. A Boulevardier is simply a NEGRONI made with bourbon rather than jim. Why don't we have a name for martini made with vodka. Well we do, but no one seems to know it's called a kangaroo, or they feel silly ordering it. But this vodka made me rethink it all. Should I throw in the towel and accept what can't be changed? And could anyone make a decent vodka with vermouth cocktail? To answer both questions, we made our way to my friend, the inimitable David Leboitz. I'm here with my friend David Leboit, who is Connecticut born. Became a pastry chef at Chaponnese on the West Coast, but he's now really known for his writing about life in France. He has several books about both memoirs and cookbooks that explore life in France. And you live in Paris now, um, and you've become an expert on their way of eating drinking, and you have a new book coming out called Drinking French. How did you get here? I took the subway, the metro, I actually, um, I started writing a blog about France when I moved there before people knew what a blog was, and I had already written a few books. Yeah, it must be said that you were one of the first food bloggers ever yes, I just celebrated my twentieth year congratulation. But I had written a couple of cookbooks. But when I moved to France, I found there was some I had gone to pastry school in France, but I had found that there was so much stuff that was really interesting UM, and a lot of that stuff doesn't didn't at the time, didn't get as you would say in French, had diffused. UM didn't get discussed. You know, magazines might talk about like top ten b stros to go to UM, and I thought, oh my god, so funny. Every time you go to a dinner party in France, you can't leave. You spend two hours at the door saying goodbye UM. Or like you know, people were shocked they cost likes or euros if you lock yourself out of your apartment to get a new key made you know, So all those things were kind of funny to me. UM. Plus I was discovering all these bakeries and pastry shops and chocolate shops that nobody was um really writing about because magazines, uh, you know, they came out once a quarter or once a month, and they didn't really have the space or they wanted to talk about the established places, the safe places for people to go, like La Bakery, which are both terrific, but there was also there was a sort of a resurgence in France of young people opening bakeries and pastry chefs, leaving their jobs at these esteemed hotels and opening a little neighborhood bakery. And I loved writing about them and sharing them. And I wanted to talk vodka, my least favorite spirit. That's those are harsh words, um, But I was just with a chef UM and Yonkers, Peter Kelly, who has partnered with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Bill Murray to create UM, a vodka that's made from buck wheat grown in Slovenia, and I was really impressed by it. And so I want to talk to you about the vodka self. I wanted your evaluation as a as a tasting expert as as you are indeed Um, to taste the vodka, see what you think UM, and to talk about what I think is the worst idea for a cocktail ever, the vodka martini. It's also probably the most popular popular junk in America. Either just lost half readers or you're double your readers. Okay, well, what are your thoughts on on the vodka martini. Um, I've actually never had one. To me, vodka is a sort of a tasteless alcohol. Um So, I don't understand the vodka martini because you're basically drinking chilled, slightly deluded glass of alcohol with some vermouth in it. And that's fine if you like that. Um Once, you know, gin is vodka with flavors in it. It's got botanicals, that's got juniper, um bergamot or whatever. They use citrus, so there's more going on in the glass. Um So, I always, you know, I prefer jin martini. It's one of my favorite cocktails. So that in the Manhattan my too too. Really, yeah, I love Manhattan's. I used to drink more martinis. They are sort of powerful and they go down very easily. But also it's hard to get a good martini martini more than any other cocktail. He used to be ice cold. It can't be cold. It needs to be ice cold. So there's a new trend now to pre bottle them, pre batch them at bars and then they put them in a bottle in the freezer, and I love that. I actually like shaking martinis now too. You do why because they're really cold. When you shake it, it gets the ice moving, you know, the ice it breaks up and it chills the cocktail. And some people, you know, the whole thing about old bruises, the general that's been widely disproven. Um, and you know, stirring it is fine, but it doesn't get it as cold. I just hate that the ice flow on top. That's the best part. Little bits of ice that melt in your mouth that are icy cold. Yeah. They used to do them at the Four Seasons in New York. You would go to the pool room and sit and they have these glasses and the little bits of ice on top there were It was perfect. Wow. I would I would have you look like you want one now? Well, of course I wouldn't. After that the scripture, I think I read something that two out of every three martini served now is a vodka martini. That's so sad. Yeah, so sad. You look like you're gonna cry. Well that kind of stop. Don't make Michael Roman cry. If you want to be on this podcast, I want you to taste this vodka, okay, and then I would love it if you would make me and join me in having your first vodka martini. Okay, you have to make it here? Did you bring it or do I have to make it? Well? You said you have some vermouth, and I brought the Slovenia vodka that we that was made um by the company with Murray Barishnikov and Peter Kelly. Okay, well, so I have Dolan vermouth from France. Tell me about the vermouth. It's actually um. A lot of people forget that France was and is a major producer of vermouth, but's a different style of vermouth. It's driver vermouth that France is known for or um you would you know, it's like a white or clear vermouth, and Italy is more known for its red vermouth, which are fruitier, more juicy, whereas the French ones are dryer. They're meant for martinis, um, but they're also meant to drink like Neiley Pratt is a famous vermouth that was the original vermouth of France. Um. And interestingly enough, I went down there and they had like a thousand barrels outside and they age the vermouth in barrels outside, say oxidize, and that mimics the wine arriving by ships from Spain, which is not which is not far, but they wanted that salty air to attack sort of speak. So that's why Noiley Pratt has a specific it's a little yellowish um and it has that sort of salty flavor. Um, thank you, I didn't know that. Well, what's interesting is Noilly Pratt makes a vermouth exclusively for the United States, and it's the extra dry um and because there you can't get that in Europe. And it's specifically. It's because Americans like martinis. They want we want a dry vermouth, we want a clear one. They reformulated their vermouth maybe fifteen years ago, and they miscalculated the American market and people started pouring because in Europe people drink vermouth as a cock, as a drink on ice, and so they had this They put forth this heavily botanical, you know, sort of lightly colored vermouth, and people started, uh, They're like, I want my vermartini. This is not right, and so Nertally Pratt quickly came out with this this extra dry for the American market and the only place you can get it in Frances if you go to the distillery. All right, well I'm gonna go now get the vodka that we put in the freezer moments not too long ago. Small glass so that David can taste, and you're gonna taste too. I will absolutely taste, all right. So you got a little tumbler that just straight, big but not kind of like the doctor's office when they about to give you a shot. And that smell of the swab comes out. You know, her whole detenses that. M it's good. It's very Uh. It's not like the alcohol doesn't burn. It must be distilled several times. Um. It's almost like the buckwheat gives it a little bit of sweetness. And we should not. This is not a paid placement. It is not a paid placement. It's excellent. Okay. Well, the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna measure the ingredients and put them in a mixing glass. All right, I've got a nice speaker. There, got four ounces of vodka because that makes the easier. So we're gonna have one ounce of drivermouth. Vermouth de chamberry and vermouth should always be kept in the refrigerator. Vermouth is a fortified wine. It doesn't have a lot of alcohol, so um, keeping it in refrigerator keeps the botanicals fresh, and they say that vermouth should be used within three weeks. Unfortunately, in a ck you can buy these half bottles if we can't get them in France. But they're quite good. So we're going to fill the cocktail glass with ice. I'm very dip jealous David as an icemaker. I have one in Paris. It's great. So I'm gonna add a dash of this eucalyptus. Bidders or these ul I'm never sure as a cop from a copy editing point of view, because the bidders plural say these are or this is bitterers. It's one of those sheeps writers awake at night. I'm trying to stir this stir? Should I grab the Coop's not hong stir for so it's really cold at least thirty seconds. And I've actually seen some bartenders who are mixing up with super alcoholic drink. We'll let it sit for a bit with the ice, just to calm everything down and get it really cold. All right? Where are those glasses? When I was writing Drinking French, which has a chapter on cocktails, I realized every bartender I spoke but hates the martini glass um. There's like a symbol of um the eighties or nineties, and this is kind of old. So I think they got overused. I don't I don't mind them, but they can slash a bit too practically speaking. Okay, so's pouring. What's the name of that silver thing with a spring on it that you're using? The strain trainer? Just a strainer, cocktail strainer, cocktail trainer. It's another kind called a hawthorn strainer, which has a handle. Yes, actually gorgeous. And we're gonna put a little bit of lemon zest on it. Okay, that's beautiful. Why um um, why lemon? And not? What are your feeling feelings on olive versus lemon. I'm the world's number one olive fan, and I actually realized I like olives, but I don't like them in my martine, so I decided to go with I actually liked a little bit of lemon in the drink. I do too. I think the letter ring is refreshing, and I think Roy Blunt said I only drank martinis with ols because you can't eat a twist. Well, I put the olives on the side because I still like the olives. Um, this is a beautiful Now this is a Slovenia vodka with Dolan vermouth and eucalyptus bidders, which is now called the Slovenitini, Slovenitini, the Barigin n Barigin Nicotini, or the Maritini. For Bill Murray, I think that's a nice cocktail. Yeah, I think it could be interesting with a little bit of orange in it. Maybe the orange bidders would take take it sort of would enhance the botanic calls. I'm going to add a dash more of this eucalyptus bitters hella bitters. Um. No, it's quite good. Well, it's good because it's very cold. It was properly made, I must say. But you know, why make a cocktail if you're going to serve in like a lukewarm glass. And I was actually out having cocktails with friends and they brought half the people their cocktails, and um. In America, everyone's polite. They wait to be polite. You wait for everybody to get everything and then you start, whereas in France you eat right away because it's that's that's when the food is right. So everybody's saying they're watching, you know, their cocktails get warm for two minutes. I'm like drink. They're like, no, we're waiting for you. Like drink your cocktail. Believe me. Stressing out here, David's written to fabulous and hilarious memoirs about living in Paris and the things that he just described, called The Sweet Life in Paris and Lapart, both available now, and his new book will be out in March. Of the remarkable David Levewitz, thank you so much. Special thanks to chef Brian Poulson for making a simple chicken Juliet. He'll be back next week making hollandaise sauce with me. Be sure to catch that. Thanks also to Chef Peter Kelly for his hospitality in hosting our Wine and Spirit's discussion at his gorgeous restaurant X two O in Yonkers. And thanks to both Peter and Dave Finney for all the wine and spirits. Lastly, my new book is out. It's called From Scratch, but it's all about cooking and ten meals that can teach us all we need to know in the kitchen. We'll have a link to it in the show notes and on my site. From Scratch. The podcast is produced by Jonathan Dressler. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Our supervising producer is Gabrielle Collins. All the music on from Scratches by Ryan Scott off his album A Freak Grows in Brooklyn. If you like this show, please rate it give it some stars because that helps other people. I'd the show from Scratch, the production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. It's Friday night, It's seven seven, Get back,