
Every other Friday, we reach into our deep freezer and reheat an episode to serve up to you. We're calling these our Reheats. If you have a show you want reheated, send us an email or voice memo at hello@sporkful.com, and include your name, your location, which episode, and why.
We're revisiting two "Call-In Smorgasbord" episodes from 2011, which were all about settling scores, issuing opinions, and learning about your kitchen innovations. In part one, we tackle a debate between an engaged couple, both philosophers, who want help answering the existential question: "Is it soup?" In part two, we take calls from a couple of students in Canada who are clearly ahead of the class. One caller has an important question about milk, and the other needs our consultation on a school project. Plus, a man in San Francisco calls in to share his strong opinions about mac and cheese.
These episodes originally aired on March 1, 2011 and March 14, 2011, and were produced by Dan Pashman and Mark Garrison. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Jared O'Connell, and Kameel Stanley. Publishing by Shantel Holder.
Interstitial music in this episode by Black Label Music:
- “Soul Good” by Lance Conrad
Photo courtesy of USDA.gov/Flickr (public domain).
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View Transcript
Dan Pashman: Hey everyone, Dan here coming at you with another Sporkful Reheat, and this is the last reheat of our monthlong 15th-anniversary celebration. We have been digging deep into the deep freezer for especially old episodes to celebrate this special month. But you know what? I've had a lot of fun relistening to some of these old episodes. I gather from the feedback we've been getting that many of you have enjoyed it as well. So, you know, I think from time to time, we're going to keep doing it. Keep going deep into the archives. Now this week, I'm bringing you two of our early call-in shows. We've been taking calls on the Sporkful since the very early days. These both aired in 2011, and you really get the full early Sporkful ethos in these. My cohost, Mark Garrison at the time, and I debated with listeners over the smallest details of food and eating, especially the language of food and eating, a lot of semantic debates back then. I grew up listening to talk radio, sports talk radio, and like morning zoo radio, and I just always love when they take calls. I love a great call segment. It's the old radio person in me. And so I've always loved our call-in shows. And I'm very excited to share two of our earliest ones with you this week. Now, as always, if there's an episode of the Sporkful that you want us to pull out of the deep freezer, send me an email at hello@sporkful.com. Tell me what episode we should reheat, and why. And include your first name and where you are. Alright, here's the first of two early call-in episodes we're sharing with you today. Enjoy.
Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman along with Mark Garrison.
Mark Garrison: Hey there, Dan.
Dan Pashman: We're about to challenge your assumptions about consumption and drop a sporkful of knowledge on you, because we're obsessively compulsive about eating more awesomely. And because if history has taught us anything, it's that the hosts of food shows need a lot of catchphrases. Mark Garrison, how are you, sir?
Mark Garrison: I'm doing great, actually. I had a really great slice of pizza on the way over here. We are at a different place of recording, which is to say it's not your apartment or mine.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Mark Garrison: And there's a great pizzeria nearby, so I was stoked about that. Alright, let's get into today's topic for mastication and rumination, which is call-in smorgasbord. We haven't done one of these in a while, and that's too bad, because we have a lot of fun when we do this. We get lots of different queries and cool ideas, and sometimes we have some fun debates, sometimes settle some scores and things like that, pass judgment, and we usually learn a lot, too. We get some cool ideas about that. So, let's get into it. Hi, who's this?
Jonathan: Hey, this is Jonathan.
Dan Pashman: Where are you calling from, Jonathan?
Jonathan: I'm calling from St Andrews in Scotland.
Mark Garrison: Very cool.
Dan Pashman: How'd you… It doesn't sound like you have a Scottish brogue. How'd you end up over there in St Andrews?
Jonathan: I don't. I came from the United States. I came here for my work. I'm a philosopher. And I finished my degree and came over to work at the University of St Andrews in the philosophy department.
Mark Garrison: What's on your mind, man?
Jonathan: Well, I'll tell you what. I've got a soup that I like to make. And I think it's very delicious. And that's not actually the issue, whether it's delicious. What's the issue is whether it's a soup.
Mark Garrison: It matters whether it's delicious though, I'm sure it is.
Jonathan: Oh it does, but that's not contested in that instance.
Mark Garrison: I see, okay.
Jonathan: So far everyone I've offered the soup to has agreed that it's delicious. But they don't tend to agree that it's a soup, which I find fairly frustrating. So I was hoping you might be able to help me out.
Dan Pashman: All right, so describe this dish to us.
Jonathan: So, it's made primarily of roast vegetables. So, I take some carrots and parsnips and turnips and potatoes and onions and garlic and chop them up. And I roast them in the oven for a while. And then I'm going to take about, uh, about half of the chopped up roast vegetables and blend it together with some vegetable broth to make a sort of rich, creamy, thick, kind of milkshake-like consistency.
Dan Pashman: Okay.
Jonathan: I mix it with the rest of the chopped up vegetables. The result ends up being very gloopy, because there's so much chopped up vegetables, and the, and the, the liquidy bit is so thick that it sticks to it. So, people say, you know, I try to pour it out, and it kind of clumps out a little bit. And, you know, maybe you could eat it with a fork, but you're not really supposed to. It's best eaten with a spoon.
Mark Garrison: It's possible to eat it with a fork, though?
Jonathan: Uh, if you're a little bit careful. I mean, you could get 80 percent of it very easily using a fork. In order to get 99%, you'd need to be sort of scraping the bottom, um, with the pieces of vegetable. You know what I mean?
Dan Pashman: Are there any other facts we need to know? Make your full case to us about why you think that it is a soup.
Jonathan: So, my fiancé likes to complain that it can't be a soup because it's not a liquid. Now this just can't be right. So, I mean, there's a sort of two-step argument that I think is important to keep in mind here. Step one is, it starts with this obvious case of a liquid, the sort of creamy milkshake-like stuff. And that's about half the material, or more than half the material, because it's had the broth mixed in with it, along with half the vegetables. So that's clearly a liquid. Step two is, you can add chunks to a soup, and it's still gonna be a soup. It'll now just be a chunky soup. And that's all mine is.
Dan Pashman: The obvious middle ground might be stew. People think of stew…
Jonathan: Ah, good. I'm glad you said that.
Dan Pashman: …as a thicker, a thicker, heartier soup. Do you have an objection to it being classified as stew?
Jonathan: I do, I have a decisive one, unfortunately.
Dan Pashman: Okay.
Jonathan: So I mean it does look a bit like a stew. I'm, I'm happy to grant that The problem with, with classifying my dishes as stew is that nothing, stews, stews need to be prepared in a certain way.
Mark Garrison: You've roasted the vegetables in the oven, is what you're saying, so they were not actually stewed. Okay, so, does your fiancée have a kind of inflection point, is it like a certain level of viscosity when something becomes soup?
Jonathan: That is a good question. You might need to ask her that one. She's never communicated to me the point at which she thinks something stops being a soup.
Mark Garrison: And she also is formally trained in philosophy, right?
Jonathan: She’s also a philosopher, yes.
Dan Pashman: Can I just say, this is really a high point for The Sporkful, I think, Mark. We have a real philosopher in Scotland, you know, at least a quarter of the way around the world, calling us to answer an existential question. Is it soup?
Jonathan: It's a very important question.
Dan Pashman: That just speaks to, you know, where we are in the world right now, Mark. We as The Sporkful. You know, I think we've made some really tremendous strides that we can be very proud of.
Mark Garrison: Certainly.
Dan Pashman: Now, I mean, Jonathan, while we have you on the phone, you're a real philosopher, I mean, we should ask you, How do we even know that soup is?
Jonathan: Oh, well… Soup is among the happier candidates for clear cases of existence. So some philosophers are worried about things that can't be sort of directly perceived. Soup, happily, as it slides down the esophagus, creates all kinds of very direct sorts of sensations. So I think soup is a good candidate for direct perception.
Dan Pashman: So you soup, therefore you are.
Jonathan: I do indeed.
Dan Pashman: Alright, now, Jonathan, I have one strike against you here. I like the philosophical argument you just made, but, I went ahead, you know. Fortunately, when we have these discussions and debates about what different words mean and whether foods should be classified and defined by certain words, society does have a general repository where we list words. And list their generally agreed-upon meanings. So I've gone ahead to dictionary.com and the first definition for soup is: “A liquid food made by boiling or simmering meat, fish, or vegetables with various added ingredients.”
Jonathan: I've got to tell you, that can't be right. I'm not going to deceive the liquid part. Because I claim that my soup is a liquid.
Dan Pashman: Okay.
Jonathan: But it can't be that it's an essential feature of soup. Um, that it involved boiling and simmering and such. Because if I didn't put my chunks of roast vegetables in, if I just pureed the whole lot, it would all be very creamy, nobody would ever doubt that it was a soup. That would be a clear, prototypical case of a soup.
Dan Pashman: Well, here's the thing though.
Jonathan: It has to be too restrictive a definition.
Mark Garrison: But no, but also, I think that definition you had, Dan, read me the last, piece of that. I think it was like with, there was a, there was a
Dan Pashman: “With various added ingredients.”
Mark Garrison: Yeah, so, so, so you, you could still fit into that definition with the added roasted vegetables.
Dan Pashman: Now this is a tough debate to fully settle without being able to see the soup ourselves. And Jonathan, you've been kind enough to make a video of your soup. You put it on YouTube. You’ve sent us the link. We're gonna put that up on the blog and we're gonna let Sporkful listeners weigh in. You've heard what Jonathan has to say.
Dan Pashman: You can go to the blog, which is linked off of sporkful. com. You can watch the video and, and we want to hear what, what you guys think. But before Mark and I can fully weigh in, I think there's a person who obviously is missing from this conversation, and that's your fiancé.
Jonathan: Absolutely.
Dan Pashman: Now, what's her name, Jonathan?
Jonathan: Her name is Carrie.
Dan Pashman: Carrie, alright. We have her number, we're gonna give her a call, say goodbye to you, and get her on the line. And, uh, let her make her case for herself. And then Mark and I will issue a final judgment. Is that okay?
Jonathan: Sounds good. Can I make one more point?
Dan Pashman: Sure.
Jonathan: If you're not gonna call it a soup, I think you undertake an onus to find a plausible category of what it can be. This can't be a sort of stateless food. It needs some kind of category to be in. I think soup’s the only candidate.
Dan Pashman: That's an awfully rigid approach for a philosopher. I mean, maybe it just exists as it is. Maybe it's its own thing. I mean, aren't categories just a construct, man?
Jonathan: We do believe in such things. But it counts as a negative to call something sui generis.
Dan Pashman: Alright, Jonathan. Well, we really appreciate you taking the time to stay up a little late there in Scotland for this taping. We appreciate you sending us that video and your enthusiasm on this topic. We wish you the best of luck in Scotland. We're gonna go get Carrie on the phone and then we'll issue our final judgment.
Jonathan: Alright, thanks guys.
MUSIC
[PHONE RINGING]
Carrie: Hello?
Dan Pashman: Hi, is this Carrie?
Carrie: Hi, yes it is.
Dan Pashman: Hey Carrie, it's Dan and Mark from The Sporkful. How are ya?
Carrie: Hi, I'm good. How are you doing?
Dan Pashman: We're doing well, thank you. We were just talking to your fiancé, Jonathan, up in, he's up in St Andrews in Scotland. Where are you?
Carrie: That's right. I'm in Nottingham in England.
Dan Pashman: Okay, so a little south of there. And Jonathan was bringing us up to date on what appears to be a long-running debate between you and him and others in your family and friends circle about whether or not this dish he makes is soup. And he's already described it to us, and we have the video up on the blog that listeners can go check out. But why don't you go ahead and make your case against the soup definition for this dish?
Carrie: Okay. I mean, there's not much that needs to be said here, really. I've had this dish now a few times. And you can eat it completely from a plate using a fork. And I think that's just, that's enough by itself. There is no soup that you can do that with. It's not a liquid. So, I mean, it needs to be a liquid to be a soup. That's what a soup is. It's a kind of a liquid food.
Dan Pashman: That's an interesting point that Jonathan did not say. You're saying that you could put this on a flat plate.
Carrie: Exactly.
Dan Pashman: And the food would not…
Carrie: He actually serves it in a bowl, but you could serve it on a plate.
Dan Pashman: And if you did, would any of the, any of the food run over the edges of the plate?
Carrie: No way, definitely not.
Dan Pashman: That's pretty damning, Mark.
Carrie: I think so.
Mark Garrison: Now, what would you propose calling it, if not soup?
Carrie: Yeah, yeah, he brings this up. Um, I don't know.
Mark Garrison: He brought this up with us too.
Carrie: There's no easy category, but you know, he could make something up. I was suggesting a roast vegetable medley.
Dan Pashman: So you think it's basically just roast vegetables with a pureed vegetable sauce?
Carrie: Yeah.
Mark Garrison: Okay.
Carrie: Yeah, that's a good description. Yeah. I like that.
Dan Pashman: Well, you're right, uh, Carrie. We did look up the definition of the word soup and it begins by saying a liquid food.
Carrie: Exactly.
Dan Pashman: Now I gotta look up liquid. Because, Jonathan says there's some liquid in there. I mean, it doesn't make, it doesn't make… but, but this definition.
Carrie: There's some liquid.
Dan Pashman: Right, but the definition of soup does not say a food with some liquid. It says a liquid food.
Carrie: It's got to be a liquid, right.
Dan Pashman: Now, you guys sent in a video, which we're gonna post on the blog. I have to say, really, though, I think that the evidence… I'm gonna go ahead and issue a judgment here, Mark, and I'm curious to hear what you say, but this right here, the very first few frames, is really all that matters. Just the the way that it glops off the spoon. It looks like a solid food to me. I'm gonna go ahead and say that this is not soup.
Carrie: Yay, alright!
Dan Pashman: I think that seeing the video is helpful, but just hearing To me, Mark, the piece of evidence that I found most decisive was that you could serve this dish —and I think Carrie's statement is confirmed by the video evidence — you could put this dish on a flat plate, and it would not run over the edge. And I think, therefore, you know, our definition that we're working with is, starts with a liquid food. Now, if you put any food that we would all consider a liquid food on a flat surface, it should be messy. This is a food that you can put On a flat plate and eat almost entirely with a fork and I think because of those two reasons, it is not soup. Mark, how do you feel?
Mark Garrison: I'm actually going to agree and the most compelling piece of evidence in the case was what drew you as well. The fact that it could be served on a plate in its entirety and eaten with convenience without a spoon. I would still recommend a spoon looking at that. It's still going to get the spoon recommendation. But the spoon alone, that's not a sufficient condition for it to be considered soup just because it's like, it's spoon-friendly. It's not spoon-mandatory. But I don't know that we've completed our mission because we haven't really decided what category to put this in.
Dan Pashman: I think that roast vegetables with a vegetable sauce.
Mark Garrison: But it's not truly a sauce because it, it, it's not, it's not prepared separately and then combined.
Dan Pashman: Well, I think the way that you add the sauce doesn't make it a sauce or not a sauce. I think that you have a situation here where, you're pureeing vegetables, then you're adding stock. Now, if I just said that to you, alright, I'm gonna take roasted vegetables, I'm gonna puree them until they're pureed. And I'm gonna add vegetable stock. I would say that the result of that is sauce.
Mark Garrison: No, I don't think it's quite the same, because like, let's say you're preparing a sauce by, you know, deglazing a pan. So you've cooked your meat, you took your meat out, then you're gonna add your, you know, your port or your sherry or whatever, you're going to deglaze the pan and then, and then you're going to have a sauce from that, but it's still being prepared separately, even though it has some, they share some certain components, but it's being prepared separately and then add it to the main thing. So I think that makes it a sauce. I don't know that this is sauce here, but Carrie since, since we're kind of like, you know, focusing on this now, we've issued a judgment on… We have a majority ruling on not soup.
Carrie: That's all I care about.
Mark Garrison: But then we're trying to figure out what we call it. Like do we, do we have though, do we, does Dan's name hold up? Like, is is there a sauce component to this?
Carrie: I'm not, I'm not so sure about the sauce thing. I mean, I have the… I share the reservations about calling that a source. Um, I think, I'm happy, I think it just needs its own kind of name. I think Jonathan just needs to make up, maybe he needs some fancy French or German word for what this is. He's got to come up with a new name.
Dan Pashman: I mean, you guys are philosophers, you can call it whatever you want. It doesn't matter.
Carrie: You can call it whatever you want, except for soup. Yeah.
Dan Pashman: I mean, why don't you just call it, uh, chicken, in honor of Aristotle.
Carrie: It's about, it's about as good a name as soup, right? It's not a chicken either.
Dan Pashman: Exactly, but neither is the sun.
Carrie: Yeah, right.
Dan Pashman: So, I think that's okay. I name this dish chicken. That won't confuse anyone, will it?
Mark Garrison: No.
Carrie: No, no, that's fine, yeah.
Mark Garrison: Alright, so we're gonna put the video evidence up, because I know that there's some people that are going to side with Jonathan, so we want to get some good discussion about this up on the blog and such. Carrie, thank you so much, and thank you also to Jonathan, and even though you may disagree on this, you guys definitely have a good relationship going, and I predict successful marriage ahead.
Carrie: Thanks very much.
MUSIC
Sally: Hi, I'm Sally. I'm from Oakland, California.
Mark Garrison: Hey Sally, thanks for calling. And tell us what's on your mind.
Sally: Well, I have this new way I discovered of reheating pizza. And I thought I'd like to share it with you guys.
Dan Pashman: We love to hear new food innovations. Go for it. Tell us about it.
Sally: Everybody loves pizza, right?
Dan Pashman: That's right. Everyone we love, certainly.
Sally: So, I have this leftover pizza in the foil. And normally I would reheat it in a toaster oven on toast. But in order to kind of keep the sogginess out of the crust, or you know, undo some sogginess, you know, I take it off the foil. But then you start heating it, and the cheese starts dripping down into the bottom of your toaster oven, and if yours is like mine, little fires start and all that kind of stuff. Well, maybe yours is cleaner than mine, but anyway, so…
Dan Pashman: It is not. [LAUGHS]
Sally: So you know those little fires.
Dan Pashman: Yes, all too well. I'm on, uh, cheese drip patrol constantly. Mrs. Sporkful is much neater than I am, so she's always like, you know, she will sacrifice the crispiness for the sake of sanitation and, and keeping the toaster not on fire.
Sally: Okay.
Dan Pashman: But I'm, you know, Dan the Torpedoes. I want my pizza crusty. If I have to burn the house down, we have renter's insurance.
Sally: Well, maybe Mrs. Sporkful will like this tip, so…
Dan Pashman: Yeah, let's hear it.
Sally: So, okay, so I took a nonstick pan. And I started heating it just a little bit. Then I put my pizza in, I just let it go, and kept checking it like every minute or so, and it got a little crispy crusty on the bottom, and then my cheese wasn't melting as fast as I wanted it to, so I put a lid on it at that point. And so the reflected heat from the lid went back and heated the cheese. And then the cheese started oozing over the side and even created a little extra cheese crispiness around the edges.
Dan Pashman: Interesting.
Mark Garrison: A lot of people value that. A lot of people value that cheese crispiness. I mean
Dan Pashman: And actually, I'm sorry, Sally, but I should also mention that we just did our latest Gastrolab video for Slate all about grilled cheese sandwiches, but focusing on how to get more burnt cheese into your grilled cheese sandwich. And that was quite an adventure. That video almost burnt my cousin's apartment down. And it was very exciting. So check that out if you haven't already. Of course, it'll be on the blog, Facebook, Twitter, go to sporkful.com to find all those places and check out the latest Gastrolab videos.
Sally: Is it including flaming cheese?
Dan Pashman: There are some near explosions in this video.
Mark Garrison: Not in, like, the Greek sense where we're, uh, you know, pouring ouzo and, and, uh, lighting in a fire like that. These were more, uh, yeah, so there was certainly some, uh, use of hot grease.
Dan Pashman: Yeah, this was more like, “Mark, you dial 9-1 while I do this.”
Sally: Well, anyway, I have to say that, um, that reheated pizza was even better than, You know, when you're at the restaurant and you're getting down there to the last piece, and…
Dan Pashman: It's not as hot?
Sally: It can be soggy a little bit, depending on your topping.
Mark Garrison: Grease, yeah, if you have a pepperoni, certainly.
Sally: Yeah, or mushrooms, sometimes mushrooms get soggy. But anyway, it was excellent.
Dan Pashman: Now my first question for you, Sally, is did you put any oil or butter in the pan, or did you put the pizza in dry?
Sally: Totally dry.
Dan Pashman: This sounds very promising to me, Mark, because I usually do go the toaster method, Sally, and the toaster I have right now is crappy for everything except reheating pizza pretty much because it reheats unevenly and so it toasts on the bottom more than on the top. So that's actually good for pizza because it will crisp the bottom without over melting the cheese on the top and starting a fire. But that's just my dumb luck and I understand that most people don't have that fortune or misfortune depending on, you know, what you're trying to toast.
Mark Garrison: I think there's a lot of good there. Now for me though, like, I don't have… I've never had access to the toaster oven in my own home on a consistent basis, so I'm often…
Sally: Well, so how do you do it?
Mark Garrison: Actually, if I have pizza…
Sally: You eat it cold.
Mark Garrison: Sometimes. I see cold pizza as like a special, like, different genre of food that can actually be very good. But it's not, it's not as, cold pizza is not a substitute for reheated pizza. And obviously it's certainly not a substitute for pizza that's, that's…
Sally: But it is quicker.
Mark Garrison: It is quicker. Sometimes, sometimes if I, if I give myself a little bit of planning, I can do it just like a regular kind of oven thing.
Sally: Well, okay, but if you've got the stove, the pan, and seven minutes, you're good on my way.
Mark Garrison: I agree. I'm convinced. I'm sold.
Dan Pashman: All right. Well, Sally, we thank you so much for your experimentation. We thank you for calling up and sharing it with us and all the sportful listeners around the world.
Sally: Okay. Well, thank you. It's been fun.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Coming up after the break, another call-in episode from 2011. In this one, we'll dive into another linguistic question, but this time about cereal and milk. Stick around.
+++ BREAK +++
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman, and I have a very big, exciting announcement for you. This past November, I took a group of Sporkful fans and some others on a special trip across Italy to eat pasta, to retrace many of the steps I took on my own research trip for my cookbook, and we had so much fun, and ate so, so well. We ate spaghetti all’asassina in Bari. We took a cooking class with Silvestro Silvestori in Lecce. We ate with Katie Parla in Rome. And the folks at Culinary Backstreets who organized the tour, they added some stops that I didn't even know about that were new to me, that were incredibly delicious and also fascinating. Point is, it was so great, we're doing it again. This November, we just opened up spots. It's a small group, so space is limited. Bottom line: Come eat pasta with me in Italy! For all the details, go to culinarybackstreets.com/sporkful. Now, back to this week's Reheat. This second half is another one of our early Call-In Smorgasbord episodes. Enjoy!
Dan Pashman: Mark Garrison, how are you doing?
Mark Garrison: I'm doing pretty good. I had some vegetable content before I came over here. I have to go out of town in a few days, so I've basically, you know, have, you have, when you do that, you have that mission of making sure you leave kind of nothing perishable behind in the fridge. So today was a double lettuce sandwich on toast.
Dan Pashman: Double lettuce? Wow. That's pretty bold. You didn't want to go triple lettuce?
Mark Garrison: No, triple lettuce, it might not last through the week. Because you want to, you want to use it all. You're rationing the lettuce. Yes, you, you want to, you want to, you, Ideally, you have that like last perishable item is consumed right before you go to the airport. So that's what I'm working on.
Dan Pashman: That's true. Although I'd rather err on the side of consuming the food a little early than having to throw something out.
Mark Garrison: Yeah. But then you got to kind of budget for some takeout or something else like that.
Dan Pashman: It's not ideal. I'm just saying err on the side. If you're gonna, if you're gonna mess it up, you can't go hungry. You're eating lettuce sandwiches here, Mark. It's a sad state of affairs.
Mark Garrison: It's not the only thing I'm eating, but I just had to like earmark that for consumption.
Dan Pashman: Let's go ahead, Mark, and jump into today's topic for mastication and rumination, which is Call-in Smorgasbord. Let's go to the phones. Who do we have on the line now?
Jeff: Hi, this is Jeff calling from Kelowna, BC, Canada.
Dan Pashman: Alright, Jeff, what's on your mind?
Jeff: Well, me and my family have been, uh, having this debate about milk. And we all know that when you drink milk out of a cup, it's a beverage. But when you pour that milk over cereal, does that make it a sauce? Or a broth? Or is it still just a beverage? I personally think that it's a sauce, but my sister's insistent that it's still a beverage no matter what.
Dan Pashman: And what's your argument? Why do you think it's a sauce?
Jeff: Well, first I'll say why it's not a beverage. It's not a beverage because you eat it with a spoon, and I can't name very many beverages that you eat with a spoon. So that's why I think it has to be a sauce. It's applied to the cereal, it makes the cereal good, just like when you apply ketchup to fries to make them awesome. That's my argument for it, at least.
Dan Pashman: And how old's your sister?
Jeff: She's 17.
Dan Pashman: And how old are you?
Jeff: I'm 19.
Dan Pashman: So, uh, is this possible that you just have a younger sister who's giving you a hard time? She's just trying to start arguments with you?
Jeff: Exactly, yeah.
Dan Pashman: Yeah, typical. Yeah. Um, is your sister there? Is she home with you right now?
Jeff: Yep.
Dan Pashman: Do you think, could you put her on the phone?
Jeff: Yeah, sure, just a sec.
Dan Pashman: Alright.
Selassie: Hello?
Dan Pashman: Hi, what's your name?
Selassie: Selassie.
Dan Pashman: Selassie?
Selassie: Yep.
Dan Pashman: Hi, how are you? This is Dan and Mark. How are you doing?
Selassie: Good, good.
Dan Pashman: So your brother Jeff told us about this debate you guys are having over the breakfast table. Uh, you say that milk is a beverage even when it is poured over cereal.
Selassie: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Why do you think that is?
Selassie: Because you can drink it after, and there's a lot more milk than there's cereal.
Dan Pashman: But here's my question for you, Selassie. You're saying that it's a beverage because you can drink it after you've consumed the cereal.
Selassie: Yes.
Dan Pashman: What do you call it when you're eating the cereal and the milk in the same bites? Is that still a beverage you're consuming with a food together in a spoon?
Selassie: It really is, because milk is just a beverage. No matter what you add it to, it will still be the drink milk.
Mark Garrison: So is cereal a beverage? Cereal with milk, is that a beverage?
Selassie: No. Cereal is a different thing itself than the milk.
Mark Garrison: No, no, but the combined entity of cereal and milk in a bowl, is that a beverage?
Selassie: But you have to chew it, so it wouldn't be much of a beverage.
Dan Pashman: But when you pour the milk on the cereal, and you're having your breakfast, if I were to knock on your door and say, “Hey Selassie, what's for breakfast? What are you having for breakfast?” What would you say to me?
Selassie: Cereal.
Dan Pashman: Okay. Okay. That is a piece of evidence that I want to hang on to here for just a moment, alright? Now, you said a minute ago that milk is a beverage no matter what you do with it.
Selassie: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: What about if you use milk in, let's say in the preparation of a dessert? In ice cream? Or in a cake of some kind? Is it still a beverage then?
Selassie: Well, no, because you're mixing it together to create a totally different experience.
Dan Pashman: Exactly.
Selassie: And I think it's solid. And, but, whereas the milk is still liquid in cereal.
Mark Garrison: Because in cereal, the milk does not change state.
Dan Pashman: Yeah. I see. All right. All right. There's some validity to that.
Mark Garrison: I think, I think that's cool. I think I'm fine with that.
Dan Pashman: Let us have Jeff back on the line.
Selassie: Okay.
Jeff: Yeah, I'm back.
Dan Pashman: All right, Jeff, your sister, you know, she's a tough cookie there for a 17-year-old. She's a real food philosopher. Mark, where are you leaning here on this debate? Do you have any more questions for Jeff or are you ready to rule?
Mark Garrison: I think I'm ready to rule.
Dan Pashman: Okay. What do you, what do you want to say?
Mark Garrison: You're both wrong.
Dan Pashman: Okay.
Mark Garrison: In thoughtful ways. Respectable ways, but the thing is the milk in this case in any of these cases we've talked about except for drinking milk in a glass or maybe maybe I'm not really to concede this yet, but possibly when you drink the milk out of the bowl after the cereal pieces are gone, but in all these cases, milk is just an ingredient…
Dan Pashman: Yes.
Mark Garrison: …that enables the cereal to become milked.
Dan Pashman: It enables the cereal to become the cereal that we know and love.
Mark Garrison: Yes.
Dan Pashman: And that's it, Mark. You picked the exactly right word, and that's exactly where I was gonna go as well. In the case of cereal, and most other instances, milk is an ingredient. It is neither a beverage nor a sauce.
Mark Garrison: And I would also say, I'm gonna go a little further than that, to say that after you've eaten all the pieces, the entity, milk-based entity that's left in the bowl is not a beverage, even though it could be poured into a glass and consumed as such, because it is a component, a leftover component, of what it made together with the dry cereal. And so that's like almost another thing that was created from that. But again, it was all made with the ingredients of milk and cereal. What I want to know, Jeff, is what makes a sauce a sauce? Because you kind of compared the milk and the cereal as a sauce because it's kind of like ketchup, like putting ketchup on fries. And I think those are two different scenarios because the fries don't, ideally, I mean, hopefully you're not putting this much ketchup on and the ketchup's not that thin and watery…. But the fries don't swim in the ketchup, or they're not submerged in the ketchup in the way that cereal is and can be. It doesn't float in that. So, so, uh, and I'm not, I'm not sure what the answer is, but tell me how… What makes a sauce?
Jeff: I think maybe the rules you're applying to sauce are a bit too strict. I'm thinking a sauce could be like any liquid. That you apply to a pre-existing food, like cereal is a pre-existing food, you can eat cereal on its own. Any liquid that you can apply to a pre-existing food to make it better.
Dan Pashman: I just think that if you go with Jeff's definition of a sauce Then all liquid ingredients become sauces. And that's problematic.
Mark Garrison: But in Jeff's scenario, I believe, as he was saying, that they are finishing strokes. It's put on a prepared dish.
Jeff: Right. That's what sets milk apart as a sauce. Because you could…
Mark Garrison: He's still hanging with this milk as a sauce. Alright, alright. I'll allow it.
Dan Pashman: I mean, that's, it's, it's, it's not a bad case, Jeff. I, I give you credit. It is persuasive. I, I just feel like, I, I think what, what this comes down to at its essence is whether dried cereal and cereal with milk are two distinctly different foods. If cereal with milk is a distinctly different food from plain cereal that you eat out of the box with your hand and no milk, then I think it's an ingredient. Because it's, it's, it's essential. An ingredient is something that, that, that, without that, like, the food isn't the food without the set of ingredients that comprise that food.
Mark Garrison: Yeah, it's a different dish without that.
Dan Pashman: Right. A sauce is, is, is really something that's optional. You, you might think it's so much better with the sauce, but I'm like, you can have pasta with tomato sauce or without tomato sauce. You can make pasta plain. It's still, you're still eating pasta. But the default manner of eating cereal is with milk. And for that reason, I just, I hold very strongly to the notion that milk is an inherent part of the equation here. I know you can eat cereal without milk, but very few people do it. I think most people who eat cereal without milk, they're doing it because they're just kind of on the go, and they want to shove a handful of food down their throat. They don't like say, oh, I'm hungry for breakfast, so I'm going to sit down and eat a bowl of cereal with no, with nothing. People just don't do that very often. So because of that, I think that the milk is an essential ingredient.
Jeff: I think that's a pretty good point. I'd say that's a fair argument.
Dan Pashman: And I'll give you one more point. If you look at the nutrition facts on a box of cereal, they will always list the nutrition facts for the cereal without milk and with milk. How many calories, how much fat, whatever, once a quarter-cup or half-cup or cup or whatever it is, of milk has been combined with the serving size. Now if you look at the, at the box of pasta, when you look at the nutrition facts, they don't say with sauce. The milk is so closely tied to the cereal that they factored it on the nutrition facts, and you know they don't want to have to add in any more calories onto those labels than they have to, because they're trying to sell you on the fact that this food's going to be healthy. So, but it's so much assumed that they put it on the label, and I think that's another piece of evidence that the milk is an ingredient in the bowl of cereal whole.
Jeff: I'll keep that in mind next time I have my bowl of Mini Wheats.
Mark Garrison: And you had a two cereal morning, right? Is that correct?
Jeff: I did.
Mark Garrison: It's very impressive. Were you, did you eat them concurrently or consecutively? Was this like a mix? Like, what was going on here?
Jeff: Oh no, it was the… I started off with the Life cereal, finished the bowl, consumed the milk out of the bowl, and then had a secondary bowl of Mini Wheats. I didn't want to mix the flavor of the life and the mini wheats, I don't know. It's kind of untreaded ground. I didn't know if that would be good or not.
Dan Pashman: One of the issues with combining serials is you don't want a serial that's gonna, um, turn soggy very quickly combined with a serial that is gonna stay hard for a long time.
Jeff: You gotta have the right surface area to volume ratios, right?
Dan Pashman: Jeff, you sound like you've been listening to a highly intelligent podcast for quite some time, my friend.
Jeff: Funny enough, funny enough, I'm actually, uh, I'm a biology major.
Mark Garrison: Oh yeah.
Jeff: And on exams, if you don't know the answer to a question, if you put surface area to volume ratio on the answer, you have a pretty good chance of getting it right. So that's kind of our go-to.
Dan Pashman: Jeff, that's probably why I bring that up so often. It's the only thing I remember from biology class. Well, Jeff, we want to thank you so much for your call. Thank your sister for us. You guys are doing a great job up there in B.C. of thinking about food and having fun with food and keep up the good work.
Jeff: Yeah, thanks.
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Robbie: Hi, this is Robbie calling.
Dan Pashman: All right, Robbie, what's on your mind?
Robbie: Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about mac and cheese, which is I'm sure a topic that you're going to get to eventually. There's lots you can say about cheese choice or pasta shape or all that.
Mark Garrison: Plenty.
Robbie: But I wanted to talk specifically about the, the practice of baking mac and cheese. I find that baked mac and cheese is really an abomination of the art form that is mac and cheese. You put on those weird breadcrumbs, you put it in the oven, and then it just gets dried out, it turns into some gelatinous cube. This maybe betrays my humble beginnings, but my ideal mac and cheese, I suppose, is that box mac and cheese, is the blue box, right? Which, of course, you don't bake at all. You just get this gooey, cheesy, creamy mess. The problem with baked mac and cheese is that it just dries out, and when you put the breadcrumbs on top, it's dry on top of dry, and it's no good for anybody.
Mark Garrison: Because some people, like, really value the kind of crunchy corners and some certain quadrants you get when you bake the mac and cheese that way, but you place no value on that. You want a consistent texture across, and you want a softtexture.
Robbie: That's correct. In some foods, I would be happy… I'm happy to have changing textures and, anddifferent sort of varieties of flavors. But in mac and cheese, I'm totally willing to dispense with those crusty bits and those corner pieces entirely. I think a good mac and cheese is pretty uniform and the quality of the texture you get from a really al dente pasta. Hopefully, if the pasta is cooked correctly, you don't need those crunchy bits on the corners.
Dan Pashman: Now, you're right, Robbie, that we're gonna do a show, at least one show down the road, in which we'll get into mac and cheese in much more detail. You happen to be talking to somebody who served mac and cheese at his wedding, and so I take mac and cheese very seriously.
Robbie: As you should.
Dan Pashman: Yeah. I should and I do, and we all should. Um, but I have to disagree with you on this issue. You’re right that baked alone dries out, but I think you are wrong to dismiss out of hand the breadcrumb topping and the joyous and magical addition that it can bring when used correctly. The best mac…
Robbie: What do you get from those breadcrumbs? Why? Why do you need those?
Dan Pashman: Well, they add a light crisp. And the best mac and cheese I have had was made in a pan, put into a shallow dish, and then covered with breadcrumbs and placed into the oven for just a few minutes to brown and crisp the breadcrumbs. And those breadcrumbs soak up some of that sauce. They add a whole other textural element. They fuse with the sauce very nicely. You still get the sauciness from a good pan-cooked mac and cheese. It doesn't dry out because it's only been in the oven for a couple of minutes. But the breadcrumbs add a tremendous, tremendous special level of flavor and crunch and texture that is indispensable.
Robbie: Whoa, whoa, whoa, you're, you're going to argue that the breadcrumbs are going to add flavor as well?
Dan Pashman: Sure.
Robbie: I can maybe go with you on texture, but flavor.
Dan Pashman: Well, breadcrumbs have flavor, don't they?
Robbie: Well, all the flavor that you should ever need in a good mac and cheese comes from the cheese itself. That's the whole point of the dish.
Dan Pashman: But I'm not talking about a thick layer of breadcrumbs. They are primarily there for texture. But they do add a little bit of extra buttery flavor. It's nice that you get a few bites that have that crispy, buttery breadcrumbness added to the mac and cheese. And you have other bites that are just pure mac and cheese.
Mark Garrison: I'll step in here. I'm going to say I'm also against Dan on the breadcrumbs question. I'm not fully against them like they should never appear there, but I often find that they are not, you know, they're not adding enough to justify their presence and I feel like that they are not a solid detriment. I won't deny they do have good aspects to them, but I generally think they're kind of overused and overrated. I don't, however, though, think that, you know, a pan-combined macaroni and cheese is automatically superior to one that's been baked because I think there are there are good baked ones and there are bad baked ones. And I think the bad baked ones are the ones where they usually just kind of, you know, put what would normally go into it and just kind of throw it in a pan and, you know, spread some cheese sauce over it and stick it in there and forget it. But I think when you do that, if you actually, like, take the time to, like, to make a roux and combine that in there and actually bake it there where you give it a motivation to be baked. So, I think you can have a very excellent baked mac and cheese, and you can have an excellent, you know, mac and cheese made in the pan. But, I do agree with you, Robbie, that the breadcrumbs are, are kind of overrated. And honestly
Robbie: I think I'm glad I've got you with me on that, on that point.
Mark Garrison: If you're gonna go, like, for things that can add crunch, like, I, I just feel like there's, there's other, you know, more intriguing choices that are out there.
Dan Pashman: You're gonna say nuts, aren't you?
Mark Garrison: I don't know if I'm gonna do nuts here.
Robbie: Nuts on mac and cheese, that's bold.
Mark Garrison: Yeah, I don't know though.
Dan Pashman: I thought that would be a classic Garrison. Oh, I don't like crunch, just throw in some nuts. Hazelnuts. I agree with you that fully baked is subpar, but I think that the combo approach is superior than the two polar extremes.
Robbie: I suppose one of the things that I like about a mac and cheese that is not baked is when you get the sort of cheese goo left over in the bowl and sometimes if the The cheese goo to macaroni proportion is too heavy, then you get a pretty substantial amount of soft leftover when you bake it, you don't get any of that. It's just sort of baked onto the pan or into the pasta. It goes somewhere. It just doesn't seem to exist anymore. But there's something special about getting to the end of mac and cheese. And, uh, still having just a little bit of that soft left.
Dan Pashman: Robbie, I agree with what you're saying about the leftover sauce, but in my combo approach mac and cheese, you still get that. You gotta try it.
Robbie: So it's baked, it's baked so, so little that there's even some of that, that, that wetness of the sauce leftover.
Dan Pashman: That's right. I mean, we're talking five minutes. It can be done. Five, you could probably, you could probably even just broil it, because all you're really trying to do is…
Robbie: A real quick broil.
Dan Pashman: Brown the top to get some breadcrumb crispiness on top without drying it out. That is the money approach for, for mac and cheese, I think.
Robbie: I'm skeptical. I'm, I'm skeptical, but, but, uh, I think it's worth a try.
Dan Pashman: All right. Well, we appreciate your open-mindedness, Robbie, and, uh, thanks so much for the call.
Robbie: Thank you so much.
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Eric: Hey, it's Eric calling from Vancouver, Canada. I wanted to talk to you guys about the rate that people eat at, like, the speed they eat at if… I like to think that people eat too fast and that people should slow down when they're eating.
Mark Garrison: Okay.
Dan Pashman: What, what got you thinking about this?
Eric: Uh, I'm in university right now. We're taking a course and uh, we pretty much can launch into any project. And after listening to many months of Sporkful, I thought like, why not have a food related project? So, one of the issues I wanted to tackle was uh, when people eat too quickly, they don't really get the full flavor of the food. They don't really get to enjoy it and savor every nuance of the flavor in the food and so I thought I'd try to figure out how this I could do something about this problem and maybe try to help people convince some people to slow down when they're eating
Mark Garrison: this an engineering class psychology class a design class like what what
Eric: Well, I'm approaching it from a design point of view and we're hoping to have maybe some kind of eating experience where people come into it and then get them to slow down the way to eat, maybe through utensils or through some kind of I don't know… Maybe we'll use some kind of manipulation based on like a something to do with the way the food is arranged.
Dan Pashman: Give us the one or two best, you know, sort of specific concrete ideas you have so far for your project that you think could work.
Eric: Right now, the best idea we have is that we have something going on that… we went to a food tasting kind of event kind of thing where one of our professors knows a chocolate maker in Switzerland and they sent over a package of chocolates to try out and wanted us to rate each of them. And we realized that when you really, like someone asks you to kind of like, “oh, tell me what flavor this is,” you really stop and think about it, like, oh, it's kind of floral, it's kind of sweet, you got that honey taste in there, or if it's dark, it's got a coffee aftertaste, or something like that, and that really slows it down. Um, the other big picture thought we had about this is try to really emphasize on the senses, because we can eat food mostly through, uh, taste, but there's also sight, like the way we visually see the food, uh, the sound of food, like I know you guys really like the crunch when you bite into things.
Mark Garrison: Especially Dan. Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah. I read a study where, like, I, I have a camera there where I was from, but The potato chip, if you get, it's the same bag they give you potato chips, but they amplify the crunch of it, you feel it's fresher.
Mark Garrison: And what I am glad to hear is that you did not choose the idea, which a lot of restaurants have chosen, not to get you to slow down, but to get you to spend more money without knowing it and saying that you should do small plates. That's one of the big, uh, common scams in, in the restaurants that became very popular in the past, like 10 years or so. And it's, uh, just kind of a bill amplifier. I mean, in theory you would get to try more things, but the portions are so small that often you have to get a bunch of them to spread. So I'm glad you're not choosing that method.
Dan Pashman: I think that a lot of it has to do with how hungry you are and being at the right level of hunger.
Eric: That's true.
Dan Pashman: Because, of course you want to be hungry for a meal because you're going to enjoy it more than if you're not that hungry. But if you come to a meal starving, if you're really, really hungry, that's when I find that I tend to eat too fast and forget to really enjoy the meal. When you're right in that sweet spot of hunger, you're hungry, you're ready to eat, but you're not dying of hunger. That's when you can have a little bit of patience. When is this assignment due, Eric?
Eric: It’s due in April, and then we'll be having a showcase for it and everything.
Dan Pashman: It's due in April. But, so essentially, I just want to make it clear to everyone, what you're doing here by calling us is, is asking us to do your homework for you. Is that right?
Eric: No, no, no. We, we have our ideas, but we try to get an outside source and see what happens.
Dan Pashman: You're calling us in as consultants on the project.
Eric: Consultants, that's a good word.
Dan Pashman: Okay, fair enough. So, uh, um, I think that it might be interesting, I agree with what Mark said about the small plates and I don't know if it's because of the cost, like I've done a few times where you do this like a tasting menu type thing where you get like six or eight or ten courses and each one is really tiny.
Eric: Yep.
Dan Pashman: And that's just torture. Basically, each course puts a slight dent in your hunger, and then that dent goes back to full hunger before the next course comes. And so the meal ends and you're still hungry, or only half full.
Eric: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: I would like you to also try, put the plate down, let them see it, let them take one or two bites, and then take the plate away.
Eric: Okay.
Dan Pashman: Then you're allowing the person, forcing the person to reflect upon what they just ate. Then give them the plate back. Don't take it away for too long. You don't want to tease them, and you don't want them to wait 20 minutes and they're back to being starving again.
Eric: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: You want them to take a couple of bites to stave off that initial bit of hunger, so they're not starving.
Eric: Yep.
Dan Pashman: So give them two or three good bites, then take the plate away for just like one minute. And give them that time to stop and think, What did I just eat? Boy, I'd like to have some more. And by forcing them to kind of revisit those first few bites, when they get that second chance at it, they're going to pay attention to the things that they were thinking about while the food was not in front of them.
Eric: Hmm. That's interesting.
Dan Pashman: That's my theory, at least. Based on no science whatsoever.
Eric: That's fine.
Dan Pashman: But I also, you know, there is a danger here, Eric, that we need to be aware of. When consuming food in great quantity is part of your goal, Eating too slowly is a problem. Because you might make the mistake of realizing that you're full.
Mark Garrison: I'll throw something else out. What if different people are served different dishes? What I'd like to see is if you kind of do, kind of bring like the telephone game into it. Where, you know, someone has a food and then describes it to another person. Then that person would then be at the table that has that food, and then would describe it to the next person. And what it would be interesting to find out is like, what's the thing that would be in common with what the first person described it as?
Eric: Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Yeah, I kind of like that, because it gets people talking to each other. And the social part, because when you eat alone, you try to eat faster. When you eat with other people, you kind of slow down because there's conversation, there's this and that, chitchat going on.
Dan Pashman: Eric, best of luck with the project. We want you to send us a full report on how the project ended up, and what grade you got, and if we're not satisfied with the grade, then Mark and I are going to get your professor on the phone, and we're going to give him much more.
Mark Garrison: We'll find out, yeah.
Eric: That sounds great, thanks guys.
Dan Pashman: Thanks so much, take care up there in Canada.
Mark Garrison: Good luck with your studies, thanks again. Thanks, bye.
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