BORDERLINE SALTY
On this episode, hosts Rick Martinez and Carla Lalli Music give pointers for getting golden brown cutlets, share strategies on veg-heavy dishes that won't heat up your kitchen, and help a caller achieve the ideal crispy-chewy-crunchy-gooey chocolate chip cookies.
Plus, actress Eva Longoria joins this week’s Total Kitchen Nightmare segment to discuss how cooking mishaps made her a better chef.
This week’s recipe book:
Carla’s California Veggie Sandwich
Stella Parks’ Chocolate Chip Cookies
Carla’s Crunchy Chicken Cutlet Sandwich
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. I'm Rick Martinez. I'm a cookbook author, video host, and I am a firm believer in a good tomato pie.
Carla Lalli Music: I'm Carla Lalli Music. I am also a cookbook author, video host and I just put skinny dipping down on the August to-do list.
Rick Martinez: Amen, and this is Borderline Salty, the show where we skinny dip, take your calls, boost your confidence, and make you a better, smarter and happier cook.
Carla Lalli Music: Today, we'll discuss how to cook veggies without heating up the kitchen. The trick to getting even gorgeous golden brown cutlets and the keys to perfect chocolate chip cookies. But before we get into it, I want to share that this week's segment of Tell Me Something Good is brought to you by the Sonos Move, a powerful and portable smart speaker for listening all around your home and beyond. Sound track your summer with Sonos. Discover Move, plus other speakers and soundbars at Sonos.com. Okay, Rick. Now tell me something good.
Rick Martinez: Carla, I have a new favorite beach snack.
Carla Lalli Music: Ooh. Okay, wait. Let me guess. Is it frozen grapes?
Rick Martinez: It is not frozen grapes, sadly. Although if I did try and take them, I'm sure they'd stay frozen for about, like, 10 seconds before they melted. So they're these things called cocadas. They're similar to macaroons. It's a mound of coconut that is coated in sugar, normally with a little bit of vanilla and then [phonetic] piloncillo. Sometimes the cook will add a little bit of either evaporated or condensed milk to make it a little bit milky. But they are so incredibly delicious. And I think the reason is because a lot of these cooks will harvest the coconuts that grow along the beach, and then they'll literally just shred the coconut meat out of the shell, cook it lightly in sugar until it just begins to caramelize. So it's just like a really blonde mound of delicious coconut. So it has a little bit of a shell on the outside, but it's still kind of soft and tender in the middle.
Carla Lalli Music: Yum. Is it like chewy, a little bit. Like a soft [unclear]
Rick Martinez: Little bit. Yeah. Well, because also, like, there's so much moisture in the fresh coconut. And so, you know, all of those oils, you know, the coconut milk that's inside the flesh is still present. So it's just so incredible. And there are these people that walk by with little boxes and, you know, I'll be laying on the beach kind of like half asleep and I'll see somebody walking with a little box and I'm like, okay, wait, wait, wait. What do you have? What do you have? They’re like cocadas, I'm like, Okay, I'll take 17, please. Thank you.
Carla Lalli Music: Well, look out for that the next time I am at the beach. But usually I'm just looking out for the guy with the rum punch.
Rick Martinez: I mean, you know, and then there's that. So yeah.
Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, he's good guy to now.
Rick Martinez: Also a good beach treat. So, Carla, why don't you tell me something good?
Carla Lalli Music: Well, I'm happy to report that here we are deep in August, and I just had my first really ripe peach eaten over the sink.
Rick Martinez: Oh, my God. I love peaches over the sink.
Carla Lalli Music: I mean, it's a true like, rite of summer. You know, summer is in summer if you haven't eaten a peach over the sink. And this was even a white peach, which is not my normal. I'm like, prefer yellow over white. But it was a really good peach.
Rick Martinez: Oh, my God. Wait, so how many did you buy and where'd you get it?
Carla Lalli Music: I went last week to the [phonetic] Carroll Street Market. I ended up getting white and yellow peaches that were pretty firm. So these were in my house for six full days, like ripening. And in that time, the peach achieved its, you know, height of heights.
Rick Martinez: Oh, God. I have to say, I do really miss late August in New York, the peaches and the blueberries.
Carla Lalli Music: Yeah.
Rick Martinez: That to me is like the ultimate galette like that. When I see those things, I mean, I just want to eat them raw, but then I also want to put them in a galette and eat them with ice cream. Oh, God. Oh, now I want to eat peaches over the sink. Dammit.
Carla Lalli Music: Caller Number One. We're ready for you.
Caller 1: Hey, Carla and Rick. My name is [phonetic] Pamela. My cooking conundrum happens every year is how do I get vegetables into my spouse who doesn't like salads during the summer when it's too hot to make roasted broccoli or other cooked dishes that he loves, but it's too hot to make, like, a giant pile of vegetable soup or [unclear] vegetables. So if could think of any creative ways that I can make vegetables cooked without heating up our home and making us miserable, I'd really appreciate it.
Carla Lalli Music: All right. Well, this sounds like to me that Pamela's got a opposite of a raw vegan on her hands.
Rick Martinez: But, you know, I completely agree. The last thing I want to do in the summertime is get my house really, really hot in the kitchen. So what I do is I use the grill. In fact, yesterday I made a summer squash ragu, but on the grill. So I just threw a bunch of cut squash, garlic, onion, olive oil on a sheet tray on my gas grill, let it cook at like 375 for about an hour, pulled it out. And then when I was ready to eat, it was cool. I just mashed it up, added some ricotta, some parm, a little bit of lemon, lemon zest, a little bit more olive oil and threw it in some pasta and a little pasta, water and boom. I've got a really nice summertime meal and the only thing that I had to heat was the, in the inside of the house was the pasta and the pasta water. So.
Carla Lalli Music: Yum. To Rick's point. You know, really just using your burner for a short amount of time or to only do one thing when vegetables are really peaking, especially things like snap beans and all of the romano beans like those are really in season right now. I'm a big fan of like a shallow poach situation, so not even bringing a big pot of water to a boil, but bringing a small amount of water to a boil, salting it really well, and then cooking things like green beans, wax beans, romano beans, you know, sugar snap peas just until they're tender. So probably 3 minutes and then you can call them down quickly, but they won't have that raw bite to them and something like that, I really love with like a basic aioli or make a yogurt dip, something like that, or hummus or a white bean puree. And then you can have kind of not raw vegetables that are still not piping hot and you've barely used your stovetop.
Rick Martinez: Right. Another thing that I like to do too, not necessarily to avoid heating up the house, but just because I like them. So making a vegan version of ceviche or carpaccio or [unclear] chili. And so you mentioned roasted broccoli that your spouse likes that well. So you could actually make a broccoli ceviche or a chile. Use lime, a little serrano, cilantro, a little garlic, a little splash of olive oil, chop up your broccoli. Really fine. Toss that together, serve that with tostadas, some crackers, and you've got a really, really nice like either appetizer or you can like turn it into a larger meal and have some margaritas. And who's going to know that you're missing any other sides?
Carla Lalli Music: Yum. Another thing that I would recommend with all of the summer produce is to do a hot brine pickle. So again, this is a small amount of liquid being heated out for a very short amount of time and then poured over any kind of crunchy vegetable. You can do this with zucchini, cucumbers, you can do it with pickles. I've done it recently with beautiful yellow and red beets and just thinly slice those things, put them in jars, pour the hot brine over, it will soften them, it will season them, and then they're good to go in the fridge. And then you can make one of my favorite sandwiches of all times, a California veggie and put all your pickled veg in there.
Rick Martinez: That is amazing. You know, the other thing is that it sounds like you might also be suffering from a bit of a marketing challenge, like this idea of a California veggie is essentially a salad inside of bread.
Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, we're doing alternative salads here.
Rick Martinez: Right, not a fake salad. Just to be clear.
Carla Lalli Music: I love this. I can't wait to see what you come up with.
Rick Martinez: Hello, caller, you're on the air.
Caller 2: Hello? You two with my name is [phonetic] Mr. Ham, and I'm calling. All right, so you're cooking a cutlet, let's say maybe it's a pork cutlet. It could be a chicken cutlet. You know, you probably dredged it and let it come up. The temperature's not too cold, fresh out of the fridge, if anything like that. And you've got it in the pan. It's nice and hot. The pan itself is nice and hot before you add the oil and then you add in meat and then you get like a nice golden crust around the edges of your cutlet. But maybe it's not exactly sort of like perfectly golden across the entirety of it. And I've tried things, different things like perhaps weighing it down. I've got a smaller cast iron pan that I put on top of that. It doesn't really make much of a difference. It's still the center [unclear], it's not completely golden brown in the way you might like it to be. And I've tried all different things. Maybe the pans too hot, but I really have no idea. So I'd love your assistance. Thank you very much. Goodbye.
Carla Lalli Music: Not only do I love this question, I love this accent so much that it's making my heart sing. I can't handle it.
Rick Martinez: I need to, like, just listen to this man talk.
Carla Lalli Music: All day. And the conundrum is a really common one. It happens to us all. The trick is you want to get great golden brown color, but it's a thin cut of meat, so you don't want to overcook. So you're in this like race against time where sometimes you have to decide, do I want the cutlet to still be juicy or am I going to just lean in to the browning that I'm going for at the possible expense of the meat that is going to spend too much time in the pan? So when this happens to me and this will happen with both kinds of cutlets, the edges of the cutlet are making good contact with the oil around the edge. But the center has kind of pulled away from the pan a little bit. And in order to get the heat conductivity to carry to the center of your cutlet so that the browning is going to happen evenly everywhere, you just need more oil in the pan. The oil is really acting as an invisible bridge between the surface of the pan and the protein that you have put into the pan. And if it's too low there is just the cutlet has nothing to get brown in. It's going to get hot, but it's not going to get brown. If you're only doing one or two cutlets, pick a skillet that is just big enough to hold them snugly. If you have a ton of extra real estate in the pan, you're just going to be putting a lot of extra oil. So keep them snug, make sure there's a good amount of oil so that they're making contact with that cooking medium.
Rick Martinez: And I would also recommend cast iron or a heavy skillet. A lot of times what happens if your pan is really thin, you will actually have hot and cold spots. And so I'm not certain what pan you're using, but you might get like that really nice brown, golden brown color on the edges of your cutlet because your pan is thin. And so maybe your cutlet is sitting over the counter -- the fire.
Carla Lalli Music: The outer edge, yeah.
Rick Martinez: Yeah. And so the center may be a little bit cooler on your pan and therefore not giving you that even browning. So by using a cast iron or a heavy bottomed skillet, you'll actually have a much more even heating. And then the chances of you getting an even golden crust on your cutlet are going to be increased exponentially. And it sounds like the cutlets that you're using are pre-sliced, which means that all of the protein strands in the meat are intact. Whereas if you pound pork chop, for example, and flatten it out to make a cutlet, you will actually break down the proteins and they won't pucker up when they hit the heat because they will have broken.
Carla Lalli Music: Oh interesting.
Rick Martinez: So you may want to if you're buying these pieces of meat from the store, precut, you may want to just give it a quick pound to break up the protein and then you're good to go, to season it and bread it and then cook it.
Carla Lalli Music: Super smart, Rick. Love that.
Rick Martinez: Caller, you're on.
Caller 3: Hi Rick and Carla. My name's [phonetic] Abby. And my question is this, Is there any reason to be using a wooden spoon instead of another utensil? Because recently in a lot of recipes I've been seeing mix with a wooden spoon, and I can't believe that there is any difference between that and like silicone spoon or a spatula or something like that. So is this all some kind of a wooden spoon conspiracy or is there really a reason to be using one?
Carla Lalli Music: This segment of borderline salty is sponsored by Big Wood. Thank you, Big Wood. Wood USA.
Rick Martinez: Oh, my God. You know, I've been waiting for that big wood sponsorship for so long.
Carla Lalli Music: Honestly, if I had to work for a conglomerate, I would want it to be the wooden spoon conglomerate. I would really feel at home.
Rick Martinez: Yeah, well, as long as they were exotic woods, right. I want the big exotic wood.
Carla Lalli Music: Only the most exotic, teaks and okay. You know, it was like what was going through my mind when I was listening was like, why would you use a wooden spoon instead of any other spoon is because you want to save your hearing. There is no worse sound to me than the sound of a metal spoon in like a metal pan. That is. It is so upsetting.
Rick Martinez: Wait wait wait. Okay. So are you responsible for at BA, whenever there was a ground beef recipe and it said cook your ground beef using a wooden spoon to break up a clumps of beef as you cook until you know, it's brown and delicious. Was that you? Like, as I always wondered, like, why would it matter? Like if I used a wooden spoon or a metal spoon or a fork.
Carla Lalli Music: Okay, so now you're on Team [phonetic] Abby? What's this? I take this. I'm just. No, I'm pleading the fifth. I have no further questions.
Rick Martinez: I am just asking a simple question, Your Honor. We have a hostile witness on the stand.
Carla Lalli Music: No, for breaking a beef, I don't think it has to be a wooden spoon, but I can think of many, many examples. Like when it's something like you've cooked a nice piece of pork and gotten great color on it, take it out of the pan, add liquid. Whenever we talk about deglazing, we would say use a wooden spoon, just scrape up the brown bits from the surface of the pan. I feel like a silicone spatula doesn't have the integrity. It's just too
Rick Martinez: Right, right.
Carla Lalli Music: Right. It's going to gently slide over the top of the [phonetic] font. So you want something sturdy, but could you use a fish spatula? Sure. You want to use a metal spoon? Great. Do you live alone? You love screeching noises? Cool. No conspiracy here. We just love big wood.
Rick Martinez: Big wood. Everybody should like big wood. Come on, what's not to love? You just want to give that big wood a big hug.
Carla Lalli Music: And if you listen to this episode backwards, it'll be like, duh duh duh, wooden spoon, la la la, wooden spoons, la la la, wooden spoons are nothing. 999. I think we have time for one more caller.
Caller 4: Hello, Rick. Hello, Carla. This is [phonetic] Brian. So I have a recipe that's been stumping me for years, and I'm no slouch in the kitchen. I've done so much baking with my grandmother, my mother. But for some reason, no matter what recipe I try, I cannot produce a fantastic chocolate chip cookie. I've tried all sorts of different butters, different flours, different recipes. My husband can throw everything in the mix or whip it up, and then it's done. But I follow the directions and it just isn't working for me. So I need some help!
Carla Lalli Music: I have a feeling Rick and I are thinking the same thing, which is if our husband is great at making chocolate chip cookies and we are not. Just take that as like a gift and a sign and go lie back down on the couch and, like, make sure the milk is ice cold when those cookies come out of the oven.
Rick Martinez: Ah, yes.
Carla Lalli Music: But if you feel, if you feel really compelled to master this chocolate chip cookie, I think there's a couple of things to think about as you head into a recipe. And Rick and I have definitely said this before, but there really are not bad cooks. There are bad recipes. So the first thing I would say is like, make sure that recipe is vetted, make sure it has a lot of really good reviews, make sure it's from a publication or a book that you trust. Beyond that, if it is a good recipe, you need to know, like what to look for and to make sure you're paying attention visually. But this is Rick's jam. So like Rick, break down the chocolate chip cookie, the wish list, the highs, the lows. Like, what are we looking for?
Rick Martinez: So one of the things that completely changed my baking is the use of a scale. Years and years ago, I was cross testing a recipe that did not have weights, and it was a friend of mine who made this snickerdoodle and it was really delicious snickerdoodle. I tasted hers and I could not, for the life of me, remake this cookie. And what it ended up coming down to was the way that we measured our flour because we weren't using scales, like I was doing the spoon and level method, as was she, but she was using this teeny tiny spoon and I was using like a really big mounded, you know, soup spoon full of flour. And that actually impacted the weight of the flour in the recipe by almost an ounce. My cookies were very fat and bready. Her cookies were really thin and crispy. And so, look for a recipe that has, you know, good reviews from a place you trust that also has gram amounts and then get yourself a really good scale. I love a brown butter cookie. I also really like a stir cookie, like a one bowl. Just dump everything in and stir. So what I would do first is I would look for a one-bowl cookie recipe. There are Martha Stewart recipes that are really good. I have a one bowl skillet cookie, which I really like, and you can actually use that dough and just scoop it out in one ounce scoops. Put that on a sheet tray and bake that and you will get like a thinner cookie.
Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, I have one, too. It's a [phonetic] Stella Sparks recipe that is so easy. Like, you can't believe they're going to work out because you literally just dump everything in and stir it, and it makes a great cookie.
Rick Martinez: Yeah. And then I think, you know, once you get a recipe under your belt that you're getting really good success from, then I think you can migrate into like a creamed situation and then from there go into a brown butter and then you can just kind of experiment and, you know, get to the point, I think, that your husband is at where it seems like he's just effortlessly throwing things together and all of a sudden this magical cookie appears. Otherwise, I would just let him do the work like you make something else.
Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. Sometimes the common mistakes that I make when I'm making chocolate chip cookies and it is a cookie that I really love to make is, I often over bake. You should pull them before you think they're dark because they continue cooking. So I always sort of take the cookie out when it's like exactly where I want it to end up. And then they always go a little bit over, so they'll be a little bit crisper or a little bit tougher than I hope they should be. And then I would also look do a little detective work in the titling of the recipe because of the different styles of cookies. Like what I would say is there's a cookie jar for every type of cookie out there and you have to decide if you're a thin and crispy person, if you're a fat and chewy person, if you want like crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle, and then look for recipes that give you those clues in the recipe title. So you want to find a recipe title that doesn't just say classic chocolate chip cookie because there are so many. But look for a recipe title that aligns with the type of cookie you want to eat.
Rick Martinez: The other thing, actually, when you were talking about that, you know, the cook times, I was thinking, you know, one thing that I always do if I'm making a cookie recipe for the first time is the first bake, I only bake at most six cookies. If I'm not quite sure how much they're going to spread or if I'm not sure quite what the cooking time is going to be, I'll only bake 4 to 6 at a time and then just see what they do. Like, see how far they spread. Do I agree with what the bake time is? Did I get a nice puff? Was it cracked? Was it cracked enough? Did it not crack at all? Did I get the little rings on the outside and then I'll adjust it for those kinds of things. So I bake the first small batch. I look at it and then I had to make adjustments.
Carla Lalli Music: Smart. You're smart.
Rick Martinez: Oh, thanks, Carla. So are you.
Carla Lalli Music: It's time for our next segment, Total Kitchen Nightmare.
Rick Martinez: In this segment, we're bringing in friends, our culinary heroes, to share their kitchen disasters. And this week, we are speaking to a very special guest, a very dear, sweet person, a very good friend of mine, none other than Ms. Eva Longoria.
Carla Lalli Music: Eva is really someone who does it all: An actress, a producer, a director, an activist, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and now the host of her own podcast, Connections with Eva Longoria.
Rick Martinez: We are so excited to chat with her and I truly can't wait to hear what kitchen nightmare she has in store for us. Hello.
Eva Longoria: Hi y'all.
Carla Lalli Music: Thanks for being here.
Eva Longoria: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited.
Rick Martinez: Same here.
Carla Lalli Music: I agree. We're not here to talk about the great moments in your life. We're, you're here to talk about your biggest total kitchen nightmare moment. Set the scene. Let's hear it.
Eva Longoria: Yes, the fried turkey craze was taking off, and I'm like, Thanksgiving's the most important holiday in our household. And so I'm like, I've been a turkey connoisseur my whole life. Yes. The roasting, the frying, the brining, the not brining the butter in the skin. The butter not under the -- I mean, like I've done it all, but it was when this fried turkey thing came out and it was dangerous. You've got to, like, connect the gas line to the thing, and then you fill up your turkey fryer with water, place your turkey in there to see how far it fills up. Then take out your turkey, dump out the water and then you know where your oil line is. It's just a whole thing. And I was like, Oh my God, this is so much work. But I guess I mis-measured in so when I put the turkey in, it just overflowed. Oh my God. And then caught fire from the fire. I'm surprised I didn't burn down my house like I was, and I was by myself. Nobody was home.
Rick Martinez: What?
Eva Longoria: Yeah, because I was like, I was doing a test run before Thanksgiving.
Carla Lalli Music: Wow.
Eva Longoria: This is how serious I take Thanksgiving.
Carla Lalli Music: So prepared.
Eva Longoria: Yes. And it just I mean, it didn't blow up, but it just like caught fire. I was like, oh, my gosh. And it just died down by itself. Wow. Because I was like, I know I don't put water, but do I put flour? Like, I don't I don't even know what to do with an oil fire. What are you supposed to do?
Carla Lalli Music: You can throw kosher salt if you have it. Okay, but were you, like, outside in your driveway?
Eva Longoria: I was outside near the garage, yeah. Okay. At least I was smart enough to be outside.
Rick Martinez: Yeah. Oh, my God. Wow.
Carla Lalli Music: But also smart enough to take all of these precautionary measures. I never knew that part about the water, but that's so smart to check how much it's going to rise.
Eva Longoria: Yeah, how much it's going to rise because it's such a dense piece of poultry. But now I found, I found an electric fryer. And so that's safer, like I feel like I know I won't blow anything up. Like oil may get everywhere, but at least I won't blow the house up.
Rick Martinez: Right, right. And there's no, like, gas tank sitting next to a giant bubbling vat of oil, which has always sort of freaked me out.
Eva Longoria: I was like, I feel like somebody should be doing this. That's not me. It's like gas.
Carla Lalli Music: There you go.
Eva Longoria: And screwing things on. And I was like listening. I was YouTubing everything because I was like, how to connect gas to your fryer. I mean, this is not things normal people should be doing.
Carla Lalli Music: So even though you had the terrifying fire in your test run, did you end up going forth and frying for the actual Thanksgiving Day?
Eva Longoria: I did. I did fry and it was great. I mean, I've never gone back, I'll tell you that. I don't roast my turkey anymore. I don't roast a turkey. I just, also I make like four turkeys. So you don't have the oven space to do four turkeys in eight hours, like. So when you fire turkey, it's about 45 minutes per turkey. So I just boom, boom, boom, boom. And mostly everybody is more excited about my leftovers more than the Thanksgiving. So I make turkey salad sandwiches like an open faced sour dough. And I do [unclear].
Carla Lalli Music: Love.
Eva Longoria: Yes. So everybody's, like, waiting for that, like the second round. And I'm like, we ate all the turkey. We don't have any turkey. They're like, What do you mean we don't have any turkey?
Carla Lalli Music: Rick And I love failures. Like, we love talking about our failures because they're so, like, intertwined with anything that ever worked out for us as well. Like, in just the process of every recipe development, there's the, like, the big idea, the attempt, the fail, the tribulations, and then the success. So with the fire, I love that you just got right back up on the horse and fried again. But was there something about that fail that you think makes you a better chef today?
Eva Longoria: Yeah, I love kitchen fails too, because there's so many beautiful things that can come out of it. Like, I was in Oaxaca and, you know, Oaxacan cheese, which is called quesillo, was an accident.
Rick Martinez: Really.
Eva Longoria: Yes, it was an accident. It was this little young maiden. She must've been 12. She was supposed to watch the cheese, it over curdled. And so she poured boiling water into it to try to get it back to its form. She started she tried to, you know, get it back to like a brie consistency. And it just got stringier and stringier. And she was like, Oh, my God, oh, my God. I'm like, my parents are going to kill me when they come back. And that's how quesillo was made, was it was a mistake. And so now once it gets to a certain point, they pour boiling water and you have to stir it really fast and mold it really fast. And then it comes into that ball and that's why it's kind of stringy and melts deliciously. But that was a mistake.
Rick Martinez: Wow.
Eva Longoria: That's the best cheese in the world.
Rick Martinez: It is 100% the best cheese.
Eva Longoria: But back to the mistakes. Like there's so many mistakes I make. So many, so many mistakes. And then you're like, I kind of like this. But, you know, over COVID when everybody was making sourdough. No, I was making croissants. I mean, it takes three days to make a croissant. So, like, the first day is the the dough. The second day is the folding, the third day is the rolling, proofing, baking. And so you see when you fuck it up because your butter did not incorporate and it's just chunks, then you're like ahh, and they still come out amazing. And so I had like a whole cycle because I was doing it every day. So every day was like, that batch is on the second day. This batch is on the third day, but I'm making the first because I wanted to keep moving it along and I was, was I screwed up and my husband was like, well, I don't know where you screwed up in the process because it's still taste amazing. But like I could see the folds weren't right. I could see the chunks of butter, you know, it wasn't distributed equally. It didn't fold in well. And so that was a fun, you know, months of failure to do croissants.
Rick Martinez: I wish I had been your neighbor during that time. Good God. Like, okay, I'm ready for my daily bag of croissant fuckups.
Eva Longoria: Yes, I can screw them up. And some days, you know what? It's also dependent on the weather, right?
Rick Martinez: Yeah.
Eva Longoria: Because we were in Valle de Bravo, which is a lake in Mexico. And if I made them in Mexico City, obviously the altitude.
Rick Martinez: The altitude, ugh.
Carla Lalli Music: It sounds like you're not you're definitely not afraid of mistakes. We welcome them. And like, if you were encouraging your son or encouraging a listener who has had a failure and wasn't able to even eat the mistake, like I always eat my mistakes. What what would you tell them, just to keep going?
Eva Longoria: I mean, my advice, I think to people is like, obviously to keep going, keep moving. And I think, you know, if you look at the history of food and the evolution of food and the travel of spices, there were these two women. There were the first cookbooks out of Mexico, [phonetic] Josephina, and oh, I forget the other woman. But when they first made their cookbooks in English for U.S. homes, they said, they would say Chile poblano. And if you don't have a poblano where you live, use a bell pepper. It was like food is meant to evolve and it's sort of like a scarcity. Like you don't have that in your region, I don't have chipotle, so I'm going to use something else to add heat, you know, or whatever. And I think that's how new dishes get. I mean, that's how Tex-Mex came to be, right? That's how California Mexican food came to be like, it's just different.
Carla Lalli Music: I think I'm going to get a pillow or one of those needlepoint frames from my kitchen that just says accidents happen.
Rick Martinez: Exactly.
Eva Longoria: Yeah! Yes, they do. All the time.
Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. Eat your mistakes.
Eva Longoria: Eat your mistakes. That's a better needlepoint.
Rick Martinez: Yeah, eat your mistakes. God.
Carla Lalli Music: Well, Eva, thank you so much for spending this time with us. And like, it seems like Thanksgiving is a far way away. But let it be a cautionary tale to everybody, you're starting your planning now. Just, you know, do the water check, make sure somebody is home. Get out the fire extinguisher.
Eva Longoria: Yes! Maybe when doing something dangerous, have a fire extinguisher. Make a note of somebody's home.
Rick Martinez: Yeah.
Eva Longoria: Just in case.
Rick Martinez: Have a partner.
Eva Longoria: Have a partner.
Carla Lalli Music: That's good advice.
Eva Longoria: Well, thank you all so much. It was fun to talk to you.
Carla Lalli Music: So before we put on our jacket and boots and march on out of here, it is time for one more segment. And that segment is No Thank You, Please. And the ingredient we are talking about today is.
Rick Martinez: Raisins.
Carla Lalli Music: I love a raisin.
Rick Martinez: I do, too.
Caller Lalli Music: Listen, I know the idea of a secret raisin or a raisin in a place where they did not think it was going to be is very upsetting to a lot of people. Like sometimes in savory food, especially if there's just like a free radical raisin, it might be a little jarring. Right.
Rick Martinez: Right. I think it's finding that balance.
Carla Lalli Music: Yes.
Rick Martinez: So, like, I've used it in more of an Argentinean style or a Spanish style picadillo, which I like pairing, but very judiciously, maybe a quarter to a third of a cup of raisins with olives.
Carla Lalli Music: Right.
Rick Martinez: Then you get like that salty, briny, plus, like sweet pop of raisin in this, like, very savory, meaty situation.
Carla Lalli Music: Yeah. And I think we under use the idea of chopping up a raisin. Like, in order to include a raisin in something, it doesn't have to be, like, a whole plump raisin. It could be just like you're getting into craisin territory, or they're spread out. They're they're they're a little bit of sweetness, but you're not, like, getting a hot raisin.
Rick Martinez: Right. You know, that's really interesting. Just the idea of treating a raisin. So, like, raisins are actually very common in moles. And what normally happens is you fry the raisin in a little bit of lard, and so it becomes a little bit toasty, a little bit savory because of the lard. But then you're also boiling it and then completely blending it. So to your point, like, you're distributing the sweetness. And what it really does is it just adds sweetness and acidity to the mole without, like, having a raisin in your mouth.
Carla Lalli Music: Totally. Yeah. I also think we should investigate whether, as human beings on earth, and maybe specifically, Americans, are just anti-raisin because of the wrinkles. Like we have such an obsession in this country with youth and like, smooth foreheads and like the whole frickin thing, that we just can't embrace a wrinkle. And the wrinkle really comes with age and with concentration of everything. Like the water has evaporated, that tasteless, sort of useless plumping and just taking up space. You've got a raisin that is distilled down to the essence, right? There's a lot of wisdom in a raisin. And I think, like, let it go. It's okay to have lines around your mouth and it's okay to love a raisin.
Rick Martinez: But for those that might want to find that skin care treatment fountain of youth for their raisins, what I have done in pastries is I have soaked them, which I actually really enjoy because you're adding an additional flavor. So, for example, in a rum cake and in a [phonetic] stolen, even in oatmeal cookies, I have soaked the raisins, sometimes in hot apple cider or sometimes in rum, sometimes in a liquor. And you just soak it in warm liquid for about 15 to 30 minutes and it plumps up and those wrinkles just melt away. And now your raisin is plump and all those wrinkles are gone and you look 30 days younger.
Carla Lalli Music: I think I'm kind of the weirdo like I don't like chocolate covered strawberries or like fruit flavor in my chocolate, but I do like the kind of chocolate candy bar that has raisins and nuts.
Rick Martinez: Oh, it's yeah, isn't it the Cadbury bar that has the, the almonds and the reasons, that is really, really good.
Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, I loved that. I loved those.
Rick Martinez: No, those are super delicious.
Carla Lalli Music: And I think if you know, it's there, again, this is sort of like a big part of it. And I think a big part of people's objection is if you're eating carrot cake and you're surprised by a raisin, like you need to do some self work, but there are likely to be I mean, they're probably they're very likely to be there.
Rick Martinez: What she's saying, callers, is you're wrong.
Carla Lalli Music: I can see this similar to our marketing problem about salad. So we had earlier. So maybe we just have to like rebrand raisin. I think it's gotten a bad rap and I understand it, but if you just were to call them dehydrated grapes, would more people eat them?
Rick Martinez: They might be more likely to. I also think that I mean, at least for me, I remember getting those little boxes of the Sun Maid raisins, like as a snack. And I'm just like, I don't want this as a snack. Put it in a cookie.
Carla Lalli Music: Right? Oh, God. If someone gives that to you on Halloween, that is the biggest fuck you ever.
Rick Martinez: I know. I mean, that really started an aversion to me until, like, I actually was like, oh, no, they're really good in things, but like.
Carla Lalli Music: But not in this, like, weird sticky box.
Rick Martinez: No. And like, your fingers, like, turn all gross and raisiny, like because you're like digging out like the raisins out of this tiny little box, like, no, gross.
Carla Lalli Music: Oh, well, I hope we haven't scared off another advertiser, Sun Maid. We do love a raisin.
Rick Martinez: We do. We do. We really do. Just not in those tiny little boxes. And that's it for this week's episode of Borderline Salty.
Carla Lalli Music: You can find recipes and recommendations from this week's episode in our show notes.
Rick Martinez: And this will be our last new episode for now. Mom and Dad need to take a little break and dip our toes into the salty, warm water.
Carla Lalli Music: But if you love the show and you want to be notified the minute we are back on, it would behoove you to subscribe. And if you haven't listened to all of the previous episodes, do that now, check out the bank of previous episodes for more of our advice and banter and laughter. And we can't wait to talk to you again.
Rick Martinez: And we will very soon. Borderline Salty is an original production by Pineapple Street Studios. We are 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 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: We appreciate, [phonetic] Pamela, Mr. Hamm, Abby and Brian for calling in this week. And we really appreciate every single person who has helped us make the first 20 episodes of this show. We love you so much.
Rick Martinez: This would not be possible without you. Thanks to all of you for continuing to listen, sending us your questions, sending us pictures of your nails. We love you so much. We can't wait to see you again.
Carla Lalli Music: It's not farewell. It's. See you later.
Rick Martinez: Ciao. For now.
Carla Lalli Music: Ciao for now.