Podcast Companion: TK and the Guys Discuss, Like, Everything! (Also, We Don't Say Any Bad Words This Time)

 Hi all!  Another fun conversation with Tarver King, which are rapidly becoming our favorite type of episode.  It's funny, Nate and Jesse will do these deep dives into topics, and they're fine, but TK shows up and all of the sudden, we are like a morning zoo FM crew, except instead of playing Ariana Grande singles and making jokes about being hungover, we get deep into food chatter.  It's a lot to keep up with, but DAMN is it fun.

Time Stamps:

1:16 The TK Profanity Story

7:18 The Bertolli Fanboy Story

11:36 The Tarver Buys a Really Expensive Ham Story

18:40 The Cat Coffin Story

20:00 Jesse’s New Favorite Dish

24:38 Scallop Mousse Discussion

27:50 The Giant Tuna

32:30 Remembering Verena Strauss

37:04 Peruvian Cuisine, and Then Some

45:16 Jesse’s Obsession with Hmong Food

50:47 On Fusion Cuisine

1:02:26 Tarver’s Duck Additcion

1:06:18 Paw Paws…. Weren’t We Going to Shorten  the Episodes?  Oh Well…

Recipes:

THE SCALLOP MOUSSE THING

Okay, so this one's not really a recipe, but we talked about it a lot.  To make scallop mousse, all you have to do is buzz scallops in the Cuisinart, and stream in a little cream until it looks like stiff mayo.  Then, season it to taste with a little salt.  (Yeah, just taste it.  Raw scallops aren't gonna kill you, Petunia.)

You can poach them as dumplings, use them to bind crab cakes, thin them out and scramble them like eggs, or bury things in them.  Cooked, they have the texture of an incredibly soft boudin blanc.  We'll do a blog post soon about things to do with them.

NATE"S SAUERKRAUT

INGREDIENTS:
100% Cabbage, sliced thin
2.5% Salt
(Additional 2.5% salt solution to cover, as needed)

PROCEDURE:
Cut cabbage (or leave leaves whole). Add 2.5% salt to total weight of cabbage.
Beat the shit out of it to release moisture (beat it less if you are doing whole leaf).
Give it a little time (an hour or two) to see if it releases enough moisture to cover.
Add 2.5% salt solution to cover if not enough.

Ferment at relatively cool temperature (70f) for 3 to 5 weeks.
Burp it (no that's not a typo, pretend you're Jesse after he just chugged an Icehouse faster than Tarver or Nate ever could) occasionally for the first 2 weeks. 

{This is a great place to explain baker's percentages, which I promised to do weeks ago.  It's the superior way to write a recipe.  The main ingredient is expressed as 100%, and every other ingredient is expressed as a fraction of that.  In this case, if you have 1000g cabbage, you want to use 25g of salt.  See how easy?  And no matter how many ingredients, it always works.  As long as you have a scale.  And if you don't have a scale, hop onto your triceratops and go down to the hardware store and by one, because I don't have time to convert everything into cro-magnon volumetrics.  -JS}

TARVER'S AMAZING FRUIT CURD

INGREDIENTS:

320g fruit puree

440g sugar

15g lemon juice

10 each eggs

600g butter

6 sheets gelatine, bloomed

PROCEDURE:

Whisk puree, sugar, juice, and eggs over a double boiler to 180F

Add gelatine, then buzz in butter with a stick blender

Certain fruits (pawpaw, apple, banana) will lose flavor when cooked, so add them after the butter

You can pour this into a pie shell to set, or chill it overnight and whip it in the KitchenAid

Links:

Mario's Peruvian Chicken (That TK Yelled at Nate and Jesse to Try)

Cuban Gypsy Pantry (Where Y'all NEED to Get UberEats From)

Those Culinaria Books the Guys Were Discussing