BORDERLINE SALTY

On this episode, hosts Rick Martinez and Carla Lalli Music give expert tips on making ganache, share their favorite ways to enjoy tinned sardines, and offer advice on navigating the culinary industry.

Also, Carla shares her anti-ziti testimony in this week’s No, Thank You, Please. 

This week’s recipe book:

As always, we’d love to hear about your cooking conundrums at 833-433-FOOD (3663). 

Find us on Instagram @borderlinesalty

Find full episode transcripts and more about the podcast on our website borderlinesalty.fm. 

If you can’t get enough of our hosts – we don’t blame you! Subscribe to Carla's newsletters here and find links to her Instagram and YouTube channel at www.carlalallimusic.com. 

You can order Rick’s cookbook Mi Cocina: Recipes and Rapture from My Kitchen in Mexico here, watch the companion Mi Cocina video series here, and find all of his socials at www.rick-martinez.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

Rick Martinez: Hi. My name is Rick Martinez and I am a cookbook author, video host and love a Sunday Sleep-In. 

Carla Lalli Music: Ooh, I'm Carla Lalli Music. I'm also a cookbook author, former restaurant person. And I have not one, not two, but three outdoor cooking vessels. 

Rick Martinez: So does it make me a jerk if I have four or five outdoor cooking vessels? I mean, they all meet different needs. 

Carla Lalli Music: Of course they do. Rick and I have been solving and laughing our way through food problems together for more than a decade in test kitchens, in videos and at magazines. 

Rick Martinez: And now we're doing it here on Borderline Salty, the show where we take your calls, boost your confidence, and make you a better, smarter and happier cook. Just like us. 

Carla Lalli Music: Today, we've got lots of advice on all the delicious ways to enjoy veggies, why tinned fish became so trendy, and I'll even confess my least favorite pasta shape. 

Rick Martinez: Dun dun dun dun. 

Carla Lalli Music: But before we dive in, Rick, tell me something good. 

Rick Martinez: You know what's good? 

Carla Lalli Music: Tell me. 

Rick Martinez: Naked food is good. 

Carla Lalli Music: Naked food? 

Rick Martinez: Naked food? Yeah. And if you're eating it while naked, then even better. 

Carla Lalli Music: Wait, didn't you listen to our Miz Cracker episode? You have to be careful with the nakedness. 

Rick Martinez: Okay, but I didn't say cook the food. I said eat the food naked while naked. 

Carla Lalli Music: So the food is naked. 

Rick Martinez: The food is naked. So here's my thing: My friends gave me this literal trash bag full of beautifully ripened, just picked tomatoes. And I realized that I have been eating tomatoes, just cut with a little pinch of salt and sometimes a little grind of pepper for the last four days. And, you know, you want to post this on the 'gram. And then I was like, but it's the same thing over and over again. And people are going to be like, Why? Why aren't you doing something with them? Why don't you cook them? Why don't you add something else? Make a caprese salad. And I thought about it and in fact I bought some really nice moz and I was going to make the crazy and I tasted it together with the tomatoes. And then I thought, 'You know what? All I want is that beautiful flavor of tomato.' And I am like this with other things too. So at the height of peach season or corn season or mangoes, pineapple, papaya, coconut, like, I don't want anything dressed because when it's really good, it doesn't need anything else. It doesn't need any help for me. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. I mean, when something's perfect, just enjoy it and it's perfection. 

Rick Martinez: Exactly. 

Carla Lalli Music: That's a God's tomato right there. 

Rick Martinez: God's tomato. So, Carla, what's good? What's good? 

Carla Lalli Music: Tell me something good! So what's good over here is that I have recently gotten back into smoothies, which I adore. And this is all kind of in a little bit of an effort to eat more protein, which is one banana, about a tablespoon of tahini. I have really good [unclear] tahini right now. A pinch of salt, a scoop of the chocolate whey protein powder, which normally I want only the unflavored because the flavors can be so weird. But this chocolate whey protein is very delicious, some cold brew. So it's also my afternoon coffee and, like, equal parts, cold brew and oat milk or any kind of milk. Or honestly, you could use water and then blend that up. And it is delicious. 

Rick Martinez: Wow. 

Carla Lalli Music: I'm going to have one today when we finish recording. 

Rick Martinez: Wait. So do you eat this before or after the gym? 

Carla Lalli Music: Usually after. 

Rick Martinez: Yeah, yeah. 

Carla Lalli Music: I don't really like eating before I go to the gym. 

Rick Martinez: Plus, there's something about, like, having the carrot at the end of your workout. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yes. Oh, my God. It's all about the carrot. First of all, working out is all about being done working out, like the best part of working out is not working out anymore. So, like, there's that. And then, yeah, the caffeine reward is, like, huge. Yeah. Chocolate coffee, oat, tahini smoothie. 

Rick Martinez: The best carrot ever. It's caller question time! 

Caller 1: Hi. My name is Julia, and I'm calling with a food therapy question that basically is a generational issue. Growing up in the nineties, my parents would cook us vegetables, steamed them, blanch them, boil them until they were mush. And I'm wondering whether it was my palate that changed or was it that my parents just didn't know how to cook vegetables? And what can I do to make those type of vegetables more interesting to my own children? Please let me know. 

Rick Martinez: I completely relate to this. My mother was an amazing cook and I hated her green beans and they grew them fresh, but she just boiled them until they were literally falling apart. And I just remember thinking, 'Ugh, this is so awful.' 

Carla Lalli Music: My dad always has a joke about his mother's cooking, was that she wasn't a very good cook and she just cooked everything until it was all the same color. Maybe Julia's parents like that maybe was the only way that they knew how to cook vegetables and they didn't taste very good. 

Rick Martinez: Yeah. I mean, they might have also had the frame of reference of canned vegetables, which were very popular in the eighties and seventies when you're probably your parents were growing up, if you opened up cans of all the green vegetables, they all were the same color, that weird olivey green kind of squishy texture. So it's not their fault. 

Carla Lalli Music: Right, think the key is not boiling them in plain water. They're just going to leach all the flavor out of them and become mushy. Whereas like collards and potluck liquor is cooked with a ham hock and tons of flavor and for a really long time. And yeah. So Julia likes vegetables the way she likes vegetables now, and that's great. Like, she should cook them the way that she wants to eat them.

Rick Martinez: Totally. 

Carla Lalli Music: If you want your kids to grow up enjoying vegetables, all you need to do is like enjoy vegetables with them. Include them in the preparation of the food. I've really found that if you want kids to eat something, even raising a very selective eater, like when Cosmo was part of making dinner, things that he wouldn't normally eat, he totally would try. 

Rick Martinez: One of the ways that I was taught how to cook vegetables is when I worked in restaurants, we would blanch our vegetables in super salty water like it was brine strength. So it was a 10% ratio of salt to water, and the way that I usually did it for when to pull the vegetables is just, as the moment that you see the bubbles start to form. The temperature is about 200, 205 degrees, pull them out, drop them into an ice bath or spread them out on a sheet tray to cool off. The salt, not only does it flavor the vegetable, but it actually prevents a lot of the nutrients from being leached out of the water. When you're doing that, you're also keeping the flavor in as well. You also lock in that beautiful color, whatever the color you started with, and then after that you can char it or sauté it or whatever you want. 

Carla Lalli Music: Right, that's what I was going to say. I feel like she could do that. And then once you have like a crisp, tender, really nicely seasoned, you know, beautiful vegetable, then you could throw those in a hot sauté pan and get really nice color on them. And it would be fast and they would have incredible flavor from the salting. So, the key with that being don't boil it for too long or it will become incredibly salty, if you have that much salt in the water, it's like a real quick dip. Quick dip in the ocean. Next caller, please. 

Caller 2: Oh, hey, it's Alex. I am calling because I am so afraid of ganache. Like, deathly afraid, I made it once, and it was just a disaster. The milk was scummy and didn't fold into the chocolate right and it got lumpy and disgusting. And I went down a Google rabbit hole, and I thought, I'll never cook again. You know what I mean? Anyway, perhaps you can help me with the ganache, dear God! 

Rick Martinez: Oh, my God. 

Carla Lalli Music: Wow. We're looking for something with two ingredients. The impact on Alex's life has been truly severe. 

Rick Martinez: Code blue, coming in hot. 

Carla Lalli Music: Ganache is incredibly simple. It is literally solid chopped chocolate and cream. But I actually had encountered this problem at Bon Appétit working on recipes where we got feedback from readers that this exact same thing had happened. And it turns out that two things will cause this to happen: One is very straightforward and simple. If the cream is too hot, when you add it to the chocolate, it will cause the chocolate to split. So heating the cream gently until it's just above warm, combining it with the chocolate. The other thing, and this was really not intuitive at all, you need to be careful with the percentage chocolate that you choose. So anything above 75% chocolate is going to have too much cocoa solids to hold the ganache together. So it's actually going to cause it to break. So wherever it is printed on the package, look for something around 70%. That's really ideal. One part of Alex's question that's weird to me is he refers to milk, which is lower fat, obviously, than cream. But maybe he just meant cream because usually ganache is chocolate and cream. 

Rick Martinez: Yeah. And maybe that might be part of it. I mean, it should still melt into a nice, silky situation, but it's going to be a less rich ganache. And -- 

Carla Lalli Music: For sure, it's funny because the fat content in the ganache is similar to any other emulsion where you need a certain amount of liquid to hold a certain amount of fat. If the fat is too rich, even in the cream itself, that can also cause splitting, which is something that we learned through empirical evidence. My mom has been making marble cake with fudge frosting for all of our birthdays, so everybody in the family gets the same birthday cake. And it's from Fannie Farmer's Baking Book, and it is perfect in every way. And she had made it forever and ever and ever. And then one year she made it and it was grainy and weird and it was frostable. But then as the frosting sat on the cake, it just started to slide down the side. So it wasn't set, the fat was separating. We couldn't figure it out. It's the same method, same person, same everything. And finally, we're just sort of like going down the checklist. What have you done differently? Is the chocolate different? Is any of the other ingredients different? And it turned out my mom had started using beautiful cream on top Ronnie Brook Heavy cream, where the fat content of the cream is actually higher than the Horizon Organic or whatever ultra pasteurized heavy cream that she had used in the past. So she thought, 'Oh, upgrade. Like, I'm going to make the frosting even more special by using this fabulous cream on top cream.' And it was too much fat and that was the problem. So she went back to using ultra pasteurized regular cream line and it doesn't happen anymore. So I just want Alex to get back into it, you know? 

Rick Martinez: Yeah. Ganache is waiting for you, Alex. Jump in. 

Carla Lalli Music: Jump into that shiny, luscious, chocolaty river. 

Rick Martinez: Slurp. 

Carla Lalli Music: Slurp. Borderline salty. You've reached us during working hours. 

Caller 3: Hi, Carla and Rick, this is Taylor from South Carolina. And I'd really love some insight into sardines. It seem to be popping up all over the place lately. And I'm super I'm familiar with them. I'm kind of intimidated about all of it. Different packing liquids, what to use them in as a newbie and then where do I go from there? What do I do with the leftover fishies that I don't use if a recipe only calls for one or two, what's the smell situation like, how fishy are they, how salty are they, um, yeah, sardines! 

Rick Martinez: All right, Carla, help this woman out. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. Taylor really wants to dive in to sardines. You see what I did there? 

Rick Martinez: I'm going to just have another sip of coffee. 

Carla Lalli Music: Okay. So tinned fishes have definitely become extremely trendy, and I think there's a couple of reasons for it. One is that there's a lot more talk and a lot more awareness around the more sustainable, eco-friendly fish. A lot of fish has been overfished. We ruined the ocean. We have to correct that. And one of the ways to do it is to eat the smaller fish. So sardines, anchovies, all of those guys are lower on the food chain. They're supposed to be very healthy, high omegas, but also better for the world. The other thing that happened is they just got really cute packaging. 

Rick Martinez: Love the packaging. 

Carla Lalli Music: Maybe something happened where some of these imported brands got to be distributed in the U.S. and we were seeing things that we had never seen before, so they really took off. Sardines are all of the things that Taylor said, but I really love them. So a couple of just logistical things that I would do getting into your first can of sardines. Drain the liquid, number one. I know some people use it. I just think that it holds a lot of that off flavor. So I always get rid of it. You don't know the quality of the olive oil and things like that, so I would drain that. And then with the sardine in particular, you need to kind of go in with a fork or the front of a paring knife and open the fish up. It's not going to have its head on, but it will have the top and bottom fillet packed together. And you want to just tease those apart, open it up like a book, and then with the end of a fork again or your paring knife, just zip out that center part of the spine, which is soft enough to eat, but if you're in any way squeamish or you're trying this for the first time, just stack the deck in your favor, get rid of that little bone. And then from there, you know, you can use them in tons of different preparations. So if you were thinking about flavor and presentation, a way to make this palatable, what would you do? 

Rick Martinez: You are very right. I am of the mindset that I would rather eat a fresh fish and so I like fresh sardines a lot.but I think if you're getting an oil-packed sardine, you might want to take it and then flick it apart and add some lemon juice, some herbs, something really fresh and bright. A little zest always helps some really good fresh olive oil. And all of those flavors are going to, they're going to sort of mask, but they're also going to cut through that that richness and that fishiness is that is at least, you know, sometimes for me, it's not like my favorite thing to eat. But once you've added all those flavors to it, it just it completely transforms the ingredient into something else. 

Carla Lalli Music: Totally. The fattiness of this fish is very forward. And what do you do to balance a fattiness in anything? You add lots of acidity, you add heat, you add crunch, you add spice. So I love in my tuna salad, actually, which is, you know, on the spectrum, pickled peppers like the little pickled banana peppers or pepperoncini. 

Rick Martinez: Oh, yum. 

Carla Lalli Music: Which are both spicy and really acidic. And I just chop those up and use the liquid from the jar or the liquid that comes out when you cut them open and put that into the mix. And it kind of crosses two things off the list and being acidic and having spice to it. 

Rick Martinez: Mm. Yes. 

Carla Lalli Music: I think butter is also a beautiful thing. 

Rick Martinez: Oh, yeah. Sauteed with butter. Yes, brown butter. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. Sauteed with brown butter. Or, you know, my grandfather sort of famously loved to eat anchovies on buttered crackers as a snack in the afternoon. And that's why that works. It's just fattiness and the sweetness, a little bit of crunch and then you can put a fishy fish. 

Rick Martinez: I don't know if you remember when I did the The Feast of the Seven Fishes, I made the anchovy garlic knots. 

Carla Lalli Music: Oh! 

Rick Martinez: Insanely delicious.

Carla Lalli Music: Insane.

Rick Martinez: You know, and it's funny, too, because when I use intravenous, I have a tendency to overdo bold flavors. And so anchovies are one of those things that I try and edit myself, and I don't want to put like an entire jar in something, but those garlic knots actually took a lot of anchovy because when you bake them, the flavor gets really flat and muted. And so you you needed that extra punch of the anchovy, but they were ridiculously addictive. 

Carla Lalli Music: So good. 

Rick Martinez: And so I think when you find that perfect combination of like the fatty, the rich, the acidic, the nutty, the oily, and you add the tinned fish to it, it's it's kind of mind blowing. 

Carla Lalli Music: If you yourself, Rick, are turned on by this conversation, then there's nowhere to go but up. 

Rick Martinez: Welcome to Borderline Salty. How can I help you? 

Caller 3: Hi. My name's Amanda. I just got off work and saw your post, which is appropriate, because what scares me is being stuck in the back of the house at a restaurant for the rest of my life. I have been a cook in some way, shape or form baking, prep, line cook for the last 16 years. And I keep finding myself in the same position, not really making a lot more money, even though I have a ton of experience because I don't want to go into management. So the thing that scares me the most is that I'm going to be stuck in this food production job for the rest of my life or until my brain or body gives out from the stress. Please help me. I don't know where to go. Thank you so much. Bye. 

Rick Martinez: Wow. A lot of what Amanda was talking about kind of struck home. Yeah, I think I've felt a lot of those same emotions, probably at multiple points in my career. 

Carla Lalli Music: I can really relate too, because, like, being a line cook is an incredibly hard job. 

Rick Martinez: Oh, awful. 

Carla Lalli Music: With physical toll and then a social toll, lifestyle. Just really intense. 

Rick Martinez: Yeah. 

Carla Lalli Music: So when you were line cooking, how long did you do it for? 

Rick Martinez: Three years. And ABC Kitchen had just opened and had just won a James Beard Award. So, you know, when I first started, we were doing like 300 covers a day. And then when I left, we were doing 1500 a day. 

Carla Lalli Music: Wow. 

Rick Martinez: It was insane. So when you're cooking for 500 covers at dinner. Or brunch. [shudders] Oh, you know, you're going to learn how to make a pancake and an egg and a fish. And that was a piece of valuable experience that I needed. But I also knew that I didn't want to do that forever, and I couldn't. And so once I learned the things that I needed to learn, I was like, right now it's time to try and figure out how to get into food media, which is where I really wanted to be. 

Carla Lalli Music: So you had that goal. That goal was like clear. 

Rick Martinez: Yeah. I mean, I never wanted a restaurant. I never wanted to work in the line or be in management, similar to Amanda. And I figured that with a marketing background and a knowledge of food and how to cook, I could go into media. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. 

Rick Martinez: And so I made the decision to quit, and I looked at my bank account and I made a plan, and I was like, I'm going to see. Figure out how long I can go without an actual paycheck. And I cleared my mind of the line cook world because as you know, it's like, you know, my last day I worked 18 hours because, you know, two people called out.

Carla Lalli Music: Of course. 

Rick Martinez: So I was like, I didn't even get like, goodbye, happy hour. I was like, I just want to go to bed. Like, leave me alone. And so, you know, I cleared my head and then I was like, all right, I got to start meeting people in media, at the Food Network, at magazines, at blogs, and just basically hit the pavement until I got a break. I got an internship at Food Network. 

Carla Lalli Music: Right. 

Rick Martinez: And and that was another humbling experience. I hadn't been an intern in, like 20 years, you know, but it's like you do what you do. Like, I mean, honestly, I, I would have cleaned the toilets and I mean, I clean grease traps, so kind of. 

Carla Lalli Music:  Like almost worse. 

Rick Martinez: Yeah, but, you know, like, if you if you want that job, if you want that life, those are the things that you do. And I learned that pursuing your passion, you just do whatever you got to do. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, it's funny, because when I started in culinary, it also was a career change for me. But I had come from book publishing and like some internet stuff and I knew I didn't want to do that, but I didn't really know. And the one thing that I was really interested in was cooking. So I think just bringing it back to Amanda, who like knows so much, knows she does want to manage people, which again is like, I get that, it's not fun having like run Shake Shack for two years where people would like literally go on a half hour break and never come back and you'd be like, 'Why is this my problem?' Like, let's be like, 'where's, you know, where's Drew?' And they'd be like, 'Yeah, Drew should have been back from break like 10 minutes ago.' And then you just look out into Madison Square Park and be like, 'Yeah, Drew's not coming back.' So, like, not managing people as a goal. But I think. If it's food, it might not be in a restaurant. You know, having done this job for this long, there's got to be some pull there. So I would just concentrate on what is it about that job that you still love or still enjoy or feel most yourself when you're doing it or, you know, take pleasure from. And those skills, those are the key. If you can continue using those skills in a different position, you will still be doing the thing you love about that without having to do the same job that you've had and that you know that you want to leave. 

Rick Martinez: Right. Right. And you're sitting on 16 years of experience. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. 

Rick Martinez: You know, I don't know if you're a writer, Amanda, or not, but I think you need to do something with that institutional knowledge. Right? So writing recipes, teaching a class, writing a tell-all book, you know, like there's a lot of knowledge that you have that can be shared with people and you just need to figure out how to monetize it. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. Can't wait to find out. 

Rick Martinez: Call us back in a year and tell us what's happened. 

Carla Lalli Music: Before we go, it is time for No, thank you, please. 

Rick Martinez: And this week, we are talking about a food that lots of people love. In fact, this food is the headlining ingredient in an absolutely canonized Italian-American dish. This week, the topic is ziti. Carla, take it away. 

Carla Lalli Music: Wow. Ziti, ziti, ziti, I mean, first of all, an unridged pasta to me is like a waste. It's just like a sign of laziness. Like, if you're going to go to the trouble of extruding a pasta and you're not going to put ridges in it, like, why? 

Rick Martinez: Why live? 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. Do you hate pleasure? Do you want the sauce to just, like, slide off instead of clinging? I want my sauce to cling. Right. So that's my number one problem with ziti. Ziti could have been rigatoni, but, like, decided to just phone it in that day. 

Rick Martinez: 100%. 

Carla Lalli Music: You know what I mean? And when you have baked ziti, you know, sounds great on paper, it's even worser because in the baking, it has absorbed a lot of liquid and it just gets then like flabby and flaccid and also smooth. And then the tomato sauce is running off. 

Rick Martinez: Nobody likes anything flaccid. Not here, anyway. 

Carla Lalli Music: No, no flaccid noodles. Thank you very much. I have ziti in the house right now. That was prior of a press package which had lovely pastas in it. And even though this pasta was sent to me and it's a great brand, I cannot bring myself to cook the ziti. 

Rick Martinez: It will, it's like. It's like trying to pull, like, minnows out of a bucket with a spoon. You know, they're just, like, all, like, moving around. You can't, like, get them. Who, who wants that? 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. It's like somebody gave you a fork, but the fork is, like, coated in Vaseline, and you just can't. You can't get anything. 

Rick Martinez: Wow. So from flaccid to Vaseline and minnows in a bucket, this is probably the best No, thank you, please we've ever recorded. Congratulations. 

Carla Lalli Music: It's just, even if ziti was the only shape left on the shelf. 

Rick Martinez: Ooh, here comes. 

Carla Lalli Music: I would completely pivot and just come up with a different dish. Just not invited to my party. I'm sorry. 

Rick Martinez: Now we know the truth. Thank you. 

Carla Lalli Music: Slip on out of here, ziti. Just slide away. 

Rick Martinez: That's it for this week's episode of Borderline Salty. But don't worry. We'll be back next week. 

Carla Lalli Music: You can find recipes and recommendations from this week's episode in our show notes. 

Rick Martinez:  If you have a question or a fear, you want us to help you through. You can always leave us a voicemail at 833-433-FOOD.

Carla Lalli Music: That number again is eight three, three, four, three, three, three, six, six, three. 

Rick Martinez: Borderline Salty is an original production by Pineapple Street Studios. We're your hosts. I'm Rick Martinez. 

Carla Lalli Music: I'm Carla Lalli Music. You can find links to our work in the show notes for this episode. 

Rick Martinez: Natalie Brennan is our lead producer. 

Carla Lalli Music: Janelle Anderson is our producer. 

Rick Martinez: Our managing producer is Agerenesh Ashagre. 

Carla Lalli Music: Our assistant producer is Mari Orozco. 

Rick Martinez: Our head of sound and engineering is Raj Makhija. 

Carla Lalli Music: Mixing and Engineering by Davy Sumner and Jason Richards. 

Rick Martinez: Our assistant engineers are Sharon Bardales and Jade Brooks. 

Carla Lalli Music: Original music from our very own Raj Makhija. 

Rick Martinez: Additional Music from Vincent Vega Spring Gang and Glove Box courtesy of Epidemic Sound. 

Carla Lalli Music: Legal Services for Pineapple Street are provided by Bianca Grimshaw at Granderson des Rochers.  

Rick Martinez: Our executive producers are Max Linsky and Jenna Weiss-Berman. 

Carla Lalli Music: Thanks to Julia, Alex, Taylor, and Amanda for calling in this week. 

Rick Martinez: And thanks to you for listening. Talk to you next week. 

Carla Lalli Music: Auf wiedersehen.

Rick Martinez: Adios. 

Carla Lalli Music: It's time to go. Party’s over. 

Rick Martinez:  Love you, mean it! 

Carla Lalli Music: Bye, see you soon. Love you. Bye.