WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: Foods We Love AND Foods We Hate (Part I)

We all have our likes and dislikes, even our loves and hates, when it comes to what we eat. We want to share ours with you!

You might be surprised what two long-time cookbook authors can't stand . . . and what they love.

We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, authors of three dozen cookbooks. This is our podcast about our passion for food.

Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:

[00:35] Our one-minute cooking tip: Use a spatula (not tongs) to turn chicken in a skillet.

[03:25] The foods we love AND hate

[24:15] What’s making us happy in food this week? Cantonese fried turnip cake and passata.

Episode Transcript

Bruce (00:01):
hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

mark (00:04):
And I'm Mark Scarborough.
And together, Bruce and I have written36, working on the 37th cookbook.
More about that soon.
But this is our podcast about food andcooking, the main passions in our life.
We've got a one minute cut.
cooking tip.
As always, this is actually the firstof two episodes in which we want to talk
about foods we like and foods we hate.
And we're each going to share our kindof love, hate lists and react to those.

(00:27):
And then we'll tell you what's making us
.... .Bruce: Our one minute cooking tip.
Stop using tongs to turn chicken and meatin a skillet, because if you are like
me, you know that the skin rips, the meatsticks, no matter how much oil you put.

(00:48):
So take a nice, flat, metal spatula,and when your meat has been in that
skillet for a few minutes, and you knowit's going to be good and brown, just
give it a good scrape, one hard scrape.
Pull the chicken skin right off thepot and you've got a beautiful brown
piece of meat without any sticking.
Okay, so the writer's going to add all the caveats now.
This is my job as a writer when we writerecipes is to write all the caveats.

(01:12):
What Bruce is talking about is a notusing a nonstick You cannot use a
metal spatula on a non stick skillet.
And I'm

Bruce (01:22):
gonna interrupt to say, and you wouldn't even need it in a
non stick skillet because there'dbe no sticking to begin with.

mark (01:26):
Well, that could be true.
But in any event, look atyour non stick cookware.
If it is at all scratched, you need tothrow it out, and you need to, uh, I
was gonna say toss it out, but throw itout, whatever, and you need to buy new.
And two, This is the second part of this.
The way it works, as Bruce describes,that you use a metal spatula to pop

(01:50):
it up is you do have to leave, let'ssay the chicken thigh skin side down
long enough for it to form a crust.
You have to be patient.
You can't do this trick.
by putting it in the skillet,leaving there 20 seconds
and then trying to turn it.
People are very impatient with this thing.
Oh, with browning

Bruce (02:08):
meat?
You gotta

mark (02:09):
really brown the hell out of everything.

Bruce (02:12):
When it says brown your beef before you're making stew, brown it.
Don't just gray it.
Don't just look for a littletinge of brown around the edges.
And if you

mark (02:20):
brown it, then the sugars, the natural sugars caramelize,
and that's why you can pop it.
off the skillet without tearing the skinor without tearing the beef or pork or
whatever you have into millions of pieces.
And again, we're talking here about landanimal protein, not about fish, of course.
So, yeah, who does?
But, um, there you go.

(02:42):
Well, well, no, I guesspeople do brown salmon skin.
So there you go.
Stop using tongs, but use metals.
bachelor with those caveats in place.
Before we get to the next part of thispodcast, let me remind you that we do
have a newsletter to sign up for that.
You have to find our website, cookingwith Bruce and Mark or Bruce and mark.
com.
It is under redevelopment,but it's still up and running.

(03:04):
You'll.
Scroll down the landing page and you'llfind a way to subscribe to the newsletter.
It comes out.
I don't know, a couple of timesa month, it's coming out more now
that my leg is fully healed and I'mwalking no longer with a broken leg.
So you can sign up for that on ourwebsite and we certainly appreciate that.
And it is sometimesconnected to this podcast.

(03:25):
Sometimes not.
Okay, we're going to talk aboutwhat foods we love and what foods
we hate, and Bruce is going tostart with his love and his hate.

Bruce (03:38):
I'm going to start with my favorite food of all time,
which has got to be prime ribs.
My mom made prime ribs for every holiday,. , we called the Standing Rib Roast.
Yes, we did, too.
In fact, we called itthe Standing Rib Roast.
It was only as I got older that ifyou go out to a restaurant, a fancy
restaurant, they call it Prime Rib.

(03:58):
Lowry's Prime Rib.
And it was a Standing Rib Roast.
And I always wanted the end piece.
I still want the end piece.
It's the deco on top.
Do you not ever want

mark (04:07):
the end piece?
Never, never.
Why don't you want the end piece?
I don't like it.
It's overcooked.
Oh, but it's charred.
It's actually mooing for me to want it.
I know, but you get all that Caramelizedmeat on the outside and anyway, it doesn't
matter because what I like and I agreewith Bruce I love prime ribs and when
I first met Bruce This was literallyall he would make for dinner party.

(04:27):
Our dinner parties are so muchdifferent now, but when I first met
him Eight years ago, what he made wasprime rib for every single dinner.
And do you remember the dessert?
Always

Bruce (04:36):
chocolate mousse.
And yes,

mark (04:38):
indeed.
And I like them bone in.
I do not want the meat trimmed offthe bone and tied back on, because
really what I want is the bones.

mark (2) (04:47):
I,

mark (04:47):
I gnaw the

Bruce (04:48):
bones.
I don't understand why butchers cutoff the bones and then tie them back on.
I know they think they're making iteasier for you, but it's really not easy.
And it is my favorite food, which isgoing to lead me to my, probably one
of my least favorite foods of all time.
And this is a weird onebecause, You're couching it.
Just say it.
Cooked oysters.

(05:09):
Cooked oysters are gross.
Why

mark (05:10):
are you couching it?
I

Bruce (05:11):
love, because I love oysters, but not cooked.
Once you cook them, ew,

mark (05:16):
ew, they just get gross.
And I totally disagree.
I love fried oysters.
I love oysters Rockefeller.
I love raw oysters.
I do not.
think they get gross.
I love oyster chowder.
I love oysters and I love oysters.
Oyster dressing.
Oh my gosh.
When I was a child, I would make myselfliterally sick on my great aunt Viola.

(05:38):
Yes, I had a great aunt Viola on heroyster dressing, salting crackers,
butter, and canned oysters..
Okay.
So I'm going to pushon and say what I love.
One of the things that I reallylove in life is fried chicken.
And I want to tell you that I amreally picky about fried chicken.
I do not like deep fried chicken, whichmeans I mostly don't like the kind of

(06:00):
fried chicken that you get at chain.
restaurants.
I like pan fried, friedchicken, not in a deep fryer.
However,

Bruce (06:10):
you love the fried chicken in Bansham, which is Korean fried chicken,
which is always a deep fried chicken.
I do,

mark (06:15):
but in general, if you're going to talk about Southern fried
chicken, I like it pan fried.
That is, you put about.
Oh, I don't know.
An inch or two of Crisco.
Yeah, indeed.
Crisco in a skillet.
You heat it to the proper temperature.
You flour coat the chicken.
That's all you do to it.
And then you put it in the hot oil,never crowding the pan and making
sure that temperature remains stable.

(06:37):
That's how I like it.
Turn it over.
I am not a fan of the big deepfryer because it tends to lead
to beer batters and all those.
It's thick batters, and I don't like that.

Bruce (06:47):
Well, growing up, we never had fried chicken the
way you're talking about it.
We lived on something called ChickenDelight, which was a chain in Queens.
Maybe they were in other places.
And they deep fried chicken, andthere wasn't a thick batter on it.
In fact, I don't know that they did much.
The thing about it, it was so crunchyand so delicious, but it got dry.
And I think it got drybecause of the deep frying.

(07:07):
But they also deep fried ribs, and we getbig buckets of Deep fried chicken ribs.
Okay.
I'm pushing on.

mark (07:13):
And I'm going to tell you that one of my hates in life,
is, , get ready, raw onions.
I despise raw onions, I grew upwith my parents ate giant slices
of raw red onion on hamburger.
That's the way you do it.
No, no, I can't do it.
I am a disaster in Serbia and Russiaand places like that where they

(07:34):
just cover the food in raw onions.
I've just seen Mark when we go out to

Bruce (07:37):
eat and he gets salads and he picks out all the red onions.
I do.
He sends back his plate withpiles of red onions on the side.
But you like pickled red onions.
I do.
And you like grilled red onions.
Raw red,

mark (07:47):
raw onions do not like me.
And that's the wholeproblem with the activity.
So, uh, I am not a fan of raw onions.
I grew up with it.
My father.
Eight raw onion slices with anything.
He would put a slice of rawonion on his plate and salt it.
And I,

Bruce (08:04):
I can't deal with it.
Okay, I'll put it this way.
Onions are not a fruit.

mark (08:06):
And my grandmother, his mother, my paternal grandmother, my grandmother
would raise onions, would grow onions,and she would go out in the backyard.
I'm not making this up.
Oh, in rural Oklahoma, she would goout in the backyard, she would pull up
the raw onions, hose them off with agarden hose, and bite into one of them.

Bruce (08:24):
I'm going to repeat, onions are not a fruit.
So, uh, moving on from that.
She took it as a hand fruit.
Okay, it's not a fruit anymore,it's a vegetable, but go on.
Okay.
My next love is something Mark hates,and that is a cinnamon raisin bagel.
Gross.
Just gross.
Oh, no.
Cinnamon raisin bagel isup there with the classics.
It's just as good as a saltbagel and a poppy bagel.

(08:44):
I'm sorry,

mark (08:45):
I'm gonna out jew you.
I, the Christian, is outjewing you right now.
I, cinnamon raisin bagelsare an abomination.

Bruce (08:53):
Oh, when I was growing up, I used to get a cinnamon raisin
bagel with walnut cream cheese.

mark (08:57):
Oh my god.
And have that

Bruce (08:58):
with a nice iced coffee.

mark (09:01):
Just have a slice of cheesecake.
No.

Bruce (09:03):
But see, the thing is, unlike getting, you know, cinnamon
coffee cake, the dough of thebagel is not sweet, right?
It's just the regular old dough.
They just happen to put raisins init and a little bit of cinnamon.
So I don't know, it's not, it'sjust not as sweet as coffee cake
and that's why I kind of like them.
Mmm, gross.
No, they're good.
You

mark (09:20):
might as well have blueberry chocolate chip.
Yeah, they're good.
Peach cobbler bagels, I don'tknow, gross, just gross.

Bruce (09:25):
But what I don't like, now this has nothing to do with bagels.
This is just a flavor that, if it goesin my mouth, I'll wipe my mouth out
like that scene from Big with Tom Hankswhen he was like 16 years old, licorice.
Disgusting.
Black licorice, don't even eat itaround me, it's like secondhand smoke.
It's just the smell of itwhen you're chewing it.
I love

mark (09:44):
licorice.

Bruce (09:45):
Like good and plenty's, my mom used to eat good and plenty's in
the car and I'd have to like stickmy head out the window like a dog.

mark (09:50):
Well maybe part of the reason I love licorice is to say something
else that I love, which is bourbon.
And if you listen to thispodcast you probably know that
I am a grand fan of bourbon.
bourbon.
Um, I must admit that as I age,I can't drink it like I used to.
But, uh, nice bourbon every once ina while is a really beautiful treat.

(10:13):
I don't, uh, I don't necessarilydrink many of the big brands.
I find these little off producersfrom Kentucky and I will only drink
bourbon from Kentucky with one.
Weird exception, and that is I loveBreckenridge bourbon from Colorado,
and I love the caramel notes in it.

(10:34):
So, mostly Kentucky bourbon,but, um, okay, I'll make an
exception for Breckenridge a lot.
Here's something I really hate.
I hate, and this is going to killyou because this is what everybody
loves, I hate too much garlic.
I just hate it.
When people say, oh, inevery recipe I quadruple the
garlic, I'm always like, why?

(10:54):
Why would you do such a thing?
I like garlic, it's not, it doesn't haveanything to do with not liking garlic.
I just don't.
Get this whole thing of five millioncloves of garlic for one chicken breast.
It

Bruce (11:04):
depends what you do with it.
If you really brown it and youget the garlic nice and toasty.
I like, I like a lot of garlic.
It's toasty.
But some dishes need garlic.
They need a lot of garlic.
See,

mark (11:15):
you're taking it to the other.
See, I didn't say I hate garlic.
I know, but.
I hate.
I don't like too much garlic.
I hate it when it is the

Bruce (11:22):
flavor.
Well, but some dishes, it is the flavor.
Well, like Like a lambwith 40 cloves of garlic.

mark (11:27):
But I don't like those dishes.
I never liked chickenwith 40 cloves of garlic.
I don't like too much garlic.
I love garlic with chicken.
A good chicken braise in a skilletdeserves a couple cloves of garlic in it.
People routinely say, Oh, Itriple and quadruple the garlic.
I don't get it, because it becomes justthis dominant, overwhelming flavor.

Bruce (11:46):
Did your grandmothers ever cook with garlic?
No, not really.

mark (11:49):
Yeah, isn't that funny?
I

Bruce (11:50):
mean, is it a

mark (11:50):
generational thing?
No, no grandmother.
I have both of my grandmothers.
One had a garden, and onespent summers on a farm.
And neither of my grandmothersgrew garlic either.

Bruce (12:00):
I mean, and mine didn't.
I know it's not a Jewish thing.
I know a lot of Jews cook with garlic, somy grandmothers just didn't have garlic.
Garlic bagels.
Garlic bagels, but for whatever reason,they never ever cooked with garlic.
Isn't that funny?
Okay.
One of the things I love.
Maple syrup and it's something Ishouldn't eat too much of it is pure
sugar is pure carbs now maple syrupThe thing is I don't love the super

(12:25):
super dark I don't like what they usedto call grade B the stuff that almost
looks like molasses and everybody prizesthe first syrup of the year, right?
The first sap and they boilit down and it's so light in
color and light in flavor.
Fat.
I want a nice, boldsyrup, but not too dark.
I like like an amber ale.
I like my syrup to look like that.

mark (12:46):
Let me say I love maple syrup too.
And let me say we live in NewEngland where so much maple syrup
is produced, although less and less.
It's with climate change.
It's moving more and more to Canada.
But a lot of syrup is stillproduced around us and we're
recording this now in early March.
And just so you know, what they callsugaring season, that's when they're

(13:06):
drawing the sap out of the trees.
Sugaring season is almost over.
And I think people often thinkof maple syrup as a fall thing,
like when the leaves are turning.
No, it's when the sap first starts to run.
And we're just about donein our part of New England.

Bruce (13:19):
I know we're almost out.
I should go find a nice localproducer and get us some new maples.
They're just not

mark (13:24):
the first run.
Vermont stuff's really good.
Oh, it is, yeah.
I do like that Vermont stuff.
Okay, anyway, yes, so I agreewith you on maple syrup.
I believe that a waffle should set sailon a sea of maple syrup on a plate.
But you're

Bruce (13:41):
not going to agree with me on the next one because I cannot stand root beer.
Almost as much as I cannot stand licorice.
Oh my gosh,

mark (13:47):
I love root beer so much.
I will

Bruce (13:49):
let you drink it around me.
secondhand smells thatbother me like the licorice.
Oh, come on.
I'm going to get some licoriceand just eat it around

mark (13:57):
you.
Um, come on.
Secondhand smells.
I guess this bleeds into my love too,because I actually love root beer.
You even made

Bruce (14:05):
your own root beer syrup a few years

mark (14:07):
ago.
I did.
And in fact, in the book we havecoming out this summer, there's
a recipe, my recipe, for smallbatch root beer syrup that you
can add to soda and make your own.
I love root beer more than I can say.
When I was a little kid, wewould go to A& W Root Beer.
This is, oh gosh, this is the early 60s.
So we would go, this is when they wouldcome out on roller skates to your car.

(14:29):
I'm not making this up,this is how old I am.
They come out on roller skates tothe car and put the tray on the
window, and we would order hamburgers.
and root beers and we thoughtit was the finest thing.
I mean, I would sit in the backseatof the car and we'd all order burgers.
And of course I come from thisvery Protestant family and A& W had
the Papa burger, the mama burger,and the baby burger, and we would

(14:50):
literally order based on what we were.
So I got.
The baby burger and mymother got the mama burger.
I know it's ridiculous, butwe followed the rules always.
And we can't rip here.
Well, I loved her.
And

Bruce (15:01):
maybe as a Christian thing, cause my father loved celery
sodas, maybe that's the Jew thing.
I can't stand celery soda.
Sweet celery soda.
Add that to another thing I don't like.

mark (15:13):
Since we're talking about what I hate, and since I agreed with Root
Beer and said I loved it, I'll tell youwhat another thing I hate is sweet tea.
And I am from the South,and I despise sweet tea.
Like with a passion, I do notwant sugar in my iced tea.
Here's a really weird thing, andwhat I want, I say before I say the
weird thing, when I was growing up,my mother made Ice tea every day.

(15:36):
There was always a pitcher ofice tea on the kitchen counter,
and we only drank it with lemon.
My mother tended not to put lemon in it.
The rest, my father and I, we put lemon init, but my mother just drank it as it is.
And here's what's so weird.
So I grew up in the South, and it wasthe mid 60s, and my mother used to

(15:57):
say that Sweet tea, well don't yell atme, that sweet tea was low class, and
that we were a high class southernersand we did not put sugar in our tea,
that's what she used to say, and Iwill tell you when we would go to
restaurants in the south and get iced tea.
It was not sweet.

(16:17):
They would put thesugar down on the table.
Now it seems like sweet teahas taken over the South and
it's all sweet tea everywhere.
I just don't like

Bruce (16:25):
it.
Okay, and here's the thing.
They put sugar on the table and youknow it's a nice ice cold drink.
You put the sugar in and it all fallsto the bottom and it doesn't dissolve.
Well, your mother would've thoughtwe were really low class because
my mother and my grandmother, both.
The only kind of iced teathey made was from the packet.
Oh no.
It was the instant.
Oh no.
Sweet tea.
Oh, no, no, no.
In fact,

mark (16:45):
my mother would in restaurants when I was a kid, my mother
would ask, is the tea brewed?
She would want to know that,and then it would come.
And if someone around us.
put sugar in there.
I said, like, get another table.
My mother would kind of look over atthem and then remark about, Oh my God,
you know, from such low class roots.

(17:06):
I mean, really, seriously, it was a thing.
And I didn't know until Ibecame an adult and moved.
Out of the south andwent back to the south.
The sweet tea had just taken over thewhole landscape and it was everything.
I guess it's just part of my raising.
I just don't like sweet tea.
All right.
And so

Bruce (17:22):
one of the things that I have learned to love as I've
gotten older is smoked salmon.

mark (17:26):
Oh, well, why don't you say what you didn't like?

Bruce (17:28):
So as a child, I would not eat.
Anything that lived in water.
Mm.

mark (17:34):
As a

Bruce (17:34):
child.
Mm-hmm . When

mark (17:35):
I met you and you were in your mid thirties, you when I was still a child.
Really, it was anythingin that lived in water.
It was my

Bruce (17:41):
identity.
I, it was like I threwthis out in front of me.
If I'd go out to eat, I don't,you know, please tell your server
if you have any food issues.
I don't eat anything that lived in water.
So . It was so weird.
So weird.
And my, yet my family.
ate all of it.
My family ate smoked salmon and whitefish salad and even lobster and shrimp.

(18:02):
We weren't koshers.
My family ate all that stuff.
And now I love it.
And I think back to all those years,all those beautiful, we called it
appetizing smoked fish dinners, allthose dinners with the platters.
I love it.
You call smoked

mark (18:17):
fish dinners appetizing, or you go to the appetizing store.

Bruce (18:20):
Yeah.
The appetizing store.
Okay.
Go on.
And, and All those years of noteating the lox, and not eating the
smoked salmon, and the whitefish,and the herring, and oh, I'm glad
I ate it now, but I really regret.

mark (18:32):
Not too long after we moved in together, uh, Bruce's paternal grandmother
died, and I went to the shiva, I wentto the funeral, and then the shiva.
Afterwards, at, at, uh, the funeralat the lunch that was served.
Of course, it was appetizing.
Of course.
And I had for the first time, sable.
It's a deep water, very oily,white fish sable on a salt bagel.

(18:56):
And I thought to myself, I havemoved in with the right family.
What is this

Bruce (19:01):
smoked sable?

mark (19:03):
thing that I'm having.
I love smoked salmon.
I love all that stuff.
I love, Bruce has taught meto love eggs, lox, and onions.
We fry it all together in a skillet.
I, I, I can't get enough smoked salmon.
Well,

Bruce (19:17):
you taught me to eat fish, so I thank you for that.

mark (19:19):
Sure.
Okay.
Sure.

Bruce (19:20):
And one more thing, I can't stand.
It's another beverage, andit's in the sort of category
of licorice and root beer.
It's Amaro's, and it's those.
Bitter, bitter aperitifsafter dinner, you drink

mark (19:34):
them.
There's a theme here, licorice root

Bruce (19:36):
beer, Amaro, that I don't like.
Yeah, I don't care for them,but I like bitter things.
So, there's just some, there's gottabe one herbal ingredient in all
of them that's just getting to me.

mark (19:45):
I, Amaro, I have to admit, is a, is a take it or leave it thing with me.
I mean, I'll drink it ifsomebody offers it to me, but
I won't seek it out on my own.
It, it's a little bittoo astringent for me.
Um, I'd rather have an espressoafter dinner than an Amaro,
but I know those aren't.
Mutually exclusive, but Iwon't necessarily turn down

Bruce (20:08):
an

mark (20:08):
Amaro,
but, um, that's thebitterness that I want.
There's something about Amaro that's gota sweet edge despite the bitterness that
I kind of, that's my take it or leave it.
See, I've got a theme too about sweetness.
So, okay, but, but, given thatsweetness, here's something that I love.
Okay.
I love fudge.
I do love fudge in almostall of its incarnations.

(20:32):
I'm less excited about whitechocolate fudges, but I do love fudge.
Bruce and I have this theory thatwhen you go into any tourist town,
Any tourist town, Algonquit, Maine,Estes Park, Colorado, I don't care,
any tourist centered town, thatthe real money must be in fudge.
That's where the lines are.
It's where the, there'salways a fudge shop, so.
And there's always a line.

(20:52):
The real money's gotta be in fudge.
When

Bruce (20:54):
fudge is made well, it's creamy and smooth and fabulous.
It's crazy.
I agree with you.
But.
Too often the fudge is grainy.
No.
And it's not good fudge.

mark (21:04):
No, no it's not.
And or it's been sitting too longand it hasn't moved outta the cave.
So it's dried

Bruce (21:09):
out on the edges and No, no,

mark (21:11):
no, no, no.
It has to be super creamy.
And the thing about fudge isI can eat a little bit of it,
but I can't eat very much.

Bruce (21:17):
Well, last December when we were in Missouri, we had, uh, Mark's mom
died and we had to drive to Oklahoma.
We, oh my God,

mark (21:24):
you're gonna tell this story

Bruce (21:26):
Bucky's.
Now, I had never been to a.
Bucky's before.
Okay.
Bucky's is what I thought you were goingto tell, but have to tell that now.
So Bucky's Bucky's is this roadstop gas station with anybody

mark (21:39):
in North America, except you knows what I didn't

Bruce (21:41):
know it was.
And they had a fudge bar with abouta hundred flavors of fudge, including
banana pudding fudge, where theyfold it in bits of Nilla wafers
and dried bananas into their fudge.
And I don't want stuff in my fudge.

mark (21:54):
So if you're traveling down the interstate, laterally northeast
to southwest across Missouri, youwill call through, I'm not making
this up, the town of Uranus.
And the

Bruce (22:06):
best fudge comes from Uranus.
And all their billboards say.

mark (22:09):
Best fudge comes from Uranus and we'll have big fun in Uranus Uranus

Bruce (22:14):
fudge factory,

mark (22:15):
right?
And it's amazing whatyou can find in Uranus.
And it's a whole big trip

Bruce (22:21):
joint behind Uranus.
Of

mark (22:22):
course there is.
There Okay.
So I do love fudge, but I did not getany fudge from Uranus, nor did I get any.
fudge from Bucky's, but I dolove really well made fudge.
And here's my final one.
I get the last one and it's, you'regoing to hear a theme here with me.
Uh, something that I hate.
I hate sweet cornbread.
I despise cornbread that tastes like cake.

(22:44):
When I grew up, my mother did not.
put sugar in cornbread.
Again, I grew up a Southerner and mymother did not put sugar in cornbread.
She thought that was low class.
Oh,

Bruce (22:56):
just like the sweet tea

mark (22:57):
neck to be a crash.
He thought that was part of my dad'sfamily, which were low class rural people.
My mother did not put sugar in mygrandmother, my mother's mother
did not put sugar in cornbreadbecause the corn is naturally sweet.
So what do you have to put sugar in it?

Bruce (23:13):
Well, you need a little bit of sugar for the structure, right?
Because you want that nice crumb to it.
So you need a little sugar, but not much.

mark (23:20):
Oh, now it's a whole different thing.
My grandmother made cornbread.
What we call corn pone, which meansshe fried the batter in a skillet.
Oh, yum.
Um, but mother made cornbread andmaybe mother put a little sugar in it.
But I just, when I bite into itand it tastes like cake at barbecue
joints, I just don't get it.

(23:41):
I totally don't get it.
Um, I want it.
taste corn, cornbread.
I don't want to just taste sure.
Okay.
Well, there's our whole list of what welike and what we hate and a little bit
self indulgent, but we're going to do thisagain in the next episode of the podcast.
So what can I say?
Hey, just to remindyou, we have a Facebook.
group called Cooking with Bruceand Mark, and we would love to

(24:02):
know what you love and hate.
So why don't you go out to thatFacebook group, Cooking with Bruce
and Mark, and tell us what you loveor what you hate or if you agree
with us on any of these items.
Okay.
Up next, as is traditional, what'smaking us happy in food this

(24:24):
... Bruce: called turnip cake.
Oh, right.
And there's actually no turnips in it.
It's made from grated daikon radish.
Right, right.
You squeeze the moisture out of theradish and you fry up dried shrimp and
Chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms.
And then you.
Stir fry up the radishthings until they're dry.

(24:44):
Then you add some stock and a slurrymixture of rice powder and cornstarch.
It's thick and pasty.
It's a lot of steps here becausethen you have to put it in an
oiled pan and steam it and thenyou cool it and cut it and fry it.
And why do you like this so much?

Bruce (24:59):
Because I've always loved it but I made it for the first
time for a dinner party last night.
And it is a lot of work and it gives He

mark (25:07):
served it with pickled celery and a

Bruce (25:09):
sweet Soy bean, a sweet bean paste with chili crisp and the
celery was pickled with star anise.
It was delicious.
It was just as good as I've everhad it in any dim sum house.
Oh, not to pat yourself on the

mark (25:23):
back, okay.
I'm good at what I do.
All right, then.
I tell you what's making me happyin food this week, and that is
something that we've probably talkedabout before, and that is mootie.
Passata.
If you don't know about passata,passata is essentially the
true Italian tomato sauce.
Mutti brand is some of thebest there possibly is.
And just to tell, cue you in onthis, you can find Mutti brand

(25:44):
passata, P A S S A T A, passata.
You can find it At world marketand sometimes at home goods
for cheap, believe it or not.
It is still more expensive than thecanned stuff from the supermarket.
But Bruce has been making a lot of passatastews this winter, always with fish.
So, a nice piece of cod or a mahi mahior something inside this deep, complex

(26:11):
tomato sauce with fennel and onions.
It braises for just a few minuteson the stovetop, and we have been
eating that like crazy this winteras my leg healed, and I love it.
Okay, that's the podcast for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for being part of this podcast.
We certainly appreciate yourbeing with us on this journey
and spending your time with us.

Bruce (26:32):
And as Mark said, go to our Facebook group, Cooking with Bruce and
Mark, and tell us what you love and hate.
But also, every week we tell youwhat's making us happy in food, so tell
us what's making you happy in food.
There will be a question there every week.
You'll see a post that says, What'smaking you happy in food this week?
Let us know, because we wantto know what you like in food
on cooking with Bruce and Mark.