Licorice Adjacent Flavor

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket.

With me, as always, is the king of all chefs.

Sorry, Rayquan, Judge John Hodgman.

I'm the king of all chefs now.

I don't deserve this.

Because we're going to do food stuff on this episode.

I made you the king of all chefs.

If anything, I am the Prince Regent.

If anything, I am the Dowager Countess.

If anything, I am the.

I mean, because we have a special guest.

We have an expert of all experts with us right now.

We have a man with us who is both a great cook and a great chef.

He's the author of the James Beard award-winning cookbook, The Food Lab, Better Home Cooking Through Science, which I have at my home because I paid actual money to buy it.

And it's my favorite cookbook.

He also has a children's book coming out later this year called Every Night is Pizza Night.

He is also the chef behind the Bay Area restaurant Wurst Hall, which is currently preparing and delivering meals to hospitals and community centers.

Friend of the court, Kenji Lopez-Alt.

Hi, Kenji.

How are you, friend?

Good.

How are you doing?

Good.

I just watched a video of you making a steak using a GoPro camera.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's like my new, my new, I'm apparently a YouTube creator now.

So

that's what I've transitioned into now that I'm stuck mostly at home

I strap a camera to my head and I cook every day.

I learned a lot about steak cooking.

I thought it was some kind of like intense sous-vide technique where it's like all you do is you fill this baggie up with water, throw steak in there, throw a Gokro in there.

No, it's kind of the opposite.

You know, it's like my book is very much about like sort of precision, and you do this for this reason, you do this for that reason.

And my actual home cooking is just like, it doesn't really matter.

That's kind of the catchphrase of the show:

it doesn't really matter.

You can do this if you want, it doesn't really matter.

i think my favorite part of uh jay kenji lopez alt's uh steak cooking head video uh was which i watched all of this like a 20 minute long video with kenji just narrating cooking his family lunch and uh kenji is like one of his greatest contributions to world cookery is something called the reverse sear a method of cooking a steak that he developed for i think for what was it for for cooks illustrated cooks illustrated yeah yeah Yeah, like 15 years ago.

And it's something that has changed many a steak cooker's life.

And Kenji was like, yeah, well, I know I invented that one, but I'm just going to cook it in the pan today.

It was great.

Although I don't claim to have invented it, because I'm sure there were people who, if you go to meatheads, amazingribs.com, I think there's like a full history of all the people who were doing that in various ways

before I came and developed it in a different, slightly different way and published it in Cooks Illustrated.

But you road tested it, you stress tested it.

If people don't understand,

the reverse sear method is a method of cooking a steak, or it could be a pork chop, right?

Or even anything, really, yeah.

Any kind of big slab of protein.

Yes.

And what you do is you cook it in a very, what they call slow oven, at a very low temperature, using a meat thermometer to get it precisely to the temperature that you want it to be, or maybe just below, and then finishing it over a hot fire or in a hot cast iron pan.

We call it the reverse sear because normally you would start by searing, right?

And then you might finish it in an oven.

But this way, it's almost like a

modified sous vide technique where you are cooking for temperature first and then finishing it.

Yeah, that's actually

how I came up with the technique because I had been working in restaurants where we were doing sous vide, but sous vide devices at the time were still like $1,500, $2,000.

The home devices didn't exist.

So I was just thinking, well, what's a way we can sort of mimic this approach for home cook?

Um, and that's how we landed on uh reverse here, although we didn't even call it reverse here at the time.

Someone came up with that name on the internet later, right?

So, and also, that's how they, you know, the big, like the house of prime rib in uh in San Francisco, all those big prime rib places, they are slow roasting those prime ribs.

Oh, yeah, yeah, low and slow.

It's like low and slow, even though it's not, I don't know, I could talk, I could talk about cooking all day long, but I don't want to because I'm not the king of shit.

Oh, I do have to say this, Kenji.

So happy you're here because it's just, it's totally coincidental that I just made this weekend your, quote, the best chili ever recipe

that you can find over at seriouseats.com.

That's a recipe I haven't made since I wrote it down

because it's very involved.

It is very involved.

And you approach cooking

with a scientist's curiosity.

And

I know that everything is happening for a reason, but as I was going through this recipe,

I was like, okay, then I got to

roast these cloves and grind them and then get the soy sauce and two, not one, not three, but two anchovy fillets are going into this.

And all this, I'm like, this guy is overthinking this quite a bit.

But then I got to the part where it says one teaspoon Marmite.

Right.

And I was like, well, I'm making this.

This guy's putting Marmite in his chili.

I know he's onto something because Marmite is one of the most intensely beloved flavors on earth by me.

Oh, really?

I completely saw where.

Well, for people who don't know, I mean, Marmite is this, it's like this fermented yeast product that British people put on toast.

Yeah.

Right?

And it's very funky and umami-ish.

Right.

And I was like, oh, this is going to...

add a ton of depth of flavor that I never thought.

I got to give this a try.

And I made it and I I served it to my family.

And my wife said, don't ever make chili any other way again.

Oh, that's good.

I was going to say, you know, the secret to that recipe, really, the secret to that recipe's success is to make it so difficult that no matter how good it is at the end, people feel like they have to like it because they put so much work into it.

No,

no, and I can tell you that's not true because my wife put zero work into it.

Well, that's good to know.

You know, we're all at home right now.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And I and I spent the afternoon,

actually, the morning and the afternoon getting this thing together, having a great time.

But by the end of it, I kind of said to my wife, look at me cooking over here.

Why aren't you helping?

She's like, you wanted to do this.

And I'm like, you're right, I did.

And she liked it, which I'm sorry.

I feel like I've now sentenced you to a life of overly fussy chili making.

No, it's not, I mean, because the basics are there.

I mean,

and the way you lay out, I mean, one of the things about making really good chili is you want to use actual dried chilies.

Yeah.

And that's intimidating for a lot of people, right?

Yeah, like lose the powder, use real dried chilies.

Like, that's by far the most important thing.

You know, if you're not from any sort of Mexican-American heritage, working with dried chilies is intimidating because in fresh form they have a certain name, and then dried form they have a certain name, and sometimes they're different kinds of names, and you got to go get them.

But once you get used to using them, and this recipe really lays out a really great sort of sequence of events for seeding the chilies and then cooking them up in that chicken stock after you've browned off the meat, it's perfect.

The best chili ever recipe.

Go get it, everyone.

And that's our podcast.

Thanks very much.

We have more?

Look, we're going to have plenty of time with Kenji for me to address roast potatoes and to ask him what's wrong with my chocolate chip cookies.

But first, how about a question from a listener?

Anna says, My boyfriend uses the word savory as an antonym to spicy, as in the question, do you want something spicy or savory for dinner?

The first couple times he said this, I was confused because any meal we would make for dinner would probably be savory, but it might or might not be spicy.

I'd argue almost all spicy foods are also savory.

I ask you, order him to find a better word to describe comfort foods that are not spicy.

Yeah.

Kenji, what do you think?

I mean, that reminds me of the kinds of things like my daughter would say.

It's like, should we have a bubble bath or a warm bath?

It's like, it doesn't have to be either or.

It could be both or one or the other.

Yeah, I would say savory and spicy are sort of orthogonal.

They don't affect each other.

You can have spicy foods that are not savory.

Like if you go to Mexico, they eat a lot of sweet foods.

The candies are like tamarind candy with chili in it, really tasty.

Yeah, they're definitely parts of the world where they eat spicy and sweet at the same time.

I would say sweet is the antonym to savory.

But yeah, I think in the U.S., most of us are familiar with spicy foods that are always savory.

So it does seem weird.

I would wonder where her boyfriend is from

or who raised him.

Yeah,

I'd say spicy and savory.

That's a very strange dichotomy.

Whoever raised Anna's boyfriend raised him wrong.

Sorry, because I hate to do this.

Kenji, I hate to go to the dictionary for a couple of reasons.

One, it's the worst way to open a school paper.

The dictionary definition of savory is blah, blah, blah.

Two, because

a dictionary is sort of an arbitrary, frozen-in-time picture of language rather than truly a,

I mean, ironically,

it is not definitive.

It is constantly evolving.

And three, because the dictionary of choice of the Judge Shan Ajin podcast is, of course, Merriam-Webster, because we have our friend Emily Brewster come on from time to time.

And

she's an editor there

and discovered a previously undocumented use of the word A that got in the dictionary.

But Merriam-Webster is also my mortal enemy because they, Merriam-Webster, claims that a hot dog is a sandwich.

Yes.

I was going to bring that up.

I was going to say, you know,

as soon as you bring in the dictionary, you know that you've already lost a hot dog debate.

Yeah.

How do you feel?

Just before we go on with this podcast.

Yeah.

Well, actually, save your response until we get through this question.

But I did go to Merriam-Webster, and it says, definition of savory.

A, B, C, D, E.

Five definitions.

One,

piquantly pleasant to the mind, a savory triumph.

Morally exemplary.

Pleasing to the sense of taste or smell, especially by reason of effective seasoning.

It's a hard sentence to say.

Maybe we're going to bunch that one up, Merriam-Webster.

And D, having a spicy or salty quality without sweetness, specifically defined, without sweetness.

Yes.

So, yeah, I would say savory and spicy are, I loved your term for it, Kenji.

They are orthogonal.

There is more of Venn overlap.

between spicy and savory.

They are not opposites by any means.

Now, I have these questions for you.

One,

tell me more about the Mexican sweet, spicy candy okay and two is a hot dog a sandwich

i'll take the answers in whatever order you prefer well the first one um so you know in mexico also in also in parts of southeast asia so it's common to have like fruit with chili.

So tajin is the name of the chili powder stuff that so I think it has like powdered lime and chilies in it.

It comes in a little jar with a with a white top and you shake it on and you sprinkle that onto like mango slices or pineapple slices, green green mango also really tasty but so at the Mexican market

the actually it's a Salvadoran market near me but they sell a lot of Mexican products

around the corner from my house they have these tamarind candies that are I don't know they're kind of like chewy and sweet and really sour but then they're coated in chili

and yeah so they're really good yeah yeah spicy spicy chili yeah And is a hot dog?

Thanks.

Well, so

I mean, I think a hot dog is a sandwich in the way that like a potato salad is a salad.

You know, it's like if there was no other section on the menu, if there's no specific sausage.

So at my restaurant, we have a sausage section on the menu and we have a sandwich section on the menu.

And the hot dogs go in the sausage section, not in the sandwich section, even though they're served in a bun.

But if there's no other place on the menu to put a hot dog, I would put it in the sandwich section.

You know, same as like if there's only one dog.

You should have just left it there, Kenji.

You should have left it with the menu.

My argument has always been, if I ask a friend, if a friend says to me, hey, I'm going down to the corner to the deli, can I get you a sandwich?

And I say yes, and then they bring me back a hot dog, I would think, wait a second, what's wrong?

Yeah, that's not a sound.

What's the name of your restaurant again?

Worst Hall.

Worst Hall?

Yeah,

W R S T.

Right.

Let me say this.

Even though, listeners, even though Kenji seems to be waffling a little bit on this,

that Worst Hall gets it right.

Worst Hall menu gets it right.

Jesse Thorne, I have this question question for you.

Have you ever put sriracha on a Satsuma?

That's a lot to ask of me, John.

This is the Judge Sean Hodgman challenge.

Listeners, is it Satsuma season yet?

It's Satsuma season's over, baby.

It ended a few weeks ago.

Yeah, it won't be back for a while.

I'm eating the dregs of the golden nuggets right now.

Is that a type of orange also?

A golden nugget?

That's a satsangum?

Yeah, that's a golden nugget in like a tangerine.

It's sort of

a big and lumpy one.

Oh, or a slightly bigger satsuma.

I think ours, we have a satsuma tree in our backyard, and I think it gave its last one like probably a week ago, maybe two weeks ago.

Hmm.

Now I want to try a siracha satsuma.

Listeners, go over to the maximum fun reddit on the discussion board for this episode.

Give us your suggestions for fruits and hot sauce pairings.

I'll try them.

Watermelon with jalapeno.

Good.

Oh.

I like that.

That does sound a little bit more.

And feta cheese.

Watermelon, feta cheese, and jalapeno.

There we go.

I could imagine putting a hot sauce on a sort of simply sweet fruit, like a cherimoya or something.

You just made that word up.

No, that's a...

I know.

I know what a cherimoya is.

What's that goofy apple you're always trying to get me to eat?

What is it called?

Yeah,

that's what it is.

Custard apple, they call her, yeah.

Custard apple.

Custard apple.

Now, the chiramoyas have just started showing up at my farmer's market.

They come down from, I think, from the Santa Barbara area.

Anyway, here's something from Andrew.

When my friends and I rent a cabin for a long weekend, I'm usually the one that wakes up first in the morning to make a pot of coffee for everyone.

I like to pour a cup for myself before the pot is finished brewing.

Most modern coffee makers automatically pause the brewing when you remove the pot to pour a cup.

My friend John argues, I'm diluting the coffee for the rest of the group, and I should wait until the full pot is complete.

Please order that I am permitted to continue pouring my coffee regardless of whether the coffee maker has finished making a full pot.

Kenji, what do you think?

Well, I think given that he's the one who wakes up to make coffee for everyone else, he's allowed to do whatever he wants.

I think that that's the basic rule.

Wow.

But

if his friend John is saying that it's diluting,

I'm like pretty famously not a coffee drinker, but that's knowing how my parents,

you know, how my parents' coffee machine works, I would say you probably are diluting it because, I don't know, that water at the beginning is dripping through all the fresh grounds, right?

Assuming it's a drip machine.

And even if it shuts off, even if it doesn't let it drip through, you're still getting the most extraction out of those first few drips.

So I would say John is correct in that it is diluting the coffee for everyone else, but I mean, he's the one making the coffee.

He gets to choose.

Kenji, I'm glad that you're not a coffee drinker because you need to leave one type of food nerd Ari alone.

Like you're already, you already have to lead, you have the responsibility on your shoulders of leading all the cast iron nerds and all the sous vide nerds and then all the umami nerds.

I made Coffee Twitter angry once because

I suggested, oh, there's somebody, I'm not going to say his name, but somebody who was was writing an article with Sirius Eats who

casually mentioned that blade grinders are worse than burr grinders because they give you uneven grind sizes.

And

on Twitter, I think I just asked, like,

okay, like, that clearly makes sense, but do we, like, but like,

are we sure that uneven grind size is necessarily a bad thing in coffee?

It's like, I don't know.

Like, can someone explain it to me?

And then, um, and then coffee Twitter got very mad that I, that I would dare question that.

i'm gonna say this this episode we have not even finished recording this episode never mind sending it out into the world and i am already getting angry emails from coffee people about andrew

like i just like i i'm i'm i'm getting letters shoved underneath the door of my office right now because look i i uh am pretty ecumenical about coffee.

I like good coffee.

I like bad coffee.

I like hot coffee.

I like cold coffee.

I will drink the coffee that was sitting on my desk yesterday.

I do not really care a lot, but I do know that there is a science to the extraction of coffee in terms of water temperature, grind, et cetera, et cetera.

More science than I care to know about.

And I do know that if you grab out that pot and grab a cup, that the cup you're having is going to be different than what it would have been if you had let the entire brewing process complete.

That's why you measure the amount of grounds.

That's why you measure the amount of water.

Andrew, modern coffee makers don't pause the brewing when you pull the carafe out because it makes no difference to the brewing.

They pause it so that it doesn't affect the counter and your dumb pants and shirt with coffee splattering everywhere when you do this thing.

Now, look, I'll abide by the king of chefs, Jay Kenji Lopez Alt,

and say that it is royal privilege, apparently.

It is your royal privilege to mess up the coffee for everyone else if you get up and make it.

You could be messing it up just by making it wrong anyway.

So

I guess he's right, John.

You got to wake up early in the morning

when you're out in a cabin with Andrew.

But frankly, Andrew, frankly,

I'm sorry that we're all having to stay at home these days, but I'm glad you can't rent a cabin anymore because, boy, oh, boy,

you're messing it up.

I want an injunction against my wife, who's a Judge John Hodgman listener.

I want her to make her coffee before she makes breakfast and breakfast drinks for our children.

I have no standing in this because I tend to get up after she and they have been up for 45 minutes.

But I would love her to kind of like in the spirit of put your own oxygen mask on first before putting them on your children.

I would like my wife to take care of her own caffeine needs before she addresses the breakfast drink needs of our little ones.

So ordered.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Let's take a quick break.

More items on the docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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Thanks to everybody who's gone to maximumfun.org slash join.

And you can join them by going to maximumfun.org slash join.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by Made In.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket with our guest, Jay Kenji Lopez Ault.

Kenji is a cookbook author.

You've seen him in the New York Times.

You've seen him in Sirius Eats.

If If you don't have a copy of his book, The Food Lab, you should have a copy of his book, The Food Lab.

He's got a kids' book coming out called Every Night is Pizza Night.

And Kenji, your restaurant, Worst Hall, which is

just south of San Francisco.

Where is it, San Mateo or something like that?

San Mateo, yeah.

Wow, I nailed it.

I haven't been there.

I'd love to go.

Your restaurant has been making food for hospitals and so on and so forth during the COVID crisis.

And you've been helped out in doing so by donations from

people who love the restaurant and people who know you from your work elsewhere and so on and so forth, right?

Yeah,

both direct donations to the so like on our website or on our on our order online order thing you can you can buy boxes meal boxes directly

or you can donate to World Central Kitchen or off their plate who work with a number of restaurants but we're we we we do some stuff with some work with them as well.

Yeah that's actually like, you know, that's that's sort of

the idea was that we could help the community while also helping to keep as many of our employees employed as possible.

So that's how we're dealing with the with the with the COVID crisis right now.

Now, Kenji, I I mentioned earlier on the program the issue of potatoes.

The other day, our friend, John and my friend, Nick Weiger from the Doughboys podcast, mentioned that because he had been cooking at home more, he was looking for everyone's like special recipe that was not special by virtue of super fanciness, but by virtue of utility.

And what I told him to cook for his family, his wife Natalie, was your recipe for crispy roasted potatoes.

What is the central thing that separates your roasted potatoes from roasties the world over?

Well, it's adding baking soda to the water when you boil it.

So baking soda, I mean, it raises the pH pH of the water.

And so the pectin, which is the carbohydrate glue that kind of holds plant cells together,

it breaks down more rapidly under higher pHs.

So you cut your potatoes up, you put a little baking soda in the water, you boil the potatoes in there,

and then the outside of them get really kind of rough.

And then after that, you follow the same sort of typical British roasty thing where you toss the potatoes, kind of rough up the surfaces as much as you can, and then toss them with oil or butter or duck fat or beef fat, whatever you want, and then roast them in the oven.

But the baking soda is what really makes those outsides sort of super, you know, gives them those kind of micro blisters.

I think I call them micro blisters in that thing.

But, you know, like the little micro blisters that you get on like a good French fry or a good bagel, like the thing that adds surface area and extra crunch,

that's the trick.

Would this be with peeled potatoes or could you do it with like peeled fingerling potatoes?

Well, if you're using fingerling, so you do, you do want to like expose the flesh.

So if you're using fingerling potatoes, yeah, you do want to either split them or use larger, but it works best with russet potatoes.

Peeled russet potatoes.

Russet potatoes that are cut into pieces.

Gotcha.

Yeah, so even if you cut the potatoes up and you boil them, then there's enough of this sort of mashed potato.

paste that kind of sloughs off the cut surfaces that it ends up coating the peeled side, you know, the side with the peel as well, so that that side gets enough surface area and crisp as well.

I've always been a waxy potato man.

I'm not even, honestly, look, I'm not even a potato guy.

I'm not a lover of potatoes the way that many people are.

I'm fine with potatoes, but you know, I've french fries.

I'm I'll take onion rings.

Thank you.

But I've always been a waxy potato guy because I hate that I don't like,

I don't like the texture of the inside of a potato all that much.

Like if I eat a baked potato often, I just add a lot of dairy to it

to make it smoother and so on and so forth.

When I so I had started making this recipe of of yours, Kenji, with waxy potatoes, and it works great.

I mean, it was, it was revelatory.

I was like, wow, this is fantastic.

And then one day, I had only been to like a small regular grocery store and all they had was russets.

And I said, well, I'll just grab a few russet potatoes and

it said you could use waxy or russet in that in that roast potato recipe.

I'll try these.

The result was spectacular.

And the crust that they develop when they're banging around because of the way the the altered pH and the boiling uh gets them is so delightful and then you get that wonderful you know with rusted potatoes if you get it right the the inside is like a total dream yeah yeah kind of

moist and fluffy so I have two questions one Kenji where where can I get this recipe You can get the recipe on Siri Seats.

I think it's called The Best Roast Potatoes Ever or on my YouTube channel where it's also called The Best Roast Potatoes Ever.

I tend to Google Kenji potatoes.

Yeah, that's a good work work too.

And the second question is, since, Jesse Thorne, you asked this and recommended this recipe

to our friend Nick Weiger, co-host of the Doughboys, I'll ask you, Kenji, now, what is your favorite hot salad?

What's the best way?

Let me put it this way.

What's the best way to heat up a garden salad so that Nick Weiger can enjoy it?

I like a grilled potato salad.

So like grilled potatoes and grilled spring onions.

So like

fingerlink potatoes that you boil, split, and then toss with olive oil and then throw in the grill and then grill some spring onions or scallions next to that and then also grill a lemon and you toss that all together and you squeeze the lemon over it and add some like really good olive oil.

I'd say that is my favorite salad.

That one goes out to Nick Weiger

because that was an in-joke pertaining to another podcast in which Nick Weiger is constantly being teased that he likes hot salad as though he microwaves his garden salads.

But you actually, and I apologize for roping you into this in-joke that you didn't know was an in-joke, but you answered it perfectly.

That is a hot salad.

That's a beautiful hot salad for you, Nick Weiger, my friend.

Now let's, speaking of potatoes, I think we do have a potatoes-themed case.

Jeffrey says, is it permissible to serve turnips alongside potatoes as a side dish?

I say yes.

Although they're both root vegetables, a turnip provides a greater range of nutrients and fiber.

The potato is merely starch and calories.

Well, it also has the amino acids that kept the entire nation of Ireland alive until they stopped having potatoes.

My wife argues they are too similar to share space on the same plate.

Hogwash.

You could have a root abega and a potato on the same plate.

Carrots, beets, any other root vegetable.

I argue her conflict simply boils down to color, nothing else.

Yeah, so I would say that definitely the most important consideration that I have, Kenji, when planning a menu and thinking of what the plate is going to look like, my first thought is, am I serving enough range of fiber?

No, seriously, Kenji, what do you think about this?

I'd say they're quite different.

I don't know.

I mean,

I think it's totally permissible.

You know, although, though, like, I generally tend to keep my meals at home simple.

So it's like, you know, like, I probably wouldn't.

yeah nothing so fancy as a turnip and a potato

I mean like if I if I am gonna grab one a root vegetable I probably just grab one

but you know sometimes like at a holiday like at holidays like I'll roast a whole bunch of different root vegetables together and I think that's fine

if I'm making you know like mashed turnips or mashed rutabaga adding a potato to that is great because the potato brings texture whereas like the rutabaga or the turnip bring flavor um yeah i'd say they're i'd say they're definitely different enough How would you describe the flavor of a turnip?

Because I've had them, but I'm having a hard time.

I would say they are

vaguely.

So they're a little sweet and a little spicy, and the aroma is vaguely of like feet, but good feet, you know?

Feet that I've grown up and grown and have been marinated in nice soil.

Yeah,

they're a little footy.

And if you, you know, we do a lot of of pickling at my restaurant.

We ferment a lot of things.

If you ferment

radishes or turnips or rutabagas, those kind of sort of watery root vegetables,

that kind of amplifies the footiness of them.

Also in a good way, I think.

But people might disagree on that.

What would you do, Kenji,

if you had to, say this were some kind of

cooking game show,

and you were forced to serve a meal that includes potatoes and turnips and a third item.

What would be the balancing item for those three?

Potatoes and turnips?

It really does feel like we're eating in the Middle Ages all of a sudden.

Chicken?

I think it would be a Blackbird pie.

I would roast some kind of, probably some kind of meat with them.

Unless you're talking about like just this is just going to be a side dish, in which case, you know,

honestly, it would be butter.

You know, actually, thinking back on this, I think the main thing that differentiates a roasted potato and a roasted turnip is the texture.

You know, where a potato is kind of dense and starchy, a turnip has it, you know, like those turnips and radishes, when you roast them, they get that kind of sort of like, it's almost like mini water balloons.

Like, they have like kind of a watery texture, but, and again, like watery sounds bad in the same way that like foot smelling sounds bad, but watery in a good way for a vegetable.

Watery and foot smelling in a good way.

I would say, Jeffrey, that turnips and potatoes are different enough flavor profiles to be served together.

But I would agree with you, Jeffrey, that putting a turnip and a potato on a plate demands other foods that offer textural and flavor contrast, lest you invite your guest to think that this is actually the 14th century.

So

I mean, that's my whole thing.

That's right.

There were no forks in medieval times, thus, there are no forks at medieval times.

That's the watchword of my dining table.

But if you wish to dine as does the king of chefs,

potato, turnip, butter, that's all you need.

Here's something from Greg.

Dear Judge Hodgman, when cooking an already written recipe for the first time, I believe it's important to experience the recipe as the creator intended.

My partner, Aaron, on the other hand, alters published recipes to better suit our tastes without ever having made them as written.

I'll concede, Erin's an excellent cook, her modified recipes rarely, if ever, turn out badly.

However, I feel her insistence on modifications strips us of the opportunity to learn new things from the experts.

I ask you forbid Erin from recipe modifications except where necessary in the middle of the cooking process and allow that changes be planned and agreed upon only before we begin cooking.

Kenji, can I, this is confession time for me.

Okay.

Remember how I was talking about that chili recipe that you wrote?

And how good it was?

I didn't grind my own coriander.

I'm sorry.

Oh, my goodness.

I used pre-ground coriander and cumin seed, and I didn't even put in the star anise.

Look, we're not supposed to go outside.

I didn't have those things.

Any Texan will tell you, without star anise, it's not chili.

so i don't i don't i i can't actually say that i have actually had your recipe even though the overall direction steered me to something really really good what do you think about aaron's recipe meddling and greg's dislike of it i am 100 on aaron's side here so so first of all i don't think you learn things from recipes in the same way that you don't learn about a neighborhood by by sort of following the term-by-term directions on your on your phone you know it's like like a recipe is there to get you from point a to point b um but if you want to actually learn about the food you need to you need to like you know pull back and look at the bigger picture do a little more research about where it's from read the read the accompanying story unless it's about you know some some individual person's grandmother but but um You know, a recipe is there to just steer you from one place to another.

It's not there to sort of teach you about the food or teach you about the technique involved at all.

So I say I'm totally totally on Aaron's side on this.

Like, if she looks at a recipe and then pulls back and says, hey, wait a minute, like, this is something that I don't particularly like.

I'm going to do it this other way.

Or, like, I understand how chicken cooks well enough to know that I can do it this way instead of that way to fit my own personal tastes and parameters, then I think she's taking everything that she should be taking from the recipe.

So,

that would be my take.

You know, like, I write very sort of what people would describe as sort of very prescriptive recipes because they're very precise.

And they're precise because I know there are people,

people out there like Greg, who

don't really care so much to learn about the externalities and to learn about the context and just want to be able to get into the kitchen and follow a process and get to a good end result.

And then that's fine.

I'm not judging Greg for that.

I am.

And

that's why I write my recipes that way, because I want to guarantee that if someone follows it, they're going to get to the right end result.

But I don't think that's necessarily the best way to learn.

And people, of course, learn in different ways.

So maybe that is the best way to learn for Greg.

I obviously, I agree with you.

I mean, the only exception that I would point out on Greg's behalf is that I am not a baker and baking

in

perhaps it's my lack of experience, I'd be a little bit more comfortable with freestyle baking.

Baking recipes, I think you need to follow, especially if you're not an experienced baker, you need to follow pretty closely to get the desired result.

But everything else, I mean, that's the fun

is

getting in there, experimenting, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't work, figuring out how the food acts and reacts against the different ingredients.

And then every time you make a little adjustment and see a little difference,

you take new information to the next time you cook.

And

that's the enjoyment of it to a great degree.

You know, the one thing I would say is that if Erin strays from a recipe and then goes and complains about how it didn't work, she is clearly in the wrong.

Yeah.

If you're going to post a comment about a recipe online that complained that it didn't work, you had better have actually followed the recipe instead of just like taking whatever route you wanted to.

But in all other cases, I think it's fine.

Remind me, Jesse Thorne, before we wrap this session, to go back onto Serious Eats and and delete my one-star review of Kenji's chili recipe for it not being star anesy enough.

I guess now I realize that's on me.

It was missing a certain licorice adjacent flavor, in my opinion.

Okay, let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll hear a case against our guest, Kenji.

We'll be back in a moment on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You know, we've been doing My Brother, My Brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcast.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no.

It's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Long.

I'm Caroline Roper.

And on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week, and we've got something from Jay.

Jay says, my dispute is with Jay Kenji Lopez Alt at Kenji Lopez Alt, who, full disclosure, I do not know in person.

I seek an order to have him unblock me on Twitter.

The inciting incident came on December 18th when I lightly admonished him on Twitter for amplifying a major spoiler for the latest Star Wars movie.

In retrospect, perhaps the tone in my tweet was not as polite as it could have been, but I don't feel that it matches the harshness of other people that he justifiably blocks.

I'm a huge fan of Kenji's and have had some positive interactions with him previously on Twitter, and I miss one of my favorite follows.

So, Kenji, we're not going to reveal Jay's Twitter name on this episode.

Okay.

We're not going to put Jay on blast.

And I don't know how to evaluate Jay's complaint because

Jay has deleted the tweet.

I think I'm pretty sure I know it.

If it was about Star Wars, I'm pretty sure I know what the tweet is.

Do you remember this incident?

Well, okay.

I think we're past spoiler territory now because,

you know, whatever.

The movie's been out for a long time and nobody's watching it anymore.

Anyway, this is Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker.

Correct.

Yes.

So, all right.

So, I'm going to talk about this because this is actually one of the things I'm most proud of in my life.

Blocking this one person?

No, no, no, no, no, no.

The context.

So,

when The Force Awakens, so I'm a huge Star Wars fan.

When The Force Awakens came out, I remember when it first came out on,

you know, I saw it in theaters a bunch of times, and then I saw it in an airplane, like, a few months later.

You know, it always comes out on airplanes before it comes out at home.

And so I was was watching it on an airplane and I was watching it.

I was like, hey, you know what?

I think Ray is

a descendant of Palpatine.

And I wrote an essay on Medium.

It's published on Medium.

It's still there called Ray is a Palpatine

where I sort of delineated all of my arguments for why Ray is a Palpatine.

Wait, you wrote this back when The Force Awakens came out?

Yes.

Yes.

And then

the last, not the last chat, The Rise of Skywalker came out and I was like, and you know, and then the the last shrine I came out I was like God like you know I kind of wrote it as a joke and I was like this is so stupid like of course she's not and then it turns out that that actually was the plot of the movie so then I think I sent out a tweet that simply said the day Star Wars came out I guess when I saw it I think I sent out a tweet that just said called it I don't think I even mentioned it was in reference to Star Wars although people who follow me probably knew what I was talking about.

I mean

you sub-tweeted the rise of Skywalker.

When it came out and it was revealed that Rey was a Palpatine,

you said called it, referring back to your Medium post, which clearly gave J.J.

Abrams the idea to write the movie that way.

Right, right.

Now we're going to get into a time travel paradox that I don't want to get into.

Anyway, I wrote called it, and

in the tweet, I didn't even mention the rise of sky.

Like, I didn't mention Star Wars.

I didn't mention anything.

I'm pretty sure.

I don't know.

Maybe I did.

But anyhow,

I think that's what he got angry about saying I spoiled something.

And I was like, you have to be in this this very, very small, tiny subsection of the Star Wars audience that also follows me and also remembers this Medium post I wrote in 2017 or whenever it was,

to have been, to be able to claim that that was a spoiler.

And then I said, this movie is not even out yet.

Oh, I guess it was before the movie came out that I said it.

Maybe I saw somewhere.

I don't remember.

So I guess I must be wrong about telling this whole thing.

But anyhow, I'm sure that's...

No, no, no, no, I'm looking at it here.

You said, WTF spoilers, this movie's not even out yet.

And then Jay said, then why are you replying to this person with 300 followers to spread to your 60,000 ones like me?

I don't understand what Jay is saying.

Jay's concern there is that

Kenji, by responding to Jay,

is calling attention to Jay's tweet.

for people who follow Kenji, but not Jay.

They might see that post because Kenji replied to it.

Yeah, that's what what it was.

Oh, yeah, and I think it was when the trailer came, maybe when the trailer came out and the trailers kind of made it clear that Palpatine was in it.

It was something like that.

It had something to do with Ray and Palpatine.

And

I apparently spoiled it by saying something about the trailer.

You know, I have a very sort of itchy trigger finger on the block button on Twitter because it's like...

I have so many, you know, it's such a negative space.

It's like I, if, if anyone gives me any kind of grief at all, I just block them because it's like, it's just not, it's not worth it, you know?

And, and, yeah, and I'm also one of those people that kind of lets it get to me more than I know I should, you know, so it's like, I kind of try and self-regulate on that by just, if, if someone's giving me any trouble, I just block them and, and that's it.

But, you know, what I'll do right, what I'll do right this second is I will unblock, I will unblock Jay.

Oh, oh, that's very gracious of you.

He's done.

Wow.

I was going to rule in your favor.

I was going to say, you know, rules of the road.

Like, all we're left with right now is talking on phones and Zooms and Twitters and everything else.

We got to remember there are other humans on the other side.

And we got to remember everyone's different and they have their own boundaries, and you got to respect those boundaries.

But that's very gracious of you to unblock Jay.

And I can now reveal, since you have done so, that the Jay in this case is Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington State.

Wow.

No, it's not.

I am following Jay now, and I'll keep an eye on this situation.

Let me know if Jay gets out of hand.

We heard recently from a listener named Mary about a list of pizza types that we discussed in the episode, The Hammer of Distraction.

Do you remember this pizza type list, John?

I do, and it came from Sirius Eats.

It was a big, fascinating list of regional pizza styles compiled by Adam Kubon.

Many, many styles that I had never heard of, including the apparently very controversial St.

Louis-style pizza, which is on an unleavened matzah-like crust with a weird processed cheese called Prevel.

And we spent a lot of time enjoying this list of pizza on the podcast earlier, Kenji, just to give you some context.

All right.

I like St.

Louis-style pizza, by the way.

Really?

The secret is to not think of it as pizza and just think of it as pizza-flavored nachos.

And then it's actually quite good.

I did Bailiff Jesse.

I can't hear what he's saying anymore because I blocked him.

Well, what does Mary have to say?

She wrote about Polish street pizza.

She says, I grew up in Warsaw from 1987 to 1991.

My dad was an American diplomat there.

One of the culinary delights of the period was a street food called zapikanka, which is French bread sliced lengthwise, topped with, in order, mushrooms, cheese, and ketchup.

Does it sound gross?

Maybe, But I still make it at home, though nothing can recreate whatever ersatz cheese the Polish government sold at that time.

Mushrooms and mushroom foraging also play a huge role in Polish culture, so those were always good.

Wow.

Does she give a recipe for her home zapikanka?

Yeah, well, here's the instructions.

She says, I make it by topping the bread with sautéed, sliced, cremini mushrooms, then eminthaler cheese, broil until until the cheese is just starting to brown, drizzle on a good spicy, sweet ketchup, and if you still have it, dill, fresh or dried, another quintessential Polish ingredient.

Something about the ketchup, the dill, and the cheese is unbelievably tasty.

Your friends had Sirius Eats have no data related to Zapikanka, but I am sure you will find the Wikipedia article interesting, especially the economic changes it heralded.

I'll leave it to the listeners and our guest, Kenjila Bezalt, to check out that Wikipedia article because it genuinely is interesting.

It was a poverty food that has been brought back.

I actually did

some homework and I read this.

I read that article.

Good job.

Have you ever had this before?

No, I haven't.

I've never heard of it, you know, but

it sounds good to me.

I can't imagine that the

ketchup is like Heinz, you know, and from looking at the Wikipedia article, the photos of the stuff in Poland doesn't look like it's what we would think of as ketchup per se.

But it's a spicy sweet.

We're coming full circle here.

Mary specifically recommends a spicy sweet ketchup.

So yeah, European ketchups are different for sure.

So can I tell you something?

And this is maybe an embarrassing quarantine story, something that I did the night that I read this article.

Please.

Okay, I wanted to make some pizza.

This is like at one in the morning.

I think I had just gotten done editing some videos and saying I wanted to make some pizza.

And normally what I do, if it's 1 a.m.

and I want to make pizzas is I use a tortilla and I crisp it up in a skillet and I put tomato sauce and whatever on it.

I did not have a tortilla and I did not have tomato sauce.

But before the quarantine, I did go and buy a bunch of cans of Campbell's tomato soup.

The condensed, the condensed kind.

And so I made a dough with with baking powder.

And just that day, actually, I had posted a video about how to make um no-need bread and somebody in the comments on youtube asked me can you do this with baking powder i was like no you cannot make this with baking powder and then i was like wait a minute did i did i jump too fast on that guy for suggesting that you can make this with baking powder and so i was like you know what i'm gonna try and make pizza tonight it's 1 a.m i want to make pizza i don't have a tortilla so i'm gonna make it with baking powder um so i made a dough with um flour all-purpose flour salt baking powder and some milk um and then i rolled it out and it took like all of 10 minutes and then i spread it and i didn't have any tomatoes.

So I put some Campbell's canned tomato soup on it, condensed.

I didn't dilute it first.

And then I had a bunch of pickled chilies, spicy.

So I was like, all right, so the spiciness will

balance out the like overt sweetness of this canned tomato soup.

And then I used pepper jack cheese and I baked it in a toaster oven and it was delicious.

It was also 1 a.m.

and I was like super hungry and

I just had a pliny, like a little very strong beer.

So

I would say my taste buds might have been tempered by a few things,

but I can definitely see the appeal of like sweet and spicy,

tomato-y, processed tomatoey stuff with cheese on top of a bread-like product.

Yeah, I think.

Well, listen, I want to try this zapikanka myself.

I do think it's an interesting blend of sweet and spicy, and I'm very fascinated by the Wikipedia article.

As far as what you made, your pizza, Kenji, your 1 a.m.

quarantine pizza,

this might earn me a block, but I'm going to say

it reminds me of that bread you described.

No need.

I no need it.

No.

Wow.

You know what's interesting, though, is that the history of the zapicanka, that it was a,

you know, a poor person's food,

it mirrors the history of the French bread pizza, which was invented in

Cornell.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, Cornell in the 60s.

In fact, I know that there's an article up on Siri Seats by Adam Kuban.

Adam Kuban, by the way, he was the founder of both A Hamburger Today and Slice, which were

respectively the hamburger blog and the pizza blog that both got incorporated into Sirius Heats like very, very early in its days.

And he was the managing editor of Sirius Heats for a while.

But he's like one of the foremost authorities on pizza in the world, I would say.

But I know he wrote an article about when

the guy who invented French bread pizza died.

I think it was like 2007 or 8 or so, something like that.

But yeah, it was known as Poor Man's Pizza and it was sold to students at Cornell University.

Well, Kenji Lopez, all, thank you so much for joining us and bringing so much good humor,

information, strange confessions,

and plain spicy, spicy, sweet, good fun to the Judge Sean Hodgin podcast.

I leave you with this final question.

All right.

You say you like St.

Louis-style pizza made with Provelle cheese, a processed cheese that

claims to be a combination of Provolone, Swiss,

and something else.

Okay.

Would you order 10 pounds of Provel

off Gold Belly for $80?

Is that a good deal or a bad deal?

So I would only order.

Well, I would only order it knowing that I probably could resell it

or give it away to friends.

I have these food connections, so it's like I could order it and split it with people, which I don't know that everyone could do, or I could order it and serve it on some kind of ironic dish at my restaurant.

You're saying that you're a wholesaler, you've got street dealers.

You're going to cut it.

You're going to chop the brick.

You're going to chop it up, combine it with some craft singles, and and make it go

now we're getting back to raekwan style of chefery well jay kenji lopez alt i as a as a parting gift for for playing the judge john hodgman game uh get ready to get 10 pounds of prevelle in the mail from me thank you so much wait thank you wait hold on we can't let kenji go i put a gun on the counter in the first act and we have to shoot it in the final act kenji how come when i make your amazing recipe for chocolate chip cookies, they turn out too tall and smooth and cakey, like almost like a muffin?

Because I see the pictures of people who've made your recipe on the Sirius Eats subreddit, which maybe I subscribe to.

Maybe I'm that dorky, it's possible.

And they look like beautiful chocolate chip cookies.

So I know it's something that I'm doing.

What makes chocolate chip cookies turn?

I know that aging the dough in the refrigerator overnight or even for 48 hours helps the enzymes develop develop the flavors and all these other things that are great about your recipe.

Your recipe is really good.

How come they turn out cakey though?

I'll give you three avenues to explore.

One of them could be that your oven is not calibrated.

So if you have it get an oven thermometer in there, make sure that it's at the right temperature.

Another could be that you're using, potentially you're using a baking sheet that's not an aluminum rimmed baking sheet.

And maybe you're using one of those insulated baking sheets which people sometimes use or

you're using some other metal so the the conductive qualities are different

so if that's the case get an aluminum rimmed baking sheet or an aluminum flat baking sheet the third thing I can think of is that potentially you are sorry there's there's gonna be four things the third thing is that potentially you're using a unbleached flour something like King Arthur or some fancy flour as opposed to regular gold metal Pillsbury flour the bleaching process changes the way it behaves

and finally the last thing I can think of is that you're maybe letting your dough get too warm before you bake it.

So there's like craggy tops.

You make the dough balls and then you rip them in half and you stick the smooth ends back together.

And if your dough is too warm, then that process doesn't really work because it all kind of melts before it starts to set in the oven.

So you want your dough to be kind of cold as it goes into the oven.

I think it's going to be my oven's fault.

Jesse, I'm no king of chefs, right?

I'm no Kenji Lopez-Alt.

But may I ask a question?

It might help you understand.

How much star Anis are you putting in?

Enough?

That was the other thing.

When I reviewed the recipe, which I did, I had a comment and I said, I did one star, not enough licorice-adjacent flavors.

P.S.

I omitted the Star Annis.

The docket is clear.

Kenji Lopez Alt.

His restaurant is called Worst Hall in San Mateo, California.

You can buy meal boxes for hospitals and and community centers at toast tab.com slash worst hall or on the worst hall website.

His children's book, Every Night is Pizza Night, comes out September 1st, and you can find his writing on the internet on Sirius Eats and in the New York Times.

Kenji, I'm such a fan of yours.

I'm so grateful you came on the show.

Thank you very much.

Thanks so much for having me.

Don't forget to follow him on Twitter at Kenji LopezAlt and see how little it takes to get him to block you.

Our brilliant producer is Jennifer Marmer, safer at home with baby Ezra and husband Shane right now.

You can find Kenji on Twitter at Kenji Lopez Alt.

You can find us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

John is on Instagram at John Hodgman, where he has been interviewing pets pets for his daily weekday talk show.

Make sure to hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ H.

O, and check out the maximum fun subreddit at maximumfun.reddit.com to discuss this episode.

Submit your cases to judge John Hodgman at maximumfun.org/slash JJHO or email hodgman at maximumfun.org.

We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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