BORDERLINE SALTY

On this episode of Borderline Salty, hosts Rick Martinez and Carla Lalli Music dig into cooking from memory, chicken livers, and a total kitchen nightmare. The pair also embrace the importance of trying (or re-trying) new foods with the segment “No, Thank You, Please”. 

This week’s recipe book: 

• Rick’s Italian Plum and Almond Cake

• Carla’s Any Berry Galette

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! Check out Carla's cookbooks here and find links to her YouTube channel, Patreon, and Instagram at www.carlalallimusic.com. 

You can pre-order Rick’s upcoming cookbook 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, I'm Rick Martinez, I am a cookbook author and salsa dancing queen, and I'm currently eating my way around Mexico.

Carla Lalli Music: And I'm Carla Lalli Music. I'm also a cookbook author, professional cook. And yes, that's my real last name. 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, happier cook just like us. 

Carla Lalli Music: Today will weigh in on cooking from memory, chicken livers and hear one of Rick's deepest, darkest secrets. 

Rick Martinez: OK, it's not that deep and it's not that dark, but it is a kitchen nightmare story. 

Carla Lalli Music: Like I said, one of Rick's deepest, darkest secrets. But before we get into all of that, Rick, tell me, what's good? 

Rick Martinez: OK, so I thought about you this week because I made beans. 

Carla Lalli Music: Mmmm beans. 

Rick Martinez: What I found in traveling through Mexico is that every town, every region has its own like, special bean. There's a bean called mayacoba, which is a really beautiful, yellow kind of meaty bean. And they're just grown all over this area. So like in late summer, they're greenish yellow and they're fresh. And then later on, like, right now, they're dried, but they're like always less than a year old. And so when you cook them, the flavor is incredible. They actually cook really fast. And last night, I made some confit, spring onions, garlic and lemon yum and basically dumped those in with the beans. And they were so incredible. And I I just remember thinking Carla would absolutely love these. So I'm smuggling in about 10 kilos next time I go to New York. 

Carla Lalli Music: OK, I will clear space in the pantry. 

Rick Martinez:  What is good with you? 

Carla Lalli Music: So this week I had one of those like your chocolate's in my peanut butter, no your peanut butter is in my chocolate. I was making a coffee at home in the aero press and in the cupboard, I happened to have a jar of really good gianduja from Christmas that's been sitting there. So I like open the cabinet up that gianduja, basically jumped out of the cabinet onto a spoon. And for the first time in my life, I like mixed the Nutella basically is what it is, into my cup of coffee with milk. 

Rick Martinez: Oh my god. 

Carla Lalli Music: And then I was like, Why is this the first time I've done this? 

Rick Martinez: That sounds so amazing. 

Carla Lalli Music: I love Café Mocha and I love hazelnut, and I love gianduja ice cream. So then it was like, hello, like mocha gianduja in my face. 

Rick Martinez: Oh my god, this is making me so hungry and we haven't even gotten to our questions. 

Carla Lalli Music: Let's dig in. 

Caller 1: Hi, I love this. My name is Leah Siegel. My question is recipes – or some recipes – ask to saute minced garlic at high heat in oil, and it always burns. And when it burns, it turns bitter. So I just, I'm trying to figure out how do you cook garlic without it burning when it's in bigger slices, it doesn't do this, but when it's minced or finely chopped, it just always seems to burn. 

Rick Martinez:  OK, it's impossible. Let's just let's just cut to it. I think whoever wrote that recipe has never actually cooked minced garlic in high heat or their version of high heat is our version of medium low. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah

Rick Martinez: I think that is an example of a very inconsiderate recipe writer, frankly. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, it's terrible advice. 

Rick Martinez: It's terrible advice. And I mean, we've together we've written literally thousands, if not more, tens of thousands of recipes. And I'm always thinking about not myself in the way that I cook – I'm thinking about the person that is going to cook this food. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yep. 

Rick Martinez: And even if I feel comfortable doing something I think about, are they going to feel comfortable if they're not? If I think they're not, I'm going to adjust my method so that that person feels good and has a shot at achieving the results that I get when I cook this recipe. 

Carla Lalli Music: Exactly. Your job as a recipe developer and a recipe writer is to give instructions to someone so that they can be successful in their own kitchen when you're not there. The trick is to find sources for recipes that you get good results from. And then those become your trusted sources, right? And so they could be the sources that you've used or that through looking at the recipe reviews or through the advice and you know, recommendations of your friends like these are good recipes. And then when you get good at that, you're following good recipes. It's making you a better cook. You're going to look at a recipe that says, cook the minced garlic in oil over high heat. You'll make that adjustment on your own. No bad cooks. Just bad recipes. 

Rick Martinez:  It's not you. It's the recipe line. Line two, you're on. 

Caller 2: Hello, this is Catherine. Chillies and dessert. What are your favorite chili spicy, sweet dessert recommendations? 

Carla Lalli Music: I feel like just directing her to your show Sweet Heat.

Rick Martinez: Obviously 

Carla Lalli Music: Starring Rick Martinez. 

Rick Martinez: I mean, my my go-to chili, whether sweet or savory is probably the chili de arbol. But I think that it goes really well in desserts because in a dessert, it actually takes the place of ginger so that warm, warmth that you get from either a ground or a candied or fresh ginger is replaced by the chili so you get a subtle chili flavor, but then that nice sort of warming finish at the end. And you can even leave the seeds in it. So what I do is I just grind them up in the spice grinder with the seeds. And because there's at least in my desserts, there's obviously a lot of fat. The sweetness is going to help tone it down. Also, the cinnamon, the cloves, allspice, all of those warming spices are just going to be enhanced by that chili flavor and heat 

Carla Lalli Music: That's so smart about the ginger and thinking about, like other things that bring a bright warming quality and spinning it with another spicy thing. Black pepper, which I love to put in for desserts like strawberries. So if you've ever had like ice cream with strawberries and cracked black pepper, so delicious. And even in galettes blackberry strawberry nectarine peach with black pepper? Fabulous. 

Rick Martinez: That is such a, I think, a brilliant way to use black pepper. I mean, honestly, sweet, spicy and also parenthetically, acidic flavors are my favorite. Like, if you can get all three of those into one dish, which a lot of Mexican dishes do, a lot of Asian dishes do, your food almost becomes symphonic. And there are highs and there are lows, and every bite is a little bit different. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, I think people don't realize that spiciness is an actual sensation, like a physical sensation. So there's the flavor of the chili. But the experience of spiciness is actually physical. 

Rick Martinez: And it doesn't have to knock you over the head. 

Carla Lalli Music: Totally. 

Rick Martinez: And a lot of times that's what I like. It's like a kiss from a chili. 

Carla Lalli Music: I think your handle should be hot honey. 

Rick Martinez: Oh, hot honey, hot honey. 

Carla Lalli Music: Next, caller, please. 

Caller 3: Hi, my name is Amber. And my question also includes its own background. I've always heard that if you do eat or cook meat, buy the best cut that you can afford. And my issue is that I can't afford a whole lot, so I wanted to know, what do you think are the best cuts of meat that are affordable or that you can kind of skimp on in terms of quality when it comes to budget? And I wanted to know, kind of, where should I maybe spend a little bit more with the knowledge that the budget isn't, Oh, I can spend $20, it's, I can spend seven instead of, you know, five. 

Rick Martinez: I think this is a great question and it actually reminded me of when I was in college. When I moved out and started cooking on my own and with friends, we obviously didn't have a lot of money and I went semi-vegetarian for probably about four years. Before I went full vegetarian, I was cooking with a lot of broth. So one thing that I could afford is bones. And so even if you just go to the grocery store, just your normal, you know, chain, big-box grocery store and just ask the guy at the counter like, do you have any bones like as they're trimming out their meats, they'll usually sell you those bones for really, really cheap. So you can just go home with a bag of bones for like 10 bucks and then make, you know, like five quarts of stock and then you're getting the flavor of the meat, and so the only thing that you're sacrificing is they actual like piece of meat. But you know, for a college kid that didn't have a lot of money, that was a quick and easy fix. But I think when I hear words like, skimp, you know, the thing that I think you have to be really careful of is particularly with meat, I've seen those pork shoulders that cost $9, and it freaks me out because I'm just imagining the poor animals in cages that aren't moving, that are living in horrible conditions, and those conditions translate into very bad flavors and sometimes honestly even smells. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. 

Rick Martinez: So if I have $10 to spend on meat for the week, I would rather buy something that is better quality, even though there might be less of it. And then just beef up your dish with other affordable things. So like vegetables are usually much more inexpensive and so you're you're getting the flavor. And you know, you're not going to feel like you're missing out on anything. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. To skimp on quality is just not going to taste good. So set that budget and then go have a conversation with your butcher. Say, like, I want to spend, you know, $10 on meat for one person or whatever it is like, I'm cooking for X amount of people and I have this much money to spend, can you point me in the direction of something that's great to cook as a steak or I'm super open, what would you recommend to me? Because they know what's in the case and they also know what's in the back and to have that conversation, even in a supermarket setting, I have found people will engage with you, you know, even if you're not in like a hoity toity, nose to tail kind of a place. And then I think people also are like, Oh, buy good meat, what does that mean? How do you know if it's good? And I think what you're talking about, Rick is, like, humanely raised, preferably organic, antibiotic free, you know, as a starting place. Those would be words that I would look for that are not vague, like all natural, which doesn't mean anything. Those are specific things with a specific meaning and certification. 

Rick Martinez: Also, like, I found that when I'm friends with anybody that I buy food from, they're going to tell me when they have something special that they want me to try, or that they know that I'll be able to afford because a lot of times what happens, I don't know if you've ever seen this before, but you know you'll have someone go up to the butcher case and they'll say, I need, you know, 11 pounds of this and then say, the butcher like cuts the this and puts it on the thing. And then they see the price tag just like, you know, turning and turning it around. And all of a sudden it's like, Whoa, I cannot afford that. I need you to take off like two pounds. And now this poor butcher has two pounds of this thing that this crazy lady just ordered, and he's not going to be able to sell. And up you walk and you're like, actually, I will take that!

Carla Lalli Music: I'll take that off your hands, two pounds of meat that you can sell to anyone. 

Rick Martinez: Right, and he'll probably give it to you for a discount, and you'll be happy and he'll be happy. And it's just win win for everybody. 

Carla Lalli Music: It's a great question. 

Rick Martinez: Yeah. Make friends. That's key. Hello, you're on the line with Rick and Carla. 

Caller 4: Hi, there! My name is  Dolan Hill. I have an amazing slow cooker, coconut ground pork curry dish that I always make, but a couple of times, and even just most recently, I've tried making it from memory and just kind of riffing with what I had, and I ended up messing up the recipe and embarrassing myself in front of my new boyfriend. So my question is, how do I better create food from memory without constantly having to refer to old recipes? And then how do I gain the skills in order to kind of have that intuitive knowledge of what's going to work and what's not going to work? Any advice would be appreciated, I have a very handsome gentleman to impress. 

Rick Martinez: OK. There's a handsome gentleman involved. 

Carla Lalli Music: That is right. We are on the case. 

Rick Martinez: I have a question for you. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. 

Rick Martinez: How many recipes do you cook for memory? 

Carla Lalli Music: I can't cook my own recipes for memory. I start making something from my own cookbook and I'm like, I have no idea what's supposed to be in this dish. I have to take the book out. And then even then, even still, I'll start cooking something for my own cookbooks, and I'm like, Why do I do that? Like, that's random and weird. 

Rick Martinez: Dolan Do not worry unless you are a grandma that's making the same dish for 70 years. Don't worry about cooking for memory. It's fine. 

Carla Lalli Music: We wrote the recipe for you, and we went through all the steps and the failures and the triumphs and getting it to a good place. And we wrote it down. So don't be embarrassed and especially if you are entertaining a gentleman caller. But there's another part of Dolan's question, which is also really interesting to me, which is about nurturing your intuition or your creativity, like riff-ability. And how do you get to the place where you can just kind of like groove in the kitchen and make it look like Ratatouille? Like a little of this and a little of that, and smelling the aroma and knowing exactly what? That's not intuition. There's no magic. It's a myth. We're not magicians or like, you know, soothsayers. It's not intuition. It's experience, and it's through repetition. And it is one of the few good things about getting older and like having been practicing this craft for a long time is like you gain, the reflexes are there or the experience is there to like, be able to anticipate or have made enough dishes where you might be familiar with flavors that are going to go together. You know, just keep practicing. This pork curry with the coconut milk sounds delicious. 

Rick Martinez: 100 percent.

Carla Lalli Music: Make it a lot. You know, I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to like constantly cook a new dish or come up with some new creation or try a new recipe when actually, I really love the idea of making something that you enjoy eating and making it a lot. 

Rick Martinez: I think part of that, too, is remembering what you liked and what you don't like, and I use the Note app 

Carla Lalli Music: Same. Love the Notes app. 

Rick Martinez:  I remember things that I really like and things that I really hate, and it can be a dish. It can be a condiment, it can be a combination of flavors, but I just. Right, all of that down, so that I know if I encounter a recipe or if I want to make something, I just have to remember, Oh, I can't cook that carrot more than 45 minutes or it starts to develop that flavor that I don't like. And that's where you start to develop your own personal sazón or your personal flair in the kitchen. So, Dolan, you make the dish that you want to eat and perfected to the point where you absolutely love it. And your new boyfriend, your family, your friends will love it. 

Carla Lalli Music: 100 percent. That's the magic. A lot of the questions we get here on the show are people opening up to us about what has gone wrong for them in the kitchen. In this next segment called Total Kitchen Nightmare, we'll be bringing on a crew of people who we are inspired by to share their own kitchen meltdowns. But before we get into all of those, we thought it would only be fair for us to tell our own 

Rick Martinez: Part of the cooking journey is about trial and error. You have to fail. You have to have that complete and total meltdown, practically burning your kitchen down and then you realize, aha. I am never going to do that again. 

Carla Lalli Music: Oh yeah. 

Rick Martinez: It's been a really long road. There are lots of bumps in that road. And you just learn from it and get better. 

Carla Lalli Music: Bumpy roads, indeed. So, Rick, I'm throwing it to you. I want to hear about the bumpy roads, the lumpy batters,  the burning down the house. 

Rick Martinez: Oh, goody, I get to go first. Well, funny enough, this story actually involves you. 

Carla Lalli Music: Oh!

Rick Martinez: Back in our Bon Appétit days, we used to have daily tastings. And so every day at three o'clock, Carla and some of the senior editors would assemble in our tasting room and test kitchen editors would get their meals together, get all of their dishes prepped and ready to go. And at three o'clock, we just had a list of who was going to be serving. And so, you know, there were heroics. There were egos. There were moments of showing off and we all did it. And so this one particular day, I think I had like seven or eight dishes that I needed to present. 

Carla Lalli Music: Wow. 

Rick Martinez: And one of them was this Italian plum cake, which I absolutely adore. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. 

Rick Martinez: Italian plums are late season. They're super flavorful and delicious, and I was very excited about this cake, but I wasn't focused, I wasn't in the moment. I was thinking about all of the things that needed to get done, to get the dishes out on time, and I did something. Actually, I'm not exactly sure. I can only believe that I put too much butter or not enough flour. 

Carla Lalli Music: OK. 

Rick Martinez: In any case, I put the cake in the oven, and about midway through Chris Morocco started sniffing. He's like a hound dog. 

Carla Lalli Music: Totally.

Rick Martinez: Like, you know, when he starts sniffing. Yeah, something is afoot. And I was like, Oh God, what is that? And I smelled something burning, and I was like, Oh shit, there's smoke coming out of my oven. And so, you know, in the vein of showing off and also not wanting to show failure, I quickly pulled that cake out of the oven, saw that it had basically boiled over and spilled onto the floor of the oven and was burning. 

Carla Lalli Music: Oh my God.

Rick Martinez: I literally threw the cake pan with the un-baked cake into my drawer in my island, scraped up all the shit on the bottom of the oven, and threw it into another drawer. 

Carla Lalli Music: Oh my God. 

Rick Martinez: And then quickly acted like nothing was happening. 

Carla Lalli Music: Wow. 

Rick Martinez: Claire started to like, walk over them. Like, Why do I smell cake? Are you baking a cake? And I'm like me? No, no, no. I'm making enchiladas, obviously. And no one was the wiser. 

Carla Lalli Music: I definitely had no idea that you had, like, had you know what we used to lovingly refer to as the char of the day. 

Rick Martinez:  Right, right. You know, I think for me, what I took away from that moment is that you really need to be present. When you're not focused on what you're doing. Like, I mean, a) it can be very dangerous. Cooking involves fire. It involves sharp knives. And if you are preoccupied with something else good or bad and you're not in the moment, you can hurt yourself or hurt somebody else. But minimally, you're probably going to fuck up your recipe. And so now I know that if I'm in a bad mood, whatever I'm doing is not going to be good. So I might as well just wait until I'm clear and I'm focused on what I'm doing, and my food will turn out much better. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. Multitasking like, honestly, our brains are not set up for it. So to juggle seven dishes like that is very difficult, but you solved it in the perfect way. So if this happened at a dinner party, you did exactly what I would want someone to do, which is throw the cake away and just serve ice cream. 

Rick Martinez: OK, that sounds like you have a kitchen nightmare that you want to share. 

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, stay tuned. Mine was definitely a party. Borderline Salty is all about celebrating food and cooking and removing the barriers to our culinary adventures. With that in mind, we want to give time to the foods we maybe don't love yet and open ourselves up to giving them the try they deserve. That's what our next segment, 'no thank you, please' is all about. 

Rick Martinez: Carla, can you actually take us back and tell us? How that term 'no thank you, please' actually got started? 

Carla Lalli Music: 100 percent. So my younger son is actually quite a selective eater. I don't like to call him picky, but especially when he was younger, there were things he just really did not like. And we had an amazing babysitter -- shout out to [phonetic Carolyn Page] -- who came up with this thing at dinnertime, where if there was something on the plate that he didn't want to try, she would say, Just taken no thank you, please, bite. And the deal was, you just have to take one bite. If you don't like it, that's fine. No one's going to make you eat it, but you got to give it a try. So it was all around like giving it your best shot and then having permission to not like it if you don't like it. So for this week's no thank you, please, I thought a perfect ingredient to put on the plate is chicken liver. So many people that I love love chicken liver, and I've tried it so many different times and so many different ways. And I just always taste that like weird, chalky flavor, and I just have never been able to get over it. But this fall, when I was out at Scribe Winery for an event for my book, I was working in the kitchen like prepping 10 different pie doughs, and there was a big party going on upstairs like a private party. And one of the cooks who works as Scribe came down to the Prep Kitchen with a plate of orders that they were serving at the party, which were these two beautiful chicken liver mousse toasts with like caramelized onion, and you know, this person bringing it down is like a little special snack to me while I'm down there making pie dough, I couldn't say like, 'Oh, thanks, but I don't like chicken liver.' Like, just as a cook, it's a bad look, but also it's just not gracious. So it's like, Oh my God, thank you so much. And then they left to go back to the party and I was like, All right, Carla. No thank you, please, on this chicken toast tasted without all the baggage. Like taste like you've never tasted it before. And so I did it. I knew it was good bread, and I knew it would have been, like, really nicely prepared. And I took a big giant bite and made sure that I got all this like vinegary, caramelized onions. And I really liked it and I ate both pieces of toast. 

Rick Martinez: I mean, if I didn't already love chicken liver toast, you would have completely a thousand percent sold me on wanting to try it. I think what's important to you is like, don't dismiss an ingredient because you've tasted it one time. My mom and my aunts used to stew liver, and it wasn't pleasant to me like it. Just it wasn't good. And it wasn't until I started working at a restaurant at ABC Kitchen, we had a chicken liver mousse, which I mean, admittedly, it was probably 50 percent butter and cognac, but with that combination of caramelized onions and herbs and butter and cognac like, it's absolutely insanely delicious. It completely changed my view of that ingredient and also inspired me to cook it in other ways similar to that preparation, like I know now, you soak the liver in milk overnight, and that pulls out a lot of those like really kind of bitter and astringent flavors. 

Carla Lalli Music: I think also like taste, it once tasted twice actually tasted like 50, 60, 70 times. And so for me, it was probably like my, who knows, 87th time trying chicken liver. And I was like, breakthrough. And now I don't have to hate on it. 

Rick Martinez: That chicken liver toast was the perfect no thank you, please moment. 

Carla Lalli Music: It truly was. 

Rick Martinez: That's it for this week's episode of Borderline Salty, but don't you worry, we'll be back next week. 

Carla Lalli Music: In the meantime, you can find recipes and recommendations from this week's episode in our show notes. Check it out 

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

Carla Lalli Music: That's 833-433-3663. 

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

Carla Lalli Music: And I’m Carla Lalli Music. You can find our social handles 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 & 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.

Carla Lalli Music: Our executive producers are Max Linsky and Jenna Weiss-Berman. We appreciate Leah, Catherine, Amber and Dolan for calling in this week, and thanks to you for listening. Talk to you next week. 

Rick Martinez: Bye.