Butterfly Buns, Barmbrack and Soda Bread: The Secrets of Irish Baking

but we also want to hear from your kids and maybe grandkids about their adventures in food. So please record your kids talking about eating new foods. To share your kids story, please leave us a voice mail at 617-249-3167-617-249-3167 or send a voice memo to [email protected]. This is Mystery Radio from PRX on your post, Christopher Kimball. Today, we're sitting down with Irish Baker, Sherry Denham. Growing up in northern Ireland,

Gabe Sherry, a first-hand education in Irish cooking, baking, and of course hospitality.

You never walk into a house in Ireland, without being offered a cup of tea and something nice to eat.

“My daddy always used to say a cup of tea is awful wet without anything else, isn't it?”

That's coming up later on the show. First, we're getting an insider's look at food advertising. The television show Madman gave his fictional campaigns for brands like Popsicle, Odds, Potato Chips, and Hines. It's clean, it's simple, and it's tantalizingly incomplete. What's missing? One thing. Pass the Hines.

You mean the Hines, ketchup? It's Hines. It only means one thing. To find out the real stories behind some of the most and least successful food ads, I'm joined now by a Madison Avenue veteran Jeff Swiston. Jeff, welcome back to most treat.

What a pleasure, it's great to be back looking forward to this. So, before we get into examples, tell me a little bit about your experiences in the advertising business and on a Madison Avenue. Yeah, so through my advertising and branding work, I worked with a branding agency and then went to DDB, one of a larger ad agencies.

Through my career, I've had the pleasure of working on McDonald's. Finding out how difficult it is for these global restaurant, quick service, grocery brands, to have a consistent message around the world. When I enjoyed DDB, I thought we did all the McDonald's advertising all around the world. Well, that wasn't true. There's not one ad agency that could serve as McDonald's globally.

So, in addition to the challenge of running a huge global business, McDonald's would have to manage like over 400 agencies around the world to try to have consistent messaging campaigns. So, now we'll start at the beginning. So, you need a 1896. This was really interesting. You said they had a teaser campaign,

“where the only thing you saw on the billboard or in the magazine or whatever was the word you need”

which sounds either prussian about the future of advertising or they didn't know what else to do. I don't know what you was. You know, you might have just defined advertising and marketing that have the time at science and half the time it's lucky art. But, you know, this came out from what is now in a biscoe, the National Biscuit Company. It was the first campaign ever to spend a million dollars. Back then, people would go into the general store and continually reach into a

cracker barrel. And, you need to came out with its packaging, with its brand name, and with this

national campaign that was never seen before and it had results. You need a what? You need a biscuit,

of course you need a biscuit, and within a couple of years Americans were buying an astonishing 10 million packages every month, more than 20 times the combined sales of all other packaged crackers. So, let's talk about some other big successes that I remember because I'm old enough, but life's serial, you know, the Mikey, let's see if Mikey wants to eat it.

“Did you just want to explain that commercial for those the younger members of our listing audience?”

Yeah, so if we I remember it, the young Mikey, the parents weren't shown in the ad, that was very unconventional for the times. And here it showed two pestering older brothers getting young Mikey to try life, which had been sold to them through their mother as being healthy. And of course, they thought healthy just meant not fun, not sugary. But Mikey touched into it and enjoys it. And, you know, they they explain, wow, Mikey likes it, he doesn't like anything. He likes it,

hey Mikey. When you bring life home, they don't tell the kids it's one of those nutritional cereals you've been trying to get them to eat. You're the only one who has to know. Well, I worked for, I guess, my parents, because I ate life cereal every morning for years,

and did you know this is incredible Chris, they revitalized it this year. They actually brought

beaver, look at the house, but you know, household where it's crazy in the morning, but Mikey's

“enjoying his life cereal. So this thing has legs, it's, you know, now going on 50 years.”

You know, I'm so fascinated by advertising because you're trying to sell a soft drink. I'm so fascinated by advertising because you're trying to sell a soft drink, and you have 50 people singing a song on a hill. And it's brilliant, but it's, you know, if you went into a meeting and said, I got this great idea for a coconut, they might think you're crazy. So how did it come about? And why do you think it works so well? This one is so funny because we would joke when I

worked on Madison Avenue that half the ideas came over a two or three martini lunch and we're

jotted down on a cocktail napkin. This wasn't a three martini lunch. It was a gentleman from McCann Erickson now called McCann, one of the bigger agencies. It's flying to England and there was bad weather and the, the plane got rerouted and everyone was unhappy on the, on the plane and the airline brought out a free coke to everyone and everyone calmed down and began talking to each other. And he sort of noticed the strangers talking to strangers and saw that this product actually brought

people together. And that's where it resulted from and it could almost be a trivia question for

your audience, but this was filled in Italy, actually. Yeah, that also surprised me. Yeah,

we make the natural assumption that they're in the hills of California and here LA. Right. And I, I often think about, you know, them costuming and them, they were hippie-ish, but they were clean cut at the same time. And I thought Coke and McCann Erickson really taught that line very well. To sing with me. Now this one really was a great example of one of the most iconic ads that did a really lousy job because he wouldn't remember and I didn't remember what they were selling.

The spicy meatball, that's the spicy meatball. So this is my old agency, Doyle Dane Burnback, obviously, many decades before I joined it. It's a commercial within a commercial. So what you're seeing as a commercial being filmed for a pasta sauce and the actor can't get his line right. Mamma Mia, that's a spicy meatball and the poor actor within this commercial, within the commercial,

“eats so many meatballs that he gets in digestion. And that's why it's an alcoholcer ad.”

But the pasta sauce was, you know, referenced so many times. An alcoholcer came up once at the end. So, you know, what it ended up doing? Selling no more alcoholcer, but pasta sauce flew off the shelves as a result. So it's totally funny. Mamma Mia, that's a spicy meatball. But what was meant with that? The accent. Me, she might be bossy, bossy, take 59. Man, action. Sometimes you eat more than you should. And when spicy besieged, Mamma Mia,

do you need alcoholcer? So we have these examples, these classic ads, many of which worked really well, like Coke, some nuts of good like Hucouselcer. So that's the world of Madison Avenue. What if people learned in the last 10 years? What things have stopped working? What new things are

“working? Is the creative really similar than it was 30, 40 years ago? Or is that also changed?”

What's changed is brevity? So it's a lot harder to convey a creative idea or get a creative idea across in a compelling way that holds people's attention. And also marketers and brands are working on shorter schedules. The successful ones we've been talking about from the 70s back to the 50s, those companies were planning on three year cycles. Now, you know, companies are planning on three day cycles. And I think we're in an interesting period right now, but I think we're going to find

a compromise in the next five to 10 years where longer term brand building is going to come back because, you know, we can speak about a Coca-Cola and generally anyone can, you know, articulate what the

all sorts of the food category, the food industry, is it plays upon comfort and it also evokes

memories. And I see that being a benefit and a bit of a, too much of a guardrail right now for the food industry where everything is built upon nostalgia. Like we were talking about with Mikey in life cereal. Well, just today, press release came out from Oscar Meyer where they are rebooting the old balonia or baloney jingle after 50 years. And so, you know, within months of each other,

“you got Mikey in life cereal and the Oscar Meyer iconic song coming back. And I think that the”

chief marketing officers and the ad agencies servicing food brands, large and small are, are struggling to remain relevant and are tapping these old time emotional roots, which are great, but there's only so much longevity, right, before you need something fresh.

Some things change and some things never change.

Jeff, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. It's been a pleasure for me to Chris great to be back. That was branding expert Jeff Swiston. He's also the author of TV dinners on box, the hot history of frozen meals. Now it's time to answer your cooking questions with my co-host, Sarah Malton. Sarah is of course the star of Sarah's weeknight meals on public television, also author of Home Cooking 101. So, Chris, what is your go-to dinner in this situation?

“Your wife and kids are out, you only have like an hour, you got to rush off and do something”

yourself. So you're not going to cook yourself a meal. Some people, like I know, this chef,

who would come home for work every night and have a bowl of cereal and watch the honey moaners.

He was in heaven. His name is Guy Rush. Right to the bone. Right to his name is Guy Rush. He's French too. So it's extra funny. What would yours? I'll tell you mine after you tell me yours. The things I like when I'm not cooking, any kind of scrambled eggs or omelette or a quick frittata or any of those things are easy to throw together. I often eat oatmeal, like still cut oatmeal, flanahan still cut oatmeal is fabulous. It comes in a can. It comes in a can,

oh, they all come in. And then it's about 20 minutes. You can actually... Lighting minutes. Yeah, you can actually do it the night before and you, so that's some of you can keep around. And I do, I often make rice. I make rice like three times a week. And I just find what's in the fridge and I, you know, left over meat or something. I top rice a lot as my go-to dinner. Well, you know, it's funny because I thought of this question because last week my nephew was in a

concert. He's being a choral group and it was absolutely beautiful. Anyway, I had to go to that. The husband was out. I only had about a half an hour to eat something for dinner. And I was so excited because I decided I can have cheese and crackers for dinner. And one. Yeah, of course. Oh, of course. Oh, of course. Absolutely. And, you know, I had some really nice cheddar, which isn't fancy or anything, but I was just like, wow, I, good crackers, good cheese. That was

just terrible. There's nothing better. Sometimes, if you skip dinner, then you can have lots of cheese and crackers. Right. And that's actually exactly what I thought. Yeah, this is mad effort. This is within the calorie range of cheese. Because otherwise you have like two pieces of cheese, you know, I shouldn't have anymore. Yeah, I know. And it's so good. That's a good one. Yeah, there you go. Cheese and crack. Okay. Moving on. Let's take a call.

Welcome to Milk Street, who's calling? Hi, this is Pamera from Adirisville, Georgia. Hi, Tamara. How can we help you? My family and I have a small homestead, and we raise our own backs and chickens. And occasionally, we wind up having too many roosters. And so we need to call the flock. And because they are free-range, they tend to be tough and dry when cooked. And I was wondering if you had suggestions for cooking them. Well, I think definitely praising is the way to go. There is a Greek dish,

which is rooster with pasta and tomato sauce, which has a fair amount of olive oil in it. I think about the old French days when they would lard a roast that was lean with, you know, fat. But you could also add some bacon, which would be really nice and bacon fat.

“So that's what I would do is, you know, cook it low and slow. I would definitely, I think,”

a tomato base is a good thing and make sure there's a fair amount of fat in there. Chris. Cucko Valle was a rooster and roosters usually were three, four or five years old. Before they were slaughtered. And so the meat was older. You know, a chicken now is what six or eight

larding, you know, I did it with a larding needle and everything else. It helps a little, but not

“really. I totally agree with Sarah that low and slow, like a braze of some kind. That's how”

it could cook, for example, you know, legs of rabbit or something, right? A wild game, or or venison, low and slow. And that'll work well. Actually, if you go dig up, like a Julia Chuck Cucko Veneres of B. It's probably six pages. Matt, but you know, it would be fun because that was designed for tough chicken, designed for roosters. So I would try that, actually. I think that's the ideal recipe for this. Yeah. That also has red wine in it.

And it has lard on, which is bacon, and pearl onions and mushrooms. When you call the herd,

how old are the roosters? They can be anywhere between six months through a year, year and a half.

Yeah, so they're older. Oh, so yeah. Some of them, you tend to be older. Would you recommend any kind of like pressure cooking or anything like that or grinding? No, I would do one thing though. Cook the breasts separately from the legs, which are going to be much tougher. Okay, great. There's some great suggestion. I remember years ago I've mentioned this before, but a friend of mine crossed the valley came to Thanksgiving and brought her home-raised turkey. And the leg was so big.

It wouldn't fit in the oven. I did chainsaw it off. And the breast for tiny. So my guess is the breast meat's going to be very small and the leg's going to be really big. So it's going to be mostly like, yeah. But do let us know what you do. What do you know? Okay, I recall. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. All right. Bye-bye. Bye. This is mostly radio. If dinner's got you down, call us 855-426-9843. That's 855-426-9843, or just email us at [email protected].

Welcome to Milk Street, who's calling? This is Don, calling from Toledo, Ohio. How can we help you? I know that in many recipe books and recipes that see when you're making things like pudding and custard and the like, that they often recommend at the end that you lay a piece of plastic on the surface to keep the skin from forming. And I am one who tries to avoid plastic as much as possible. So I'm wondering if you can recommend an alternative to that.

Number one, I'm with you. I don't like putting plastic or plastic wrap on hot fatty foods. Correct. I've read that that's not a good idea. Now, maybe there are certain plastic wraps where this is not a problem, but I just don't do it. Number two, as a kid, I love the skin on custard and pudding. So I view that as a positive and a negative. I guess if you really objected to it, you could use parchment paper, maybe you spray it or don't, or there's also a parchment paper

instead of nonstick parchment paper you could use, or you could use wax paper, I guess. I would not use plastic wrap. What I actually would do is nothing. Right, Sarah? Nothing. Well, because you like the skin, and there are quite a few people who do like the skin, although it is a bit chewy. Multi-text rule. Yes, there you go. But I wonder if, I mean, what happens is as soon as the surface of the pudding is exposed to the air, it starts to form that

“skin. So you need to sort of keep the air from the pudding. I wonder if, perhaps this wouldn't”

last very long. If you put a wet paper towel right on top of the surface, if, you know, okay. So there's nothing intrinsic to the plastic, necessarily. It doesn't have to be plastic, I guess is what you're saying. No, it's the air. It's just like now when I cut a avocado, I put it cut side down on a plate because then there's no air getting to the side of the small container with a slice of apple or a slice of onion. Yes, this all works. Air is the monster here.

Kind of just comment that given the infinite and totally confusing nature of the universe, that it's so wonderful as human beings we can argue about skin on pudding. It just makes you feel good about our ability to ignore the big issues of the day. Right, that's what people find food.

So I know, it's like forget about black holes in your opinion. It's not even that essential at all.

I guess it's what I'm hearing. Well, it's whatever you want. I mean, it's the great thing about food.

“It doesn't matter what I think. And some people do like that. But there is partying paper that”

is actually sort of a non-stick portion paper you can buy. I think wax paper would probably be fine. Yeah, I do too. And you don't think the wax would for the melted. I don't think so. Let it cool just a bit. Maybe wax paper used to be all time. I know the trouble was when you did put it in the oven, it would start to smoke. So that will probably weren't supposed to put it in the oven. I know. Don, I think we're, yeah, we're headed towards the infinite universe here.

Don's, thank you. Yes, appreciate it. Take care. Bye. Bye. Bye bye.

(Music)

This is Milcie Radio. I'm your host Christopher Kimball. Now, what's my interview with

Sherry Denham? Sherry is a baker, preserver and author of the new cookbook, The Irish Bakery. Sherry, welcome to Milk Street. Thanks very much. Thank you for having me. Let's start with history. So, when you talk about the baking of Ireland,

“was this entirely separate from any other influence up until the present day?”

Or at some point did the Irish traditions get mixed with other traditions. In other words, is there pure Irish baking that's totally separate from like England or Britain, for example?

I think so, Chris, yeah. I think that from years ago, it was always a situation where these

women, because it was women back in the day, it was people of my grandmother's era and my grandparents, and they seemed to bake for every day. They never really bought breads of anything, and also these breads were always made with bicarbonate of soda rather than yeast. They were fast breads, and they always used to bake for the whole family. Like my grandmother had 13 children, and even when they were older, she would bake all day, and make sure that they all had bread to

take home with them, because it all come and visit her, and they'd all walk away with bags of butter, bread, jam, you know, and I think those baking traditions meant everything to them. It really rooted them as well, because they bought the food back to basics, you know, the Rooney about foreign ingredients in each bread, and I think that's something that we need to really think about, bring in food back to basics. So what about today, has soda bread remained

“a really important part of Irish baking, or has yeasted bread sort of crept into the scene now?”

Not really, you know, it's interesting, because I put a few yeasted breads on my tech talk, but the ones that really go are the soda breads, like the soda farals, and the on the white soda, the fruits soda, the the wheat and bread, because I think, especially for a new bread makers, people want to try things, they want it to be quick. Do you know what I mean? Whereas I think a yeasted bread, people are more afraid of yeast, whereas the soda bread, they've got something

like in an hour coming out of the oven, out of smells divine, out of so much better than shop bought,

so much better. So I always wondered, because I make a cross on my the whole wheat soda bread,

and you're said you're, you're great aunt, Evie said that it kept the devil out of the home, so now I know why I do it. Yeah, so the cross across the top to keep the the devil like

“then you have to pierce each quarter to let the fairies out, because the fairies might change”

your bread otherwise. I didn't know that. That's important. I've had fairies in my whole wheat soda bread all the time, that's a problem. I knew there was a problem. So if you're going to bake soda bread at home, give us like, what are a couple other common ones that maybe people here might make at home? Okay, so really easy is the white soda, so you need about 400 grams of plain flour, 300 mills or 355 mills of buttermilk, a teaspoon of bicarbonate soda or baking soda,

and a teaspoon of salt, and that's all you need for that one, and then salmon gradients, but with maybe leftover bacon that you've had from breakfast, a bit of grated cheese with some spring onions, absolutely delicious. Then you've got fruit slums, so that's again a soda bread with a dried fruit added, you roll it out to about the size of a dinner plate, cut it in four, and then you do those on the griddle or a dry frying pan, so those are fruit them, soda files, and then there's trickle

files, there's wheat and files, yes, so those are all of a lovely soda bread ones delicious. So F-A-R-L-S, what does files mean? So files is ulster scots for quarter, so they're just the sheep of a circle that's been cut into four. So let's talk about biscuits and pancakes, other quick breads, so our pancakes and biscuits similar to what I would make in New England, for example, talk about buns, biscuits, scones, etc. So the pancake recipe, you guys,

your flour, your egg, your milk, and maybe a wee bit of bacon powder, and my mummy says that

years ago when Grani made them, she literally had the griddle over the fire, and they all lined up after their bath on a Saturday night, and as quickly as she made them and got them off the pan, they all cut up and put a bit of butter or a bit of sugar or something, you know, very simple on them, and then go round again in a circle until all the pancake mixture had gone, she says that was a

“lovely memory for her, because I think pancakes, people only really tend to have had pancakes in the”

North of Ireland, whenever it was true Tuesday. So it was only a once-year thing, so it was very exciting. I don't know, I was born at the wrong time, I'm sorry, I just, I don't get me started, but I just think like, cultures have a rise in fall, and I just don't, I think we're past the good part, because the idea of having a bath on a Saturday night and standing in line and someone's making pancakes on a griddle over fire is about as appealing as it gets, I guess. Isn't that just,

isn't it? Barmbrak, that has a great story to it, and you want to explain what they are and what's entombed in the loaf. So Barmbrak is a delicious yeasted fruit bread and riched fruit bread, it's got this gorgeous dark glossy covering, and not only is it delicious fresh with cheese or jam, but it's also delicious toasted. And when you make the dough up, what my granny and auntie Evelyn used to do actually was wrap, each little, there were five little things that were wrapped, little tokens, I suppose you could

call them. One was a stick, and that meant, I don't know, happy marriage. One was a ring that meant you were going to get married. One was a pay or a piece of cloth, and they meant, but you weren't going to do very well in life. I mean, it was a bit more, but really it's just going to save, wait a minute.

No, this is the first one you'd have a happy marriage, you're unhappy marriage. The stick on

“happy marriage, okay, so let's make the list that we got on happy marriage, what was the second one?”

Then you've got the rag or the pay, which meant that you weren't going to have much money. Okay, then you had the wedding ring, I think we would all have wanted the wedding ring, I have to say. Oh, you have a thimble, what about a thimble? The thimble was like, you know, you were going to be a great woman in the house. You were going to be able to do everything you could manned, you could cook, you could net everything. Does this say something to you about

Irish traditions and culture? Oh, like, Chris years ago, it was like fortune telling. People were in and bits of the got the wrong thing. I mean, yeah, very much no years and years years ago, but the same thing at Halloween, they would have wrapped silver coins up an apple tart, and if you got the coin, you were delighted. But if you didn't get the coin, there was not fine. So you're like, oh, it's a no hope for me. You know, they did take it.

“It was really important, you know. Okay, let's talk about dessert. I mean, is dessert something?”

I know a lot of cultures would have a sweet in the afternoon with a cup of tea or coffee, you know, it's late afternoon. A lot of people didn't actually eat desserts per se. Is there a long tradition of an actual dessert? Like there is, you know, putting an England, and if so, what, what are some of the things that were pretty common? So put in desserts, whatever they would really, only have been, especially in our house, only on a Sunday.

Okay, because, you know, they were quite expensive, you know, all that creamed the fruit. So we would have done on a Sunday, you know, the apple tart, the rhubarb tart, an apple sponge. So apple on the bottom and maybe a wee bit of lemon in there, because mommy loved lemon. And then some sponge over the top, and rice pudding, or rice pudding with a wee bit of nutmeg, and a bit of vanilla. So is your rice pudding cooked on top of the stove? Was it in the oven?

How do you make it? It's pretty oven. So how do you make an apple? What's an apple tart like?

So my Grammy always did hers on a normal 10 plates or a glass plate, a pyrex plate.

So a lovely rich shortcut's pastry on the bottom. And then she used to do a mixture of stewed apples and raw apples, or she would do stewed apples, but not cook them down too much.

Put that all onto your short cross pastry. And then if it's Halloween, you wrap up your silver coin. And then you put your rich shortcut's pastry over the top, crimp it. And then a wee hole in the top for the steam, some egg wash over the top, and sprinkle with casse to sugar. So it listens when it comes out of the oven. Oh my word, it's delicious. I'm actually sour at the end of the night. It's delicious. Well, yeah, I've said for 40 years, apple pie or apple tart is the highest

expression of the culinary arts, because if you get a right, if you don't get a right, it's not great. You know, I don't know. I just, I, I need to move or something. It's just like everything you talked about is right up my alley. I love to bake and you tell a great story as well. Oh, thank you. But it's like when you go right to someone's house for tea,

you never walk into a house in Ireland without being offered a cup of tea on something nice to eat.

“My daddy always used to say, a cup of tea is awful wet without anything else, isn't it?”

And that would be his thing. So so you'd always have a piece of tart or a bun. I don't know how many houses you went to in the day. You had to have something, you know, and just that really lovely sense of, you know, come in your right, as in, come in through the door your right side, come in, have a cup of tea, sit down and then say give us a while here crack and you'd sit and have a wee chat with them and ever's lovely. It's a lovely thing to do.

Yeah, well, I don't know whether I should be happy or depressed right now. I think a little bit I mean, you given me hope for the future, but I'm now depressed about everything we've lost in the past. Sure, thank you so much. You know, this has just been absolutely charming and I just love the book, the Irish bakery. Thank you. Thank you very much, indeed. I really love chatting to you. Thank you. Yeah, my pleasure.

“That was Sherry Den on the author of the Irish bakery.”

Sherry mentioned that she scores across on the top of her soda bread to let the fairies out, so they don't jinx your loaf. Well, here are some other food superstitions. In China,

you never gift a knife since it will sever your relationship. The ancient Romans thought that

witches could sail on eggshells and sink ships, so eggs were often prohibited on board. Parsley is rife with superstitions. The Greeks thought that the herb was grown from the blood of the baby, and in England it was taboo to plant parsley because you would be transporting sorrow. But my favorite superstition is from New England, and is perfectly aligned with the douric character of my part of the world. If you find a hole in a loaf of bread, it means that someone

will die. But on second thought, when it comes to bread, maybe I'll just stick with the Irish who are trying to let the fairies out.

“I'm Christopher Kimball, and this is most street radio. I'm joined now by Rose Hattabot”

to talk about this week's recipe, spinach and ricotta dumplings in tomato sauce. Rose, how are you? Good Chris, how are you? I'm good. My favorite place in Rome is not a great way to start a conversation. Um, is Antico Foccaune, which is out of the center, it's a more residential area. The chef is Mimo Colal, he's actually originally from Egypt. It's a very simple dining room, very modern, and the food is similar. It's very simple, but perfectly

executed. So the dish I just fell in love with is Palini al Verde. These are ricotta spinach dumplings served in a very quick tomato sauce, and they were light, and it doesn't sound special, but just one of those dishes you really want to have in your repertoire. But I came back and said, Rose, let's give this one a try, and we had some problems, right? Yes. I mean, like you said,

very simple ingredients, just basically what you put inside of a raveli, ricotta, spinach, whole eggs,

a little salt and parmesan, so it sounds really easy, but they just kept falling apart every time we tried to coach them. So one of the things we realized is that the ricotta that we have here in the United States is very different from what you had in Italy. It's a lot more watery. We found that if you had a ricotta that had stabilizer in it, it wouldn't hold together at all. It put them in the water, they completely fall apart. So there are other recipes that include a little flower,

and so we ended up having to do that. So we drained the ricotta to get a little firmer consistency, and also added flour, and that seemed to do the trick. So I think he cooked his in a minute or two,

ours to hold them together when they were boiled. So we refrigerate them for about half an hour,

and then they take about eight to ten minutes to cook all the way through. And the last thing is, tomato sauce is very often Italy, or made in about ten minutes. It's not like it's cooked all

“day. So this is another super fresh, super fast tomato sauce that I think just highlights the”

fresh taste of tomatoes. It's got nothing else in there, essentially. Oh, really simple. Yeah, we just sauteed a couple of cloves of garlic in oil, add your whole peeled tomatoes, crushed up a little, a little basil, a few minutes on the stove, and that's it. It's really clean and bright. It's perfect with these polines. Yeah, this is a recipe everyone should have.

So spinach and ricotta dumplings in tomato sauce, palini alverde, straight from Antico,

Falcone and Rome. Rose, thank you. You're welcome, Chris. You can get the recipe for spinach and ricotta dumplings in tomato sauce at milkstreetradio.com. You're listening to Milkstreet and radio coming up the very best way to roast a chicken. I'm Christopher Kimball, and you're listening to Milkstreet, radio right now. My co-host Sarah Molten, I will be

“answering a few more of your cooking questions. Welcome to Milkstreet, who's calling? Hi,”

this is Marie from Pennington, New Jersey. Hi, Maurice. How can we help you? For a few years now, I've been making Roblox at home, and it's a great thing. It's sort of like a bit of a commitment, but it's really easy. It comes out great. I've got all this nice homemade Roblox. My question is, what other fish could I cure in the same way? Like salmon's great, but if I wanted to try something else, do you have any ideas or sort of like what should I be looking for? It's like fat content in

the fish or there's something else. Yeah, that it's going to be curbed at home. You want to fatty or fish. You'll just have a much better texture and flavor. So, you know, Arctic char, macro, trout, macro. If you can get really fresh blue fish, I mean blue fish has a bit of rap because it's very high in fat, and so it can get quite funky. But if you have it fresh, it's absolutely delicious, and it would be good candidate here. That's actually a great idea.

We do get fresh blue fish in New Jersey, you know, they fish it off the coast, and you can get it, and we love eating that cooked. My wife likes that a lot. And macro, if you get really fresh macro, it's not nearly as strong as if it's not really fresh, because most people go macro. Is that expression? Oh, macro. But holy macro. If it's very fresh, it's good. I don't know about, I mean, Sarah said trout. I don't think about trout as being a fatty fish. It's not a fatty fish.

It is a nice firm fish though. trout's really similar to salmon, but my worry is that trout's the fillets are small, so it would be like hard to get it good. Yeah, it's not a good place. Unless you could find a 15 pound trout, I don't know. I don't think so. I've tried wild salmon, which was too lean. Yes. It's very lean. Yeah. I fish for wild salmon up in Canada, and the flesh is almost white. And when the ice goes out in April and May, it's very lean.

It's totally different than what you think of the salmon. Yeah. Yeah. We still ate it, but it wasn't

satisfying in the same way as grandfather. That mean, well, Chris, you know what we never did to

“find what gravelax is. Maurice, do you want to tell us what it is since this is your baby?”

Sure. It is a cold, chilled fish. So what I do is I get two sides of salmon. I usually just get farm Ray salmon from the supermarket covered in a mix of brown sugar and kosher salt. Put some roughly chopped dill all over it. Maybe splash it with some gin or vodka. You wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and you put it in the fridge on a tray and turn it every 12 hours, keep some weight on it. You know, maybe a heavy cookbook or something. And it sure's in the fridge. You

lose a lot of liquid, but it's just a beautiful, buttery, succulent fish. My kid likes it and it's way more affordable. It's very expensive to buy, but if you make it yourself, you know, it's more reasonable. Well, that was a beautiful summary of a recipe. You did a beautiful job there. It was poetic. Somebody could make that, based on what you just said, very impressed. Yeah. Maurice, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for taking care of.

Oh, okay. This is Milk Street Radio. Looking for some dinner inspiration. Well, please give us a ring any time. 855-426-984-31 more time. 855-426-984-3 or please email us at [email protected]. Welcome to most read his calling. This is my drill. How can we help you? Well, I was just curious

or can you, in fact, sometimes use key for, for example, instead of buttermilk? I know you can

put in lemon in milk, but that's not the same thing. But other times when it calls for buttermilk

“that you have to depend upon buttermilk. It's so weird you called with his question as we just”

tested this. So you came to the right place. This will be the world's shortest call. The answer is yes.

Oddly enough, you know, culture buttermilk is essentially fermented milk. And that's what

Confir is. It's fermented milk. From PRX.