The Musical Innertube - Volume 2, Number 139 - Joy Stocke Returns!

JOHN

Today on the Musical Innertube, our guest is the great guest of the podcast, that beautiful human being, Joy Stocke - poet, fiction writer, essayist, memoirist, consultant, and publisher, and also a world class chef. She's co-founder and editor at Tree of Life Consulting and Publishing. (And I want that T-shirt.)  And for many years, she co-helmed the remarkable and beloved online cultural publication Wild River Review. Among her books are a travel memoir, Anatolian Days and Nights, and a splendid, delicious cookbook, Tree of Life, Turkish Home Cooking, into which we will be delving today. You could not have a better guide to cooking, writing, almost anything. Welcome back to the Musical Innertube, You Beautiful human being. Joy Stocke.

JOY

Thank you. It's my pleasure, pleasure, pleasure.

JOHN

Joy, here's a trick question. What was the last thing that you cooked that you'd never cooked before?

JOY

This is funny. You know, I've been a private chef for a lovely couple for the last few months, and they are a meat-and-potatoes people. I am pretty much a vegetarian now. I cook any kind of meat. But I had never made a roast tenderloin before. Ever.

JOHN

Ohh.

JOY

And almost every cook will be, “What are you talking about? You know, you've been writing recipes!”  And so I got a sous vide machine, and I sous-vided the tenderloin so I just had to sear it in a pan. I was so afraid of getting it too cooked, not enough cooked, and so, there's something I never cooked before. And I bet if you talk to a lot of chefs, there'll be something so common. You'll be surprised.

JOHN

Yeah, I've never cooked one before. Have you ever done a tenderloin, Don?

DON

No, but my wife and my son have both done tenderloins in the sous vide. In fact, my wife got a sous vide like you did specifically to cook a tenderloin. And it does a great job. And that's something that a lot of people don't know about either is that a lot of chefs are starting to use sous vides as well. It's a big  - you get a big pan, and you fill it full of water, and then the sous vide is a like a huge rod that heats up, and you put it in the pan and lock it to the pan. And the electronics in the top, you tell it how warm you want the water to be. And it heats up the water, and then you put the food in a plastic bag in that water, and it heats it exactly right. And the tenderloin comes out perfect every time.

JOY

Yeah, and you can season - what I love about the sous vide, because now I use it, and it makes a beautiful salmon too. You can control the temperature perfectly. And you can season the meat. So what I've been doing, lamb chops in it, like a rack of lamb. And I rub the lamb with a paste of preserved lemon, and thyme, and you seal them the bag and then that flavor goes into the meat. So you can season your meat that way. And people think you've done something genius, like.  I can bring. It to your house, John. You can try it.

JOHN

Well, yes, I'd love to try it. I haven't had a tenderloin of beef since 19??. OK, so we're going to go into your Turkish cookbook today. And in your Turkish cookbook, on page 110, we find a recipe for Russian potato salad. Now, first of all, you are telling us why a recipe for Russian potato salad should be in a Turkish cookbook. What's the story behind that?

JOY

What I was always interested in, and I want to commend also my writing partner Angie Brenner, because I co-wrote this book, I had a traveling companion throughout all these adventures. What we were always interested in about the country, which I call Anatolia, is that it, and especially Istanbul, was such a melting pot, and a nexus for the Middle and Near East. And it was a home particularly, really up through World War One, of - everybody came there, and it was a real trading hub, because you could get to the Black Sea, the Crimean, etcetera. When the Bolsheviks took over in Russia, a lot of the wealthy Russians - no difference than today, actually - a lot of the wealthy, which were called, they were called White Russians, came to Turkey, came to Istanbul. They settled on the European side of the Bosphorus, and they brought their recipes, and this recipe is a traditional Russian dish, and it became a classic in particularly fancy restaurants, and then it traveled from there, obviously. My Eastern European grandma used to make it when I was a kid, and it's really delicious. So that's why we included it.

JOHN

Lucky you. Uh, what makes it Russian? What is the ingredient or the treatment that makes it Russian specifically?

JOY

You know I can't tell you. I would, if I looked at it, I would say, and I'm looking at the recipe right now, it's kind of, of the area, I would say, if we want to say Russian, I would say, Eastern European, because it's got dill, which is really classic in Eastern European cooking, and it's got pickle. Right? So, and paprika, you know, you associate Hungary with paprika. Really.  I'm looking at it right now. I think it was one of these mashups, that, you know, was made famous  by the White Russians, so to speak. So.

JOHN

I have to say, I made this. This is the reason, you know, many years ago we went to a particular event that you were throwing, and it was sort of a potluck, and I brought a huge bowl of this, which disappeared in about 15 minutes! And I thought to myself, I have no business making this because, one I've never made potato salad. Two, I don't like potato salad for the most part. Most potato salad is bland. You know the potato salad you run into. You know, most of it is bland. I don't really like mayonnaise. Uh, and there's something about the combination of the mayonnaise and large pieces of potato that I don't like. That's just me. So, I have to say this was really different, and I think that's right that the Eastern European aspect of it, that the pickle relish. So first of all, let's just go down the, the list, I think. So for this -

DON

Can I say something before we go down the list, John?

JOHN

Sure!

DON

Because I've read the list. You sent us this recipe yesterday, before we started taping. And I'm looking at this and I'll tell you. One of the things that flashed in my head is that it has carrots. It has peas, along with the potatoes and the pickles and everything, and I'm thinking this looks like it could be, like, Russian Stew with mayonnaise in. It. Basically, you know, I mean. It has everything but meat. Seriously, that would go into a stew. I mean it to me it looks - am I way off on that, Joy?

JOY

No, you're not. And remember, meat, the way we know, meat or how it's been sort of lionized in our culture. Meat wasn't eaten to the degree we're talking about, so....

JOHN

No. Expensive.

JOY

Yeah, and even if you were, I would, they would probably serve this with smoked fish of some sort as opposed to meat. So this is a pretty hearty salad. It's got eggs in it. You could eat it as a main dish, almost.

JOHN

Sure you could. So I did a couple of little, tiny tweaks. Tiny, tiny.

JOY

Love it!

JOHN

So, first of all, OK, for the dressing we had the mayonnaise. 2 tablespoons of sweet pickle relish. I think that makes a huge difference. Chopped scallions, which is a little tiny different, I think a lot of people just bung onions in a potato salad. And of course, I love dill. Fresh dill on anything. Ohh yeah, we have kosher salt which you explained last time about why kosher salt's a good thing. We have pepper. And then as Don said, carrots, Yukon Gold potatoes, I mean, come on. that's - I live on those things. That's wonderful. Frozen peas. Four large hard boiled eggs peeled. One tablespoon chopped dill, so that's for the salad itself. The first dill was for the dressing. And then, uh, paprika. So the only thing I did, I chopped the potatoes after they were cooked, I chopped them into little bitty pieces, right? Not so that they crumbled and lost their, there were still pieces of cooked potato, but not big old pieces. Ah, because I want to see what that would do for the, you know, for the for the bulk of the thing. And I snuck a little bit of, just a little tiny bit of mustard in there, just a little tiny bit, you know? Is that OK? Did I kill it by putting the mustard in?

JOY

You killed it by making a delicious potato salad.

DON

There you go, John.

JOHN

Thank you. You're nice! No, I just, it was such a terra incognita for me, you know, cause to me potato salad, you go to parties, and a lot of the time it, you could tell it was made in 2 minutes. This one's not going to be made in 2 minutes. It's it. It takes some preparation and you have to, you know, make the eggs. But there's parts of it that could be made the day before, you know. Chop the carrots the night before, the scallions, put them on water. You know, drain them. You could do that.

DON

Can I ask a question? Joy. Four large, hard boiled eggs, peeled. Do you really have to tell people to get the shells off the damned eggs?

JOY

No, this is really interesting about writing recipes. There's so many little details that, if a recipe is well done, you would never know. And you have to put every single detail, even if it seems silly. That that's part of the etiquette. To me, recipes are not exactly poetry, but kind of. You really need the instruction. You need to have it, so, as much - and this is why, when you read a badly written cookbook, you won't see that kind of thing. And I know it seems ridiculous, but somebody's going to catch you on it.

DON

The food police.

JOY

The food police!  Yeah, I mean, I give everybody, I say take a dish you really love, like your tomato sauce that I love, John, that that yellow (sauce).

JOHN

Ohh thank you.

JOY

Write it into a recipe. They're not as easy to write as you think!

JOHN

Yeah. And and sometimes you feel the need to explain why something's in there. Like, you know, I feel the need to explain why the vinegar is in there, you know?

JOY

But but that would be nice, because that's why there are head notes.  Do you guys read head notes in cookbooks? ‘Cause I love reading the head notes. They tell you a lot.

JOHN

They're my favorite part of your book.

JOY

Ohh thank you.

JOHN

Yeah, this is a great cookbook guys. You should really get it, because Joy talks about where this dish came from. This particular Russian potato salad. And she says serve alongside minted lamb burgers, page177.  Or toss in a cup of chickpeas to make a hearty main dish salad. I almost did that. I almost said, hey, I'll just put in the cup of chickpeas. What could be bad, you know?

JOY

That's my catch all for everything. Throw in some chickpeas it'll....and....

JOHN

And run like hell.

JOY

Run like hell, ‘cause I'm telling people who don't like chickpeas to throw them in, like, “We don't like chickpeas!”

JOHN

I mean of what? You know, I've had successes and I've had failures as a chef. We all have. I mean, having failures teaches you for next time. It's unfortunate, but it's important to have failures. But this I think this went away faster than anything I'd ever cooked. You know, people had some and then they had some more, you know? And it went away.

JOY

Yeah, we you know what you said that that I really liked that you chopped the potatoes very evenly and smaller. That's a, that's a good technique to chop ingredients similar in size. Because they absorb particularly potatoes that’ll absorb the dressing better. You've got more little surfaces to absorb the dressing, a large - you know when you get a potato salt, sometimes there's big chunks and there's the mayonnaise and it's bland because the potatoes aren't absorbing any flavor.

DON

Sure. And I also hate a potato salad where you have to take your fork and cut the potatoes down to bite size. If somebody's already done that for you, that that's maybe a little more enjoyable in the eating.

JOHN

I had never thought of that. I just wanted them to be smaller, but I liked it for the same reason, Don, that that you bite into a potato that's cold. And it's covered with mayonnaise, which one already hates, if one is me. It's not especially fun, especially if there's big chunks of raw onion in there. See here, I think Joy has hit upon it. You know that you want to, you want to chop scallions. You know that's – Joy, talk about that, because that's an interesting...

JOY

Yeah. Well, the original recipe, like when you see really old ones, they would go out and get the wild onions from the yard, you know, right?  And they'd have the dill, they'd have the onions. they might even have the carrots. And, you know, they have chickens. They, like, this is simple food. This is not fancy food. And the peas elevate it, you know, to something in that era of more special. But that's what the scallions, you know come from. And I love the flavor of a scallion. It's - they're, sharper, there's - you could – they're picante. And the thing is with onions, have you guys noticed - but you also, some onions taste really good. Some onions don't even taste that good, you know?

DON

Yeah. The big yellow ones, which are the ones that most cookbooks steer you towards - yeah, I think maybe, and perhaps the way they're grown -  because again, we learn that food suppliers find out that something is very popular and grow a lot of it right away, and sometimes they just breed all the all the flavor out of it in order to meet the demand. And I think maybe that happened with the yellow onions.

JOHN

I mean, they should taste good. I mean, a good yellow onion is a thing of beauty, if you can come upon one. But I think Don's got a point there is that, you know, they're sort of like a, you know, the Plymouth Valiant of the 1960s. You know, you're just - yeah, there's so many of them. But they should have more flavor to them. I'm not fond of, you know, everybody throws red onions into everything now, you know, like red onions in guacamole, which I object to, but maybe that's just me. They add some crunch. They certainly do add crunch and and what do you think, Joy, about the red onion?

JOY

Well, I like a red onion, but I will say they can be a little sharp and, so, you can soak your onions in water to get some of the sharpness out of it. I must say I don't like onions in my guacamole at.

DON

Well, I would think that something like red onions, especially in a guacamole, or maybe in a dressing like this, that you're putting in a potato salad, would tend to overpower all the other ingredients in them.

JOY

That's good point. You know, that's the thing about this recipe. You know, it's funny that you pick this, cause the balance is so good. That's another thing I really, like, I go to bed and read cookbooks;  when I'm stressed out, I read cookbooks because there's a solution in your head. You've made it. You never have to make it and...but this recipe is super well balanced, and I wonder if that's why it took off the way it did. Know what I mean? Because...it's really, and the other little thing, you know, peppers came from the new world. That's what's so fascinating. You think of the Aleppo pepper and all these wonderful Middle Eastern and Near Eastern peppers in food, and that all came from the Colombian exchange. You know, I find this really interesting that, you know, paprika, you know, this is really a melting pot of a of a recipe in many ways. And the pickle relish - did you guys have pickle relish on your hot dogs when you were kids? Were you a pickle relish guy?

JOHN

All the time!

DON

Still do. Still do.

JOHN

We had pickle relish on hot dogs, but not on hamburgers. You know pickle relish....

DON

We had, yeah, we had regular pickles on hamburgers, regular, you know dill or bread and butter. Yeah, but also pickle relish... now again, this is - my mom, when we were kids, she would make tuna salad. So she would take tuna fish, put it in a bowl, smother it in mayonnaise and pickle relish. And that was tuna salad. So after I went to college, I came back and she said would you make me a tuna sandwich? And I said sure. And I got the tuna out and I got the mayonnaise. She said, “Just a little mayonnaise.” She said, “The mayonnaise, you know, just washes out the tuna.” So somewhere between me leaving, you know, after high school graduation and me going to college, in that couple of years, she lost her taste for mayonnaise, or wanted a little more of the tuna taste to come out. But I thought that was funny because, when we had tuna salad sandwiches when I was a kid, it was like mayonnaise with a little tuna in it, you know that's kind of how...

JOHN

Oh my God.

DON

...it went. And so it was funny that she changed her mind on that, because she wanted the tuna flavor a little more to come out. But we yeah put pickle relish in that, and when you stop to think of it, Tartar sauce for fish is basically just mayonnaise and pickle relish, right? And maybe a little....

JOY

Basically I I remember being a kid in the Midwest and growing up Catholic. We didn't eat meat on Fridays and my mom would get fish sticks. And, oh my God, we loved fish sticks. And you got this little pack of basically pickle relish that you mix with mayonnaise so you could make “homemade” tartar sauce.

JOHN

Tartar sauce.

JOY

We were really living the dream, I'll tell you.

JOHN

Well, speaking of living the dream, I think we should go to our second recipe, which Joy brought in. And I tell you, Joy, it takes chutzpah to bring to a podcast on cooking what is essentially a recipe for Rice a Roni. Or at least that's what you said. It's not really- talk about this dish because it's got this amazing history, and so many of us grew up on it.

JOY

So, “Rice-a-Roni, The San Francisco...”

JOHN

“...Francisco treat.” Yeah. There you go.

JOY

Thank you.

DON

Thank you very much. Now that's going to be running through my head for the rest of the day. Thanks for the ear worm!

JOY

Hey everybody! Sing along with the bouncing ball! I love this recipe. I actually I really we really did grow up on Rice-A-Roni. My mom was a mom of the 60s who tried every new fangled thing that came along. And if anybody is in this remembers, you can look up the commercial. But it was, it was - you guys grew up in California, but California was the. golden dream for us Midwesterners. And San Francisco. And it was a cable car. So, so,the marketers did a great job on romanticizing this very simple Armenian rice and basically spaghetti pilaf. But what's - it's got an interesting past, and again, we go back to Turkey. Now we're on the Persian border of Turkey there, and the Armenians, the Armenian border. Armenia spilled into, was part of eastern Turkey. There's a town there called Van, or Wan, as it's pronounced, the “V” is not pronounced, and that was the center of, Mount Ararat was the center of the Armenian culture when things were happening everywhere, and the Kemal Ataturk was taking over, Turkey was becoming a Republic. (It) was the end of the Ottoman Empire, and the Armenians were expelled from Turkey. And so, this is an Armenian recipe, and so, a lot of Armenians came to San Francisco. There was an Armenian community in Northern California, and in fact, some of the vineyards, I can't remember the names of them, were founded by Armenians too. So one of the refugees was a woman named Pailadzo Captanian, and she settled there, and she brought this classic recipe of the of the Near East, and it is simply rice and pasta cooked in butter with chicken broth into a pilaf, and then it would be served, usually they'd serve it with kebabs or something like this and this would be on the table almost every night. This was really a classic.

JOHN

Oh yeah.

JOY

Well, she teamed up with a guy, her neighbors, Tom and Lois DeDomenico. He happened to own a pasta company. And so she had baked this dish. And they, you know, can you imagine sitting together over some wine and, you know, probably in a jug that you got somewhere, and “why don't we sell this?” And they started making it and packaging it for sale. And that became Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat. And as every household of the 60s had this on their table, and it's in existence, you can go into your store now and buy it. And it's not bad as a convenience food, but simple, easy, simply easy to make. And I think it's delicious.

JOHN

And is this better than the stuff in the box, do you think?

JOY

All right, so I'm going to be a kid of the 60s now. Of course, it's better than the stuff in the box, but from a nostalgia point of view, the over-salted, over-monosodium glutamated stuff is great, you know.

JOHN

I have to say that the thing I remember most about Rice-A-Roni, which we had all the time, is the slight after taste.

JOY

Yeah, the MSG kicking in, yeah.

JOHN

I mean, it's still around, it's still around. I think it's a Quaker Oats product. I think they still make it, I'm sure a lot of people, yeah, you know several times a week.

JOY

And just remember, it will last into Armageddon, so...

DON

That's true! That's true! That's true, if you're in your underground bunker, you probably got several boxes surrounding you. Even some cases there. I, you know, I do, it is similar, what John was saying, to, like, Kraft macaroni and cheese. That's  another one that we all grew up on as kids. And then you become an adult and somebody serves you mac and cheese at a potluck, or whatever, and they've made it. They've boiled the macaroni, they've melted the cheese, and then they put a crust on top of it. And that was for me the end of my innocence, if you will, as far as macaroni and cheese. I went to somebody's house and they had, you know, crust on top of the macaroni and cheese. And it was like, wow, that added a whole new level of flavor that I had never experienced in my mushy bowl of macaroni and cheese. Kraft macaroni and cheese, when I was a kid. So I think your version of Rice-A-Roni may be similar to that in the sense that, it's not, you know, not only not heavily processed, but maybe there's a little more freshness to it or a little, a little twist in it that that you couldn't get in the box.

JOHN

Yeah, I love the fact, once again, that if we would like a nicely balanced vegetarian dish with complete protein, we can just get ourselves some cooked chickpeas and add it to it, once it's finished, right, you know, I see that you...

JOY

Yep!

JOHN

Are there any, you know, are there any parts of cooking this that you want to be careful about?  Take us through, I mean, you know, the, when you cook it, is it the kind of thing you could sort of cook it with half attention or do you need to be a little bit careful with it?

JOY

So that's what's interesting about simple recipes. It's like we were talking about earlier with a tenderloin, right? It's pretty simple, but this recipe, I'll read the ingredients.

JOHN

Yes. Please.

JOY

It's butter, we have in our recipe angel hair or thin spaghetti, but you can use any spaghetti in this, and then basmati rice because I like it. You can use any rice too. Chicken stock or water or vegetable stock and salt. So it's real simple, right? You can always have this on hand. The key is when you're sauteing, what makes it a pilaf is you saute the pasta, you give it a nutty flavor. You can burn it in a second. If you're not watching it and stirring it, you can burn it. And I've done it. So, it's a great question and it requires just that little bit of care. Just make sure not to burn the vermicelli and then the rest, you time it, and you can make it ahead and there it is, right? You know, you can do all kinds of things with this. You can add the chickpeas. I like to top it with parsley. But you could put anything, cilantro on top you could...

JOHN

I love it. I love cilantro. I mean, I know a lot of people, I know a lot of people have that genetic mutation where cilantro tastes like soap. And I just have to say I remember the first time I ever tasted it. I still remember it. And I said, what is this? Yeah, I just. It was so beautiful. So that's a beautiful thing. And by the way, I just want to point out that, when you say medium heat, can you talk about medium heat? Cause I think medium heat is the hero in a lot of cooking. You know that a lot of us cook at too high a level. Can you talk a little bit about that because I see that, you know, melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat, which you see in so many recipes, but it's absolutely, it's absolutely essential.

JOY

Yeah, you know, we, and myself included, tend to cook at too high of a temperature. And again, that's a time element, right? And, look over medium, medium-low even, for this medium's fine. You risk, less risk of burning and it's just patience, and I think we're all talking about food here, listening to you two, it's a sensual pleasure that the preparation should be, in my mind, a sensual pleasure. Whatever, even if you're just boiling water, you know that we're not supposed to watch a pot. But I do. And those little bubbles come. So that's the reason for medium. All you need to do is turn away on a higher heat and you burnt it and you got to start over.

JOHN

That moment when the butter foams, which you point out here, that's when, you know, you add the spaghetti and lower the heat. That moment when the butter foams is such a beautiful, delicate moment because you know you're there. You know, if it's at really high heat, the butter goes straight to brown, you know, that's, I mean, again, the notion of patience, being part of even a basic dish like this is very moving.

JOY

I actually think the simpler the dish, the more we should put thought into it. You know, obviously not boil water, put it in a cup to make tea, but then you've got the tea, right? And then I just, I think in a world that we're in, which we don't have a lot of control. And that's ever thus, it's not like we're all of a sudden in a world in which we don't have a lot of control. I think that's true for the human race, so to speak. That taking this time and following this and doing it this way, you have control and then you create something beautiful and then you eat it, you know, it's the pleasure is all the way through the process and then to dining, and honestly, whether you're blessed enough to be in community or you're by yourself. Because really, even when we're by ourselves, we're never fully by ourselves, there’s...

DON

Sure. And it's that old: it's not the destination, it's the journey part of it.

JOY

Always, always. And that's the beauty about food, because we can, and that's why I take cookbooks to bed. You know, as I said, we all go through periods in our life where they're challenging and that's the human condition. But I'd go to bed and I read my recipes and I've just made an amazing dinner and my kitchen is perfectly clean - and John knows from following my Instagram feed every once in a while I will post the aftermath of my cheffing. And, when you get a beautiful meal, and any of us cook, we know what's in the kitchen behind there. Unless we have an assistant Dobby the House Elf or something following us around.

JOHN

Yes, yes. And by the way, Joy Stocke's Instagram feed, folks, is one to follow because whether she's cooking, whether she's going to literary events, whether she's with family, it's, you know, it's such a trip. And I agree with you. I mean the best, to me, the best dishes are the ones that are made in a single pot. You know, because you haven't destroyed the kitchen, which I usually do. Right, Don? I mean, you know, I turn around and go where do I live?

DON

Somewhere in the middle of that mess over there!

JOHN

Where do I lie down so I can sleep? I mean, wow.

DON

I want to say two things, Joy, the connection to Joy's Instagram is if you go on our website and go to her biography down at the bottom there'll be a link to her Instagram feed. The other thing I want to specifically ask something about the, the getting the butter foamy and adding spaghetti. I know in a lot of rice dishes now they would like you before you add the water to get the rice a little toasty and they advise you to put the butter in and put the rice in and get a little toasty and then put the water in. This has you do that with the spaghetti, as well as the rice, and I know in spaghetti recipes all the time, it's just throw it in the boiling water, you know.

JOY

Yeah, right.

DON

You don't have you do anything with the spaghetti before you boil it up. So what? What is the value in toasting the spaghetti a little bit? And would you do that in other dishes?

JOY

You know what? While we're talking, I'm going to try it with something. I'm going to try to do a spaghetti dish where I do this in the butter, then I add boiling water and cook it. I'll just see what it does. What this does is, you know, spaghetti's got starch on, you know it's a carbohydrate, it's starch, and it toasts it caramelizes it a little bit and it gives it a beautiful, beautiful flavor, you know. And it also if you think about it if it's rice and pasta and you just boil, add boiled pasta to it, it's kind of unattractive. With this, you know you've got, you know....

JOHN

Timpane Family Surprise is what it is!

JOY

It’s, like, we grew up with Midwestern families, right? Was like that white stuff. The white potato with the white fish with something else. You're like, OK, mom, do we have to? Here, have some white sauce on it? I'm not gonna.

JOHN

I wanna hear what what happens there, Joy, when you do that.

JOY

I have an assignment for anybody who's listening. This could be kind of fun, but for you too, particularly. Take a recipe you really love and write the recipe for us. Like, let's get a thing on the website where we have some of our recipes, but write it for me because I'd love your tomato recipe. Really that, that was delicious. And Don, I'm sure you have this, as you were talking about it. Your brownies!  But you can’t give your recipe.

DON

Yeah, well, now I can find it. Yeah, it's my wife's recipe. So, yeah, it's hanging around on some computer somewhere. If can find it, yeah, and put in the brownies. Or, you know, I could do a hot dog. You know, you boil it up, you put the relish on it.

JOHN

And run like hell.

JOY

Wow! OK. Yeah, that sounds delicious. Oh, it's funny. Why don't you write your hot dog recipe? Actually, that sounds fun. What kind of bun? What kind of hot dog? What kind of relish? I'm sorry, I was rather callous about that. I now want your hot dog.

DON

Well, the only thing I would say about a hot dog seriously is I get the beef ones. Because the the other ones, I probably, I mean I know that there are some other ones that are mixture of pork and beef, but the beef ones are the only ones - you know they have all of the slogans, you know, “they plump when you cook them” and stuff like that. But the beef ones seem to hold a shape and a taste a lot better than the other hot dogs. The other hot dogs just seem to lie there and the beef ones seem to sweat a little bit and have a little more - a little more character, I want to say. If a hot dog can have character.

JOHN

I have to ask the question.

Speaker 3

And John has character. So if John has character, a hot dog can have character.

JOHN

I have almost as much character as a hot dog, and that is the best thing anyone's ever said. One thing I was gonna ask, did you guys prefer the kind of hot dog bun with a top and a bottom, or the kind that was slit in the middle and just opened, because the first time I ever found one of those, I thought I died, you know, and the and the hot dog just lies in the little trough..

DON

Oh yeah, that's the New England style, and when you go up to New England and you get a lobster roll like they come in those kind of buns.

JOHN

Oh, baby! Yeah. I prefer those now. I mean, you know, I don't know why, except I sort of like seeing the hot dog there before I demolish it.

JOY

You're making me crave a hot dog, all of a sudden.

DON

Well, you know, it's coming up on lunchtime.

JOHN

Thanks a lot, Don.

JOY

Yeah, Don!

JOHN

Well, Joy Stocke, as always, you've taken us through a very fast half hour and change and made us very hungry.  The book we’ve been talking about is The Tree of Life Turkish Home Cooking by Joy E. Stocke and Angie Brenner, and you can get it, and it has some great recipes. We've been talking about one of them, which is the Russian Potato Salad, and Joy brought in some what she calls homemade Rice-A-Roni, which I am going to try. And maybe I'll just get a whole shaker of MSG just to make it have that down home, that down home tang.

DON

Just like Mama used to make!  Ooh, mommy! And we will put both of these recipes on the website, so that you at home can follow along and try it yourself.

JOHN

You got to do it. All right. Thank you, Joy.

JOY

Thank you guys. You're a complete delight. I wish you a wonderful, wonderful day.

JOHN

You too.

JOY

Happy cooking!