Advanced Italian and School Cooking

(upbeat music) - Hi again everybody, and welcome back to the Miles Palfcast, the flagship podcast of authentic Italian cooking. - Or wanna be Italian, authentic Italian cooking? The other day Kendall made a comment that she wants to go back to Italy to eat good food. Now, I'm sure there's a lot more reasons why she wants to go back to Italy. But it inspired me because I've, I learned it a cook a long time ago. Well, that's not true. I learned how to cook. Well, it would have been like seven or eight years ago when we first got together. We started doing Hello Fresh. Really back when it was like brand new, and I'd never really cooked before, but doing all those recipes and like you just, you kind of like to learn the general principles of it. It really taught me how to cook. And ever since then, we've been doing that. We did every plate for a while. And now we're kind of in and out on it. But anyway, I've learned how to make a lot of things. But I feel like my cooking is like really plateaued. Like I do the same stuff each time. Like we have our set of recipes that we like to go to. And we cycle through those kind of in and out. And it's good, but I've plateaued. Like I don't feel like I'm making much progress anymore. So this is kind of cool inspiration for that when she said this kind of things. Like hey, maybe, you know, I'm sure it's great in Italy, but it's not like they have magic dust over there. Like there has to be some way here that like, maybe we can, I can replicate that or learn like what, what are the small things that you'd never get when you make like imitation Italian food as opposed to what they do there? Like there's gotta be some principles for that. And I wanted to know the difference. So I did a deep dive on it. I kind of looked into it. And there's several things that come up when it comes to like what separates imitation Italian food or like what you'd expect to be like Italian. You know, like we make Italian recipes all the time, but it's not the same obviously. And I want to know why. Couple of things. A, in Italy, it's all about quality over quantity. A lot of recipes generally don't use a ton of ingredients, but the ingredients that do use a really high quality. Or they're really good. So for example, think like cheeses that are used rather than using like pre-shredded cheese, which you know, if you buy here, if you buy pre-shredded cheese here in a bag, you're gonna get, there's additives that help it from my clumping and molding and it just influences the taste. I mean, everyone knows how much better, like if you shred a block of, even like sharp cheddar cheese, so much better than like something's already pre-shredded. So there's a big difference there. Noodles is a huge one. So if you go to the store and you like, look at the packs of noodles, a lot of them are gonna be like that shiny yellow color. I mean, everyone knows what it looks like. Shiny yellow packs spaghetti. That, those noodles are Teflon cut. So they're much more smooth. They've got that nice yellow color. They're really, really shiny. If you want like authentic Italian noodles, you want the brown ones, the rust colored noodles that look really rough. They call it like bronze cut or bronze die cut and not dies in like a die, like a color. It's just like they use like a bronze, I don't know, a cutting machine if some sort, that cuts them and it makes them much more, hey, they get that rust color, but also B, they are much more rough in surface area. So if those signs people out there will know really quick, if you have like, you know, limited surface area, if everything's super smooth, there's no friction, it's gonna be hard for sauces to cling onto that. As opposed to something that's really, really rough, that's gonna have a lot more surface area, a lot more friction. That helps the sauce clean the noodles much, much better. And in Italy, like authentic noodles, like they don't serve the noodles with like a, you know, the dollop of sauce on the top, like it's all mixed together and the ideas that the sauce clings to the noodles and guess what, these noodles really make that kind of thing happen. As far as like meats go, they use a lot of pork, it's a lot more flavorful than something like chicken, which obviously makes a big, big difference. Garlic's another big one, but the funny thing here is like you might go to an Italian restaurant here and it's a lot of garlic, or you know anywhere, anywhere that's an imitation Italian cooking, a lot of garlic. As opposed to like authentic Italian, they use garlic sparingly, granted it's often used like when infused into olive oil. So, you know, something you wouldn't necessarily expect. Like they use garlic, but it's usually infused into olive oil and not just, you know, minced and put in there. And if they do mince it, it's used, again, sparingly and not overwhelmingly so. And the big thing, obviously this is, this is obviously this is also like in the recipes I did, but like, reserving the pasta water makes a big difference as opposed to normal water. I got to the point where I would just, you know, I throw the noodles into a strainer or a colander and, you know, just get fresh water, which is a big mistake because the starch in the water really, really helps again with the sauce with increasing the clingingness that starts in the water really helps with the clinging and stuff. And you know, there's just a ton of things like this. And again, it's all about like, again, that quality over quantity and using really good ingredients, authentic ingredients, whether that is, you know, the vegetables or the meats, the noodles, it's all there. And another thing that was interesting, they mentioned like, regu sauce. And I think regu here, like you look at the bottles of like regu the brand and it's like, it's your tomato sauce with some meat in it. Regu there is like, it's literally like a more of a meat sauce with tomatoes added rather sparingly. Like it's much more, it's like a meat and you kind of throw on some like vegetables there like to simmer like some garlic and a couple of other things. And tomatoes is more of an afterthought. Whereas, you know, imitation Italian, it's like, it's gonna be heavy tomato, it's gonna be your red sauce and that's not, again, so the case of authentic, so I don't know, just a lot of things that I want to try some stuff. So I also got some recipes. I got some stuff to try one with like some pork and some noodles, some of the prawns cut noodles. And we're gonna see how it goes. This is like by inspiration to try and like, be better at cooking and try and get better at like a certain, you know, cuisine. And I think it'd be cool if I could get at this kind of thing. It's gonna take practice. It's one of those things where it's like the first time it's gonna take forever and I'm gonna make a giant mess, but it's gonna be cool. Oh, another one. I think heavy cream's another really common thing that you add as like a sauce and they don't do that a lot with I got that thick Italian cooking. It's generally like a ricotta cheese and you use some of the leftover pasta water and you thin it out with that and then you have like more of like a cheese sauce as opposed to using heavy cream. Just little things here and there that I thought was really interesting that kind of separate out from, you know, imitation Italian to actual authentic Italian cooking. All right, today on the show, usual stuff. Tell me something good. We've made it, there's a certain season, I love it. I owe you one kind of throwback to something I really took for granted back in the day and now really appreciate and then Sean's what do you into kind of a continuation on something good, but tell me something good. (upbeat music) Tell me something good. First and foremost, we're on the doorstep of it. Harvest season is coming on. Summer has come and gone. We're finally at fall. My favorite season of the year, my favorite month's always been like October and it's because it's fall. We're finally given that cooler weather. I think today's like one of the last hot days as I record this and it drops like in, it pretty substantially like into the '60s and or into the '70s and maybe even the '60s. I love that. Like I'm down for the hot weather. We had, I feel like we maximized it this year. We were out for like so many times. We enjoyed the sun. You know, harvest was great. Hot weather for that really made it go. But hey, it's time for some cooler weather. I don't mind throwing on a coat or a sweatshirt every now and then. I don't have to like worry about going outside and just sweating and like for all my runs, like cooler weather, not such a bad thing. Hot weather's good. I needed that, but I'm ready for some cooler weather. This is a controversial one, but it getting dark earlier, I'm completely down for. I've said this before, but I feel like it's growing up and even like into the '20s, like it's fun to be light all the time. But when you have kids, it is so hard to put them to bed. Like when it's 85 degrees outside and still super bright out at eight o'clock at night and on the late side, like I'm happy if the sun's down at seven. It just makes it so much easier to put the girls to bed. It feels like nighttime. I have no problem with that. And I know that's an unpopular opinion, but that's where I'm at. Football starting soon, excited about that. Both NFL and college football to some degree. I don't like college football as much as I used to. I don't know, there's a lot of things. It's just changed so much in the Cougs. Obviously they got the short end of that stick over and over again. But in NFL, and I'm gonna talk about fantasy football here in a minute, I'm excited about it. Cocks are back. And it's fun following that. It's just a new sport to follow. And on top of that, playoff baseball. I love playoff baseball in the fall. And for that matter, September baseball. And the manager in a position where they're still in it, it's still matters, it's awesome. And obviously I really hope they make it, but I've always loved the playoffs growing up. It's, and the managers were never in it. And I still enjoy it. So it's still something I love to watch it to follow. This week was the first official day of it, but I'll give me all the pumpkin stuff. I have no shame. I love pumpkin spice lattes and anything else, pumpkin drinks or desserts. I starbucks, I think officially released theirs on Tuesday. Haven't had one yet. I'm waiting for it to be like a little bit cooler, a little bit cloudier. I want it actually to feel like fall and not like 98 degrees and sweating hot when I have a pumpkin spice latte. But shamelessly love. Anything pumpkin I've always have. And it's just, again, it's a part of fall. There's so much fun stuff. Anything pumpkin cream cheese I'm all in. Also new TV shows. This used to be much bigger. I feel like as we were growing up, back in the heyday of broadcast TV, where all the NBC and CBS and ABC and Fox would all have their fresh fall lineup of shows and there'd be so much great stuff to look forward to. Or that was something like returning like a 24 or a lost or the new shows that would come on. It was another fun time. There's a bunch of fresh new stuff coming in. And it just felt cool. And it's just to some degree that still happens. There's several shows that are coming out in the next several months that I'm looking forward to. And several that are out right now. But that's another great thing that I love about this. Just this time of years. You kind of get that fresh start. Same thing with video games. I feel like with you get your, well, I feel like there's, yeah. You got your new TV shows. And you also get like video game season kind of like this time of year, generally September, October, November. You're getting all the big companies releasing their games in the lead up to the holidays. like Nintendo's always, you know, big game September, October, November, there's like the awkward of time remakes coming out. Obviously, Grand Theft Auto is going to be a huge game, Grand Theft Auto, and the Wolverine game, the new X-Men Wolverine game looks awesome. There's just, there's so much fun fresh stuff coming out. It's, it's phone season again. Sadly, I don't think I'll be participating in that, but it's fun seeing all those, just a bunch of new stuff coming out as everybody kind of gets gears up for the holidays. I just, I love all that. Leaves changing, obviously, down for that. Halloween, love Halloween, our anniversary's in October, October 6th. And obviously, I've talked about it at nausea, but I got like my room to room to room thing coming up in mid-October as well. And hunting season for that matter. They're just, I just love this time of year. There's so much great stuff. Kind of in the lead up, like you're, again, you're getting, you're getting the fall season, you got your holiday rounds with the Halloween and Thanksgiving eventually Christmas. It's just great. I, I, I, I know there's a lot of people bum that summer's coming to an end, but for me, like, this is like, this is, I don't know where we start fresh again. I mentioned it last week, I think, actually with the nostalgia of going back to school. It's kind of like the year starting fresh, starting new and there's so much great stuff that goes with that. And kind of all those same lines, moving right on into the I.O. you one. You know who you are, yeah, who you want. Something that I always took for granted. And something that I know I complained about. And now I look back and realize how good we had it. The I.O. you one is for darling Perkins are, are forever ago, 20 some odd years ago are elementary school chef. The head cook at Garfield Elementary and Garfield Middle School and Garfield Police Middle School for that matter was darling Perkins. And I honestly, I don't think she's with us anymore, but holy smokes. I mean, she crushed it looking back. It's such a cliche thing to like complain about school lunches and that kind of thing. And I love now asking kids about like their school lunches and looking back though, man, we had it. And I think back to like how hard that must have been like to plan out. It's hard enough for me to plan out a week's worth of food for me and my wife and let alone then kind of the girls on top of that. I can't imagine doing like a months worth because we would get a calendar every month and on every day that it's obviously something completely different. And to be able to plan for that, the ingredients said, I know a lot of schools, like there'll be a lot of like kind of pre-made food, a lot of frozen meals. But I've heard like through different grape vines and mini grape vines that darling Perkins and her staff of probably two other people, like they made a lot of stuff homemade. And again, looking back, that was definitely the case. Like there was so much, so much good stuff. Some things that come to mind immediately, you got your classics. You got the, I love the hamburger days, the chicken bun which days, the pizzas were okay. I was never like the bigger pizza person, but hamburger gravy or turkey gravy. Again, there's no way in the world this is pre-made because this is handmade with lots of love and holy smokes. I, I don't think I love that until later. Probably that was probably like a middle school thing, but love those chicken and dumplings they would make. I don't think if you Googled chicken and dumplings, it wouldn't be anywhere close to what they made. But whatever it was that they made was divine. I think I mentioned like chicken bun which is love those. You get your random breakfast for lunch days and like it'd be pancakes. My favorite was French toast. That was always delicious. And again, you can get your main meal and then like two or three sides on top of it. It's just, again, looking back really impressive at how much work they put into it, day in and day out. Like there's no off days. You know, everybody's getting lunch. There's a ton of people had hot lunch back in the day. I don't know what it looks like now, but most of it, most kids did. We had a rule in our house where like we could go through when we get these calendars. And Garrett and I at the time would like we could put our initials down on one day a week that we wanted a cold lunch on one day a week that we wouldn't want. Whatever that main meal was, you know, it could have been that we didn't like it or it just wasn't our favorite. And on that day, mom would make us like a cold lunch, you know, a sack lunch and we would take that and that instead. But for the most part, a lot of kids ate hot lunch. You know, you get your juice or your milk and you go through the line and God forbid you drop your tray and you got to go all the way to the back, top of the shames and the booze you get or even worse like you crack your tray or you jump drop your tray full of food. There's always those memories as well. But I loved it. I remember like the days of like they would make. Sometimes it wasn't even like the main thing they'd make. Darling Perkins was famous for her maple bars and on the spaghetti days. And I don't understand why it was spaghetti days. And there might have been one other day on top of it, but they'd be like homemade maple bars. And you know, the donut part would be homemade and fresh and like the maple frosting or icing was homemade. It's just man. I haven't had that again, probably in 25 years and I can still picture and almost just taste like house soft and like air in fresh. They were well fantastic. Now again, with that said, there was something that I would never even touch and one of them was the name. I remember well, I always get a cold lunch on a date that where they were serving cheese dog zombies. Like why do you name something cheese dog zombies? Now I'm bedding looking back. It was delicious. I mean, it's got cheese in it clearly and there's probably some level hot dog in there. But that was never something I touched. And I remember people would sometimes like take the cheese off the grilled cheese and like you could like roll it into a ball and bounce it and you can get like a super ball bounce out of it or that kind of thing. But I don't know. And looking back, I think we really had it made. And if any was listening that like had lunch with these people, please text me your favorites because I was thinking through and again, the turkey gravy, the hamburger gravy, the chicken and dumplings, any of the classics, the burgers and the bun, which is I loved all those. But I know there was so many more out there that you say the name and I'll be taken right back. Like you can just still taste that stuff. And we were like darling Parkinson's rest in peace. I don't I can't imagine she's still around with us. But she crushed it when she was really, really great. And I mean, I know she's like famous round town for that kind of thing too. But again, man, planning all that out just insane. Like all these ingredients you got to order. Well done on a limited school budget, probably two in the less. All right. Last but not least, Sean's what are you into? All right. Listeners. It's time for hidden passions, wild hobbies and that one thing that you didn't know miles was obsessed with. Buckle up. It's time for Sean's. What are you into? I talk about this with caution because you know, it's a cliche thing where people talk about their fantasy football teams and it's like, no one cares. No one cares about your team. Like everyone's got their own, you know, it's just it's something that's not super relevant. So I'm not going to talk about my team because I haven't drafted yet. So I've talked about it before every year. Our work does a fantasy football league. And there are 10 of us that participate. $100 buy in. So there's a lot on the line. 100 bucks. The way it works. If you win the week, highest total points, no matter who you're playing, you get 25 bucks at the end of it. First place picks up. I was like 500 bucks. Second place is by three hundred and third place is probably a hundred. You probably get money back if you get third place. So there's a lot of line, which is great until it's not until you don't play the right person. And it's just a day full of regret or a week full of regret. And then it's just it's brutal. Right now we're also doing fantasy baseball. At the first time this year, I've ever done it. It's been awesome. I'm so grateful that Travis and Kenzie invited us and it's the group we've got. It's awesome. It's Levi and Katie and Trevor and Haley and Garrett and I. And like I said, Travis and Kenzie. And we don't have any money in the line. But the great thing is with these guys, like there doesn't have to be money in the line because everyone is so competitive. Like it still means so much. We're in the final regular season week. Next week, the playoff starts. Top four teams make it. I'm I'm walking a line and I need a win or else I need a lot of magic to happen. I could use Garrett to win because I'm almost sure. But it's really cool because everyone's so competitive. You don't need money in the line for that to be awesome. And that's honestly, it's probably the case for our work league as well. But it just that hundred bucks that you're buying in with, like it really makes it matter. I mean, a couple of years ago, I won the whole thing and I I bought an attempt to switch with the money that I won. It was it was fantastic or switched to. So I got to win again, because last year didn't go so well. And that's kind of where we're at. The draft if you're listening to this on Friday is tonight. And I don't think I can't imagine if anybody's listening to this. That's also in this league. Let alone someone who's listening to it day off. So I'm going to give away my strategy. And that's that's why I'm talking about this. Because I'm really excited about the strategy. And I'm proud of what I've come up with because usually what I do is I try and level it out. Like I'm responsible. And I'm like I'm not going to spend more than x amount on a player. You know, if I'm not going to spend more than like 30 bucks on a player. And you kind of go through it and you realize like there's some positions that are more important than others. And the way that we do it, we don't do the salary, we don't do the snake draft because that's it's so luck based. And where you're at in that order, we do salary cap based. So how that works is everyone gets, you know, a computer, a lot of 200 imaginary dollars. And you bid on players. Like when if you're turned to nominate somebody, let's say I nominate Jackson Smith and Jigbaugh. And then everyone bids on him. And you, you know, you bid until someone bids most and that person gets it. And they spend that, you know, imaginary amount of money. You've got 200 bucks total and you got to fill up an entire team. So to strategy on like how much to spend per player, do you go big and then kind of waste away on the end part of your team or do you kind of level it out in the past. I've tried to be responsible. I'm like I'm going to spend x amount. I top it out at 30 bucks. So I got a whole bunch of good players and we're very level across the board. Then the work last year. And what did work is I looked it up. And I'm like, who won? So I found out who won. And they're not even actually, they're the one player that's not coming back. They, they moved on, which is perfect because I'm going to steal their strategy. What they did. And I, I remember that night thinking it was like they, they, they, they showed up late and it was all automated by the computer. Turns out it wasn't. It was a great plan. They broke the bank on the top three players in the draft. I, it was B. John Robinson and Jamar Chase. And who else was it last year? There was one other wide receiver or running back hang on. I got, I have it here because I saved all their players, uh, shit, uh, Barkley, so come Barkley. And they broke the bank on these three players. Like they spent literally two, they spent three quarters of their 200 bucks. I'm looking at like a hundred. 50 bucks on their top three players they went all in and it's like holy smokes like now you're like have anything left like your rest your team's gonna suck guess what they didn't they won the whole thing So I'm stealing that plan. I'm not gonna be your response black last year. That was that was boring We're not doing that. So what I did and I was very proud of this is I went back and looked at everybody's draft Like how much everybody spec so I wanted to learn their behavioral habits and their strategies for this And I'm just gonna have to assume they're gonna be the same way this year So what it looked like was again looking at at Kelly who won last year And I think credit to her husband probably Jesse as well They spent 46 and then 53 and then 53 on their top three players I looked at everybody else and Only six out of the remaining nine which would have included myself spent more than 40 on any player at all And again like she got to for 146 153 153 153 Nobody spent more oh hang on back up Only six of the nine spent more than 40 and of that nobody spent more than 44 and most didn't spend more than 41 or 42 So that that means in my mind is like that's like their mental limit That's that is their top bar that they're gonna spend And I think that if I can push it a little bit past that everyone's gonna give up on it and I can steal some players Like that's the goal. I'm gonna I'm gonna try and get three really good guys and then this year's draft It'll be it'll be Gibbs and be John Robinson and Jamar Chase It's gonna be a couple what a couple running backs and a wide receiver And that that fills up a decent chunk of the team I would love for it to be JSN But I think he's you know being a seahawk. He's gonna come in a premium people are gonna want him because of the seahawk Which is awesome. I don't want to pay that premium And I think he's five on the list Pukas Pukas also right up there and some people's top three Too much of a risk he might be suspended not paying for a guy who's suspended for a couple games because I'm going all in And if they're not playing I'm gonna be up a crook and there's a couple by weeks where I think they all of them together And it's gonna suck. But anyways, that's gonna be my plan. I'm gonna try and out bid everybody just enough and just steal these guys Because it worked like she ran away with it last year I mean Kelly was up by like two games at the end of the season and then ran away with the the championship So that's my plan. I say all that to say like I'm excited about my plan and proud of my like research on the behavioral habits of bidding And hoping that remains the same because if not the whole plan is gonna go sideways and I'm gonna be scrambling Just to try and figure something out because like the way fantasy football works if you don't know like you get points Based on how you perform and on your team you have two running backs and two head receivers So I'd be recovered. I'd be covering three of those four spots You have a quarterback who I mean there we have ten people aren't in our draft and there's what some 30 some odd teams I know base. Anyways, there's a lot of extra quarterbacks So there are a diamond dozen like you could spend a ton on the top guy But guess what the next guy probably isn't gonna do that much worse And you can get one pretty cheap, which is actually what Kelly did last year Same thing with kickers defense. They just don't mean anything You can just you can restream those on a week-to-week basis The fourth most that I'll spend is on a tight end and then try and get like the final wide receiver in a flex spot Which is again one of the two but We're gonna gamble on it. We're gonna go big. We're gonna see if I can steal some guys Gonna bid up and see if I can sneak away with it and see how it goes Sorry about that again. I know I know like no one cares about your fantasy team This is more about like how excited I am for the draft and it when it when it comes to be and Our report back if it works or not or like what my draft grade is I won't go into depth about my team. That's boring. This is probably boring as well But it's something I'm excited about and it's a challenge. What do you into and I'm into the draft and I'm hoping my research pays off I'm very proud of it very proud All right. Thank you all for listening. I appreciate it so so much especially when you sit through that kind of thing It means a lot Emmy Gabby sound bite on the way out. I think oh, I recorded it earlier. I think it's gonna be Gabby Our her favorite food right now. Well, she'll tell you about it. Cheesy noodles Not not noodles. We have a silent D in there and an extra in just cheesy noodles Which is actually what we had for dinner tonight and both girls did great All right, that's it. I got all I got go Mariners and we'll talk to you on the flip side. Bye Say it again