OSBonus: Oops All Cooking Special!

I think what I'm hearing is like we as a podcast need to invent scallop pasta as a shape so that uh red is backwards justified Cyclops Pasta. Right, you're right. That's on me. We invent Cyclops pasta that looks more like a Cyclops. A cycle. You have to have like a sprig of some herb jammed through the eye socket so it's like Odyssean pasta. Ah yeah. Pastel Nemo, pastel Nemo! That's it! We have it! Yeah. Right itself.

Hello and welcome to a very special cooking bonus episode of the Overly Sarcastic Podcast. Our regular crew is all present, red, blue, and indigo myself. And we have a very special guest here, uh and a very appropriate guest for an episode all about food, uh, Max Miller, aka Tasting History. Max, welcome to the show. Woo! Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah! We are very excited to have yes, your expertise uh on this particular episode.

Uh but before we get into some questions from our lovely listeners, all about uh the things we like to eat and make to eat and acquire to eat and all those various things, um I thought I'd have to do that. Steel to eat. Jean Valjean style. I was gonna say. Just a loaf of bread. He didn't eat that bread though. He didn't even get to eat the bread. The real tragedy. Yeah. Yeah, his his niece, nephew, nibbling, I don't know. Anyway. What? You gotta gender neutral it. It's twenty twenty six.

But regardless, uh we are gonna be going around real quick and talking about our favorite things to cook. Um to start us off, uh Blue, why don't you let us know what your favorite things are? Sure. Yeah, uh I like to keep it uh pretty straightforward and simple. I've learned over time that

complex cooking and I don't get along. I just I it it makes too much of a mess. I'm cleaning every surface so that I can put the next thing on there and it's awful. So what I like to do is something nice, simple, but delicious and more fun to to make by yourself than to to get made or or get delivered and for me, that is a beautiful pizza. I love making pizza with my wife Cyan. The way that we do it is essentially we get one of those nice pizza stones

Which is just a giant like stone thingy, the circular little disc. You toss it in the oven on like five hundred preheating for an hour, and you take it out, put it on the little uh stovetop, dribble some uh uh Drizzle, that's the that's the right verb. Drizzle some uh some semolina flour on it, throw your dough on there, you get the nice crust underneath.

really just murder that sucker with spices, like as much Italian seasonings and oregano and basil as you can. Like literally throw in the Italian seasoning mix and then throw in more basil and oregano on afterwards. Um throw it in there, put it on broil, take it out, and it's just so nice to have a wonderful homemade pizza. It doesn't take

that long and it's so tasty. The cleanup is so easy. You just wash the stone, you throw the cutting board in the in the dishwasher and it's amazing. It's so delicious and so So few components. It's like the epitome of like the the one pot meal. Uh but for us uh it is so much fun to make. Sign and I absolutely love uh making pizza and that is my favorite thing that I actually enjoy cooking, which for me is a high bar because the complexity overwhelms my cleanliness uh instincts in the kitchen.

First off, next time in I'm in town, you're you're making that. Hell yeah, dude. That's not a question. That's a that's a demand. And second, do you do you make the dough from scratch? Sometimes when we when we can be fussed to do Hardest part. Yeah, usually we'll get like a like a a white pizza dough or like a sourdough um pizza dough and and go for that if it's like, Yeah, let's just have pizza in like ten minutes. Um No, no, no.

We we can do it. The other thing that I was considering talking about was uh cinnamon rolls, uh which uh Cyan, my wife, loves to make, and we'll we'll make everything on that from scratch, like down to the dough. Uh But usually for pizza it's like it's dinner, it's night, we wanna we wanna have some food, whereas like cinnamon buns like that can be a multi hour process. Like we're already taking the day, we might as well indulge. So

As the uh probably the person who cooks the least on this call, I have to set the low bar. Um for uh there's a variety of reasons. Uh you know, my my dad bakes a lot and as I was when I was little, he would uh teach me how to bake and how to cook also, but like baking is what I

stuck with. But also like I live by myself and it's really hard to cook for one person. Yeah. So I I've like cooked for myself. I'll make myself breakfast on high motivation days. But the thing like the highest Effort thing that I've most consistently made has been the the product of necessity and the difficulty of uh eating by myself.

uh which is I keep buying like whole bags of apples and then eating like two apples and then being like that's enough apples for like ever and then they start getting wrinkly and I'm like, I gotta do something with these apples or I'm gonna have to throw'em out.

Apple crumbles. I have made so many apple crumbles and then usually they don't make it past the end of the day. Like, it's definitely not good for me, but like it's mostly fruits, so it can't be that bad, right? Um For house soon before you eat all of them in a day. It means three weeks later I'm gonna be making a delicious apple crumble and then eating the entire thing one spatula s serving at a time.

Yeah. If an apple a day is supposed to keep the doctor away, you're kinda just like preloading the week with in the apple crumble quantity. You know, you're you're getting it all in early. On the medical advice of my doctor, I eat one apple crumble We have to do a telehealth vote because I've eaten so many apples that I'm repelling all doctors within a ten mile radius. For me, you know, you say that you are the one that cooks the least.

I bet I am the one that cooks the least when it is not for my show. Sure. All the time for the show. I almost never actually anymore cook for myself, which is actually really sad. Um When I do it's usually so I like baking. So I I bake cookies. Chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies or like on a special occasion.

I will make Berox, which are these they're they're from the Folga Germans, which were Germans who lived in Russia. Um and then they became very popular when they moved here in in the Midwest, and they're Essentially, like a really rich semi-sweet dough that is filled with usually like beef and onions and cheese and mustard. And they're f they are addictive and delicious. Um Five. They are Kind of a pain in the butt. I don't know. Yeah. It's like the the calzone of the Volga.

Yeah, very much so. It it kinda looks like a cow zone actually. Yeah, yeah. I must have talked about how many times I've sabotaged making Because despite having been taught how to bake Uh the fact that there's a reason why you let the dough sit in the fridge.

for multiple hours never clicked with me. I was like, but I gotta go speedy. If I just do all the folds now and bake'em, they'll turn out pretty good. And they were pretty good. It's just all the butter melted out of them, so they ended up frying in like a quarter inch of butter the entire time. The one time I waited, I was like, Wow, these croissants came out really good.

Croissants are one of those foods and and just general puff pastry, either puff or phyllo, that just go buy it. It will be better than you can make, quite honestly. It just is. It's kind of like french fries. You can make sure Yeah. You are not beating the like seventy year old Greek man who's making those phylodough pastries. You cannot do better in your own home no matter what. Especially even even in in Greece, a lot of those seventy year old

They're using store bought filo because they're not crazy.'Cause the a machine can just do it more consistently than you can. It's sad, but it's true. Uh Well this is directly tied into what my favorite thing to cook is because I I was going back and forth between a couple of things'cause I really enjoy cooking as kind of the way that I wind down my day. So I do cook a lot of dinners. But the thing that I've made the most is I'm the designated Baklava.

provider of my family. And I do, like many old Greek women, um, think that I make it best and anyone who makes it any other way is wrong. Ha ha ha. But we use store bought phyllo because we're not ashamed. Um, but I I do think that my favorite thing to cook is any sort of like one pan pasta. Uh at some point in the last few years I've something finally clicked in my brain and I understood how to get that glossy sauce.

Uh, and now I'm now I'm addicted to like, oh, it's one pa it's one pan, it's cooking really fast, a little uh spicy rigatoni moment, um, you know, put some frozen peas in there and call it a full meal.

Um so I'm a I'm a big proponent of the one pan pasta and I recently found out that my uh younger brother who has just had to start cooking for himself for the first time is also discovering their joy. So it's a nice it's a nice familial through line. Everyone could benefit from a good one pan pasta.

One time uh Cyan made a uh cache pepe for my dad and like for a month afterward he's like, I need to try that pasta again. I'm like, it's just cache pepe He's like, I know, but she made it really well. But yeah. like a a John Henry scenario but for like a machine versus the old uh philo artisan. Making the most perfect puff pastry known to man while a pasta maker in the corner is just effortlessly cranking it out by the yard.

I mean there are when we were in uh not not in Greece, uh but when we were in Vienna, someone was making strudel and they made the the dough from scratch and you know, they they did an amazing job. Um so it it it it is done. It's just so rare and so often Like even like even when we were gr in Greece, I w I went to like a lot of small little r restaurants and stuff that it was just, you know, an old lady and oh yeah, that's just frozen dovak there I Yeah.

Use it, frozen go. I see. And it's because it's it's because yes, they can make it, but not at the scale that they need. Making that dough. Yeah. So I get it. I feel like there's not a lot of like textural or flavor changes from making it homemade versus just using the store bought too and the way that. Well that's That's just hard. You can't you can't you can't taste or feel the difference. And so it's like

I mean like when my parents would make pie dough for stuff, usually they'd like make enough for two pies and then they just freeze half of it for potentially months and like that next pie that got made didn't taste any different than the first one. It's not like it's bad for it. Uh

Well a lot of very fun things to come out of the collective tasting history and OSP kitchens, but um the main thing that we churn out here is questions from you guys, the listeners. So we're gonna get into some of those. Uh in this first one. Also i if you can't get questions made homemade store bought is fine. Um yeah.

Our first question actually comes from one of our lovely patrons if you'd like to put the the channel, consider becoming a patron for a chance to have your question read first on a future episode. Um this one comes from Neurosmorgusboard. To all, if you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, which one would it be and why? Like what? You don't have to cook it, but you only get to eat one one meal, I guess. Uh one.

So that was my thing. Like how granular are we going? Like i if I say charcuterie board, is it like only cheese forever or can I think you're allowed to call like charcuterie board as a concept. You're not limited to like just the Gorgonzola and that's it. It's gonna be charcuterie board and I won't even be upset. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Mm. Yeah. That's like the the one thing I never tire of.

For me it's uh easily a Thai musam and curry. Um I if I can say Thai curry and go that wide, okay, sure. But if I have to pick one, I'll go for muscam and that's that's my particular favorite. It is the food where on any given day, like if I know I'm getting Thai food for dinner, I obviously won't get it for lunch. But if I've already gotten it for lunch, I am fine also getting it for dinner again. What kind of fucked up logic puzzle situation are you inflicting on?

I won't spoil myself if I know I'm getting it for dinner, but if I've already have it, it's like, oh, well, I can have it again now. Because it's not like I'm spoiling this thing in the future I'm looking forward to. to. I it's a special thing between my dad and I, because he uh he was in Thailand for a couple years when he was young and he developed a taste for Thai cuisine. He shared it with me when I was a teenager, was old enough to appreciate like spice.

uh one I upgraded uh from like uh chicken ton uh chicken dentures. Um and it's a a very tasty thing that's also like a little family thing. So uh as tasty as it is, it's also like, yeah, this is the food that my dad also likes. And it's very, very spiced and flavorful, so I I will never tire of it.

It is super spice, but it's usually not that hot, which I love which is why I like Massamon. It's like I mean you c you can make it hot, but usually it is one of the lesser hot but it's still like packed with spices and flavor. Yeah. It's my favorite curry. Yeah. Oh I can't make it. I'll take you to the place nearby. That's good. That's fine, that's fine. Every coarse meal with the pizza and the Thai muscle. Yes, yes.

Yeah yeah yeah if you eat the curry then you have pizza in the middle you can have curry again at the end of the Yeah,'cause then Exactly. It just has to have a break in the middle. Um I think for my part it'd be like a classic uh American diner breakfast, you know, some sort of breakfast potato. Yeah. mm bacon or sausage or something. Just like just very that that plate I could eat ad infinitum every single day, no problem. Um Probably the smarter choice. Yeah, yeah.

We have similar ideas of like we've got to get multiple kinds of food items on one plate. What's the plate look like? It's just that yours is a large wooden board and mine is um some sort of circle. Circle versus rectangle. Cheese fruits. I think saying charcuterie i it it opens up a a world. Yeah. Sometimes there's like a little bunch of grapes on there. Sometimes there's a little toasty thing. I love the little toasty things.

They never give you enough toasties though, you know. They're there's a they're always like a decorative little spread of three toasties and then the rest of the plate is just piled with cheese and I'm like, Sir, what do you expect me to do with this? Making Scooby Doo ass sandwiches. Yeah, I'm pretty sure like Cinderella where Gus has like all of the cheeses stacked up. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, picture.

There was a flash game on like Disney.com that was one of the extended like Lilo and Stitch alien guys, and you would like they would drop sandwich ingredients from the top. the screen and you had to like slide along the bottom to stack the tallest sandwich. And it's killing me that I can't remember what the name of that game was because it's so vivid in my memory and it's exactly this scenario. There you go.

Huh. Ah well this next question comes from wanted easy to say username. To all, what is the best pasta shape? Or shapes plural because different shapes go with different sauces and occasions and everything. But which ones, in your opinion, are the best? So what are you guys' best pasta shapes? You will never hear me say no to gnocchi. It's good Skokie is good.

But I always call it Cyclops Pasta because it kinda looks like a Cyclops face with like one really big eye and then like a Uh it's basically just macaroni with delusions of grandeur, but I really like how it looks and it like when you make mac and cheese with it, it holds the sauce so I like it. Yeah.

Well it so it's it's kind of like if you made like a thick macaroni and then you bent it sort of asymmetrically, so the bottom part ends up curved up like a little smile, and the top part is just a big round aperture. So it kind of looks like the head of a smiling cycle. Uh so I just call it Cyclon's Post. It's called scallop pasty. You can look up what it looks like. Yeah. Okay, just Google Cyclops Post. Yeah. Look up like a um a shell. I think what you're looking for is shell pasta. No.

I've no okay fine. Just Google Cyclops Pasta and you will see photos of what I'm talking about. I see shellbows pasta. What? Cyclops Pasta. You're ruining my Google uh search history, Red. Is it Farfalone? No It might actually be a good one. It's a family thing. Maybe only your family. And Well now I'm thinking that wait a minute, wait a minute. Has Google been lying to me? Because now they're like this is all just actually skeleton. I think it's just pasta with scallops in it.

Fred, you've been psychosis into thinking a pasta shape exists. Despite you in real life. I'm gonna put this in our group chat so you can all see I'm not insane. Do you mean the kid at it on Riverside? Look up my works ye mighty. I mean yeah, that's one image result out of like hundreds of knots. What kind of pasta? I just can't. No, no. It's cool. Yeah. Uh this i don't have the name for this, but this is uh it is a a kind of pasta. Oh my god

This is gonna kill me'cause I've used this in things before and I just simply never internalized the box name. Um Okay, see? Who's not crazy? No. Anyway, it's definitely not called scallop pasta, it's just that all of the results for Cyclops Pasta are scallop recipes, except for this one Facebook image of how they look like Cyclops. Anyway. Somebody else should answer this question.

I like orchietti. The kind of simply because it holds the the the sauce pretty well. And I like the um A little bit of the texture, like that there's some I don't know, it like bends in and out when you when you bite it. And Fusili, I think. Those are those are the two that I enjoy. But I'm not gonna lie, there is no pasta that I don't like. Even my least favorite is probably like Spaghetti or angel hair like the long ones. Just because I make a mess. Oh yeah.

Even those. I'm I'm like that's fine, I'll make it Hard to get on the fork. Uh Red, you were looking for Lumaque. L-U-M-A-C-H-E is a pasta variety. Snail shaped. Okay. Okay. And then often how we got to a different kind of like mollusk situation. Jason. It it works really great with m as mac and cheese. Um I believe. I've always liked Delini. Um I've recently been made fun of a lot because my boyfriend thinks it's a very silly name for a pasta shape, but uh I feel it's very scoopable.

Didalini. It is very fun to say. Fun to say dalini. Uh but it's very scoopable in a way. Like it kind of has a similar effect um to a lot of the ones Max the Name that like hold the sauce really well. Um But I like that you can you can make a big pot of Didalini and it kinda feels infinite. No matter how much Diedolini you eat, there's always a lot more Diedolini left in the pot. That said, my favorite pasta is actually

A ravioli because if there is a pumpkin or butternut squash ravioli in a butter sage sauce, yeah. That's what Max is getting. Peak. Yeah, no for sure. I've eaten so many Trader Joe's raviolis is just a full meal in my life. You can't you gotta oh throw it up I love a good brand. I will shout out the Trader Joe's gnocchi, the the white gorgonzola and the the red uh tomato sauce ones are both good.

The the thing with like the the insane the legitimately insane variety of pasta shapes on display. Obviously Italy's a big cul uh big country, big culture of food that is hyper specified by like, you know, one town to the next. It is so funny to imagine people just being like, I'm gonna do something fucking weird with the shapes today, and then that becomes the thing for the next three hundred years that this town is all about. That's why I f I feel like at some point in time

it became like a thing. When you hit the age of sixteen, you have to invent a new shape. If you want to be Italian, you have to invent a new shape. And a lot of those shapes have made it down to us, so now we have like ten thousand Yeah, it's like the equivalent of a PhD dissertation. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, it has to be new. And and it's almost exactly like something else that's out there. Mm-hmm. And that's the thing. It's like, oh it's this. No, it's this. And they look exactly it's the same picture. But no, there's a slight deviation. I think what I'm hearing is like we as a podcast need to invent scallop pasta as a shape so that uh red is backwards justified. That needs to be Cyclops pasta, actually. Well you're right. You're right. That's on me.

We invent Cyclops pasta that looks more like a Cyclops. Cycle. You have to have like a sprig of some herb jammed through the eye socket so it's like Odysseyan pasta. Yeah. Fastel Nemo! Pastel Nemo! We have it. Yeah. Writes itself. Recipe testing coming soon, but uh sooner are more questions. Just real qu put a uh a little exclamation point on it, I texted my family group chat like time sensitive, what's the name for Cyclops Pause? Did they know?

Uh no actually, so it's a good thing that Blue fan. You're welcome. Yeah, they're like, What was time sensitive about that? It's like don't worry about it, I definitely Comments we're gonna roast you at the end of this podcast with you not knowing the shape of your favorite uh the shape name of your favorite pasta. I think we could hope hope for worse things than a comment section full of people guessing different pasta shapes. Um And if you make pasta I'll ne mo. Take a photo of it.

Fan art desk Monday. Yeah, yeah. Pasta fan art. That might be a And our plate Monday more like that. Well, yeah. Yeah.

This next question comes from Space Wizard. What is the strangest meal you've ever eaten? Uh I had Cyclops Pasta one time. Yeah. Not not to not to be very American, but when we were in Iceland it did take me a while to adjust to how much everything was fish. So I did at one point order a fish stew that was served to me in a skillet that had not a drop of moisture in it. It was paste. I did my best. Um

But uh yeah, that was pr that probably uh takes the cake, uh currently. Just it's so it was the furthest from what I thought I was ordering. Yeah. Um I think for me it was uh and now I was young. I was like twelve years old and not super adventurous. Um, and I was in the Philippines staying with a family and they took us to this place where they um Did a whole pig, which was fantastic. But the nose was sliced off. Like before it was fully cooked. And and and and Some of that. Uh and that was

An interesting texture that I I remember not enjoying. Also, I was just in Jordan and had a very interesting meal. Um It's the first time I've ever had lamb brake. And lamb tongue, but it was like pulled straight from the head so you could very much see where it was coming from. And and and I was like, And and you just eat it? And he's like, Yes, you have to because you're the host. And it's rude if you don't. So it's like, All right, here we go. Digging in.

It's possible you were being punked, but uh That's what I thought. No, no. And but it was like in a in a group'cause I was leading a group so there were like forty, you know, people there all watching and I was like Had to like I have to do this. And I'm I'm a big the thing is I'm a big texture. Yep. Sure. If the texture is not my my my bag, uh I I have trouble hiding my reaction on my face. Mm-hmm. Um and so the the brains especially. It was like, oh Yeah.

Because the flavor is fine. It doesn't really have a flavor. Beef tongue uh is pretty common in like um Jewish deli and stuff like that. So I've I've eaten it a lot, but one year my mom got beef tongue that had not yet been sliced and she was like, I think next time We'll just wait for the prank'cause it's too much clearly part of a body before it's been turned into lunch meat, you know? Well and you have to s you have to strip off the taste buds? Yeah.

I I'm not sure she did that'cause I remember there being a certain taste bud like texture that I was rather not fond of storing. Because I was like, I know it's dead, but I can't shake the feeling that my sandwich is also tasting me. No, in a similar vein, uh when I was in China I had a couple meals where like I would eat like coagulated blood would be an ingredient and some soup. And like that's texturally not my favorite, but like taste wise is fine.

I don't know that I would say it's the weirdest meal though, just because like it was very normal circumstances I was eating it under. It's just that it's not part of uh cuisine I was used to necessarily. So I think the weirdest meal experience for me was when I had to sit alone in a parking lot and try and eat um New England style clam shower with a fork out of a little to-go cup because I misunderstood the timing of a ferry and all of my friends had already left.

So it's just a You misunder m misunderstood the concept of soup, it seems. Uh quick moving and uh I assume that she was having a very bad day. Woman who had sold me the clam shelter. And I ha did not have the courage to go back to her little booth and ask for a spoon instead of a for a little to-go plastic fork. So I figured, hey, it's a pretty chunky uh soup, we're gonna just make the best of it. I guess the good news is you can just kind of drink soup in a pinch.

That was the that was the real coup. Um but I'm I'm more of a Manhattan clam chowder girl, so it was really losing on all fronts. Really I don't think I've ever heard of the first one. Never met anyone. I know I'm the outlier. I I we um there was a a clam chowder exclusive establishment at the Jersey Shore my family frequented for years.

And we always had to get one quart of Manhattan style just for me. And uh I'm w I'm willing to hold it down. It just means more there's more tomato and clams where that came from. Um, I'm struggling to think of the weirdest meal I've had. What I'm what I'm coming up with instead is various times going to to Greece with my mom for for summers to visit family.

And we'd get like a whole fried fish bronzino delicious. I developed a taste for it at a young age. My mom would always eat the head of the fish, including the eyeballs, because that's how she grew up doing it on the island. So I didn't actually I don't think I ever tried it, or if I did, I repressed it. But the thought of like eating the fish heads, like all parts included, was like, no, no, I I might rather die.

That was in Greece too. Oh. And I ended up I ended up like loving it. I was I was at first I was like, Trying to do it. I gotta get over myself. There's a lot of foods where I'm like, if you don't tell me what this is, I'll probably have a nice time with it. But once I start overthinking it, I won't be able to stop myself. So Very much so. But a lot of uh interesting culinary adventures out there. Um

This next question comes from Death Ray Man to all, what is your most disastrous cooking incident? Mine would probably be somehow managing to put in simultaneously too much and too little water when making rice, making it soft and a bit mushy in one bite, and during the same bite it became unbearably cold. Uh mine well I and I have so many to choose from

But I'm gonna go one that is not associated with the show. Uh'cause that's that's kinda not fair. Um it it's one of the first times I ever made a pie. I was just learning how to bake. And I got this recipe from a cookbook that was like all pies, some pie place in New York. And it was all these different interesting pies. And one of them was a rose and apple pie. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. And um so I made it and it called for um I think it was a tablespoon of rose water.

And so I added a tablespoon of rose water. Or at least I thought I added a tablespoon of rose water. What it actually was was a tablespoon of rose oil.'Cause I had never cooked with it. And as it's baking The house smelled delightful. It was basically a potpourri pie. But then Jose and I took a bite and we we just looked at each other and was like Oh my god! What have I done? What have I done? Your always is such a weird flavor too.

Well and I use it all the time in cooking because so many historic recipes use Sure, yeah. Um and today in the Middle East it's used all the time. Um so I actually really like the flavor, but rose water and rose oil are too uh uh very different ingredients. Um and I thought this is the most expensive pie ever because a tablespoon of rose oil is like sixty dollars.

It's like if they were like vanilla extract and you were like, Got it, vanilla beans coming right up Um But but the house smelled great for days to come. Nice.

It's comparatively very minor,'cause I I haven't had that many truly disastrous cooking mishaps. The worst I've really had has been like, oh I I'm I trusted a recipe and it didn't turn out great and now I've wasted the ingredients on But like The one that I remember being kind of like baffled by, sort of like, I didn't realize that could happen, is I I found the

accidentally found the upper limit on uh uh the temperature that you can melt chocolate at'cause um I gotten uh a microwave uh because uh when I was uh living with my parents uh early days of COVID I was almost fully nocturnal and that meant I would routinely get hungry at like one in the morning and so

Myself dark lunch, as I called it. And eventually I just ended up buying a microwave for my own use, and immediately they were like, wow, this thing is so useful. And I'm like, Yeah, I know, it's almost like you could have had one at any point. But one of the things that was useful is I was using it for baking and I was using it to melt chocolate. And at one point, uh I had melted some chocolate, and normally it worked out fine. And I was just trying to make like a I want to say

That involved melted chocolate as a recipe. And I was just kind of stirring it to uh smooth it out. And I noticed there was this odd graininess, and I was like, oh, I'll just stir it out. And the graininess. Spread through the entire bowl and curdled it because clearly what I'd done is the center of it had gotten hot enough that it had like destabilized the chocolate, and chocolate's like a complex like molecule. It's it's like wax.

And if it starts curdling, it spreads almost like a crystallization process. I didn't know that could happen. Uh and I was in this weird situation where I was like, well it still tastes like chocolate, but it's texturally unusable. So I had to start that part over again. And with with melting chocolate, you could literally have like

Two pounds of chocolate melting and it's perfect. And if even one drop of water touches that chocolate, the whole thing is ruined within seconds. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So that was interesting. Didn't even occur to me. Obviously it had to have a temperature upper limit. I'd just never gotten close to it before'cause I was used to like like making it in a in a oh my god, I haven't used uh Double boiler, yeah.

Yeah. So that was that was what I was used to, but I was like, I'll take a shortcut and uh it led to a long delay. But with a double boiler you do run the risk of the steam condensing on the side. Yeah. I've got two, one from school and one much more recently. Uh classic like rose water rose oil scenario where for a home economics class we were making like Johnny cakes or something and we did the classic baking powder baking soda. I didn't know that

completely ruined and we're like, Why is this so bad? And the teacher's like, Have I failed you that you don't know the difference? And I'm like, Yeah, what's the difference? So like even after having done it, I'm like, what are you talking about? Those two things sound the same. But um a couple of years ago I was making um this as a birthday gift for my mom a pot roast.

Um, and I thought it'd be like fun and cool to to make this thing that she would often make for me and I was trying to like de glaze with red wine and I had apparently the skillet way too hot, which is how I ended up with a suspicious amount of red wine on her 12 foot high ceiling. Um I don't think it would even have been possible for me to clean that up without help. Ha ha. So it's like, oh honey, this is delicious. I'm like, yeah, great, don't look up. It's the most sitcom ass situation.

Apparently it tasted great, uh but yeah, that was the the collateral damage. This is why I like pizza instead. Yeah. Yeah. Well I this is like the second podcast Up and then you can kind of like stick it onto the ceiling to go with the red one. That's Oh the ceiling. This is the second like podcast in a month where I've almost said it's hard to mess up pizza and the first time my dad

who's from New York had to text me and be like, You know that's not correct And I was like, I do, I do. That's why he said it wasn't true. But uh pizza's harder to fuck up than de glazing a skillet, I will say. Yeah. Uh similar to to Blue I have the classic mixed up salt and sugar in a cookie recipe and so had, you know, a cup of salt, a a t tablespoon of sugar.

Uh not great. A great sleeper thing to give out to anyone who walks into your apartment and be like, Oh try these cookies I just made and then you know, obviously they're terrible. Um but the the reason Oh, go on. I don't know. I I the the real story is that I I kinda kinda steal one that was maybe an all time moment of my mom's. Um we were baking a cake together, going from scratch.

baking powder, baking soda, flour, all the ingredients that look very similar. And I guess we must have at some point mixed up some large amount of baking powder or baking soda. Um we put the we put the cake in the pan, we put it in the oven, we leave it. It's cooking. Um, my mom and I are turned away doing something else. My younger brother looks into the oven and he says, Is the um cake supposed to be

Boiling? And my mom, with all the confidence of someone who is horribly wrong, says, Yeah, it's supposed to do that. Um two minutes later explosion of cake batter all over the interior of the oven. Uh they're not supposed to be boiling, they're supposed to be baking. Yeah. My uh we went on a camping trip when I was a kid and my uncle made fish, uh fried fish, you know, in a

Cast iron skillet, delicious. Uh and then um that was that was for dinner. The next morning he decides that he's gonna make biscuits. So he makes biscuits in the same cast iron skillet, but doesn't Yeah. We had fish biscuits that were just Yeah. It's rough. Someone in Iceland is like, write that down, write that down. Make sure to call it a stew. Yeah.

Uh yeah. Well for all of our enjoyment of cooking, we've got our fair share of cooking disasters as well. I think it just kinda comes with the experimental territory. Um But uh this next question comes from Abstract Abomination, uh for all crunchy or creamy peanut butter.

Crunchies. Really? Premium. Yeah. Creamy. It's for me. Crunchy in almost every scenario. I even use it when making Yeah. Supposed to use creamy, I'll use crunchy and I'll even add whole peanut but That's how dedicated you are to the crunchy cause. I am I am dedicated to peanut butter in general. Uh peanut butter I believe is one of the this this that and hummus are the greatest inventions Of mankind, period.

Yeah, I'd say so. Um for me, like smooth peanut butter is such a treat uh be because um I mentioned on a recent podcast episode that my mom went through some organic phases when I was little. And also crucially, my dad and my sister have never liked peanut butter.

And despite the fact that I have always been ride or die I love PB and J's, my mom was like, if you know, half of us aren't gonna eat it, I'm not gonna put it in the fridge. So PB and J until I moved out on my own was an incredibly rare treatment. And I had very strong opinions about it and I liked the smooth textured one the most.

Uh'cause like we would have almond butter, which for the record, I don't know if almond butter is good under any circumstances, but it never gets rid of that sort of grittiness, the grainy texture. Um Yeah. So for me the fact that you can make butter smooth peanut butter is like an incredible technology. I do like smooth when it is on like if I'm having like wonder bread and peanut butter and jelly or like those uncrustables.

Yeah. The more delicate the bread, the smoother the filling has to be because otherwise you risk damaging the bread. That's why I make my PBJ PB and J's with toasted sourdough. I've done that. I think it's a good idea. Like fry it in a skillet sometimes. To like really like get the interior nice and uh gooey. Because I am thoroughly lazy but I I have had it that way and it is delicious, but I am so good. Fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I jumping back to the like peanut butter and hummus is like the greatest inventions of mankind. I'm imagining some like guy at the Neolithic like planting seeds in the ground and his friends like, What the fuck are you doing? And he's like, No, no, no, trust me, it's gonna be worth it. I have a long con, but I I have a vision. Just hear me out. Let me cook. Literally. Shout out to George Washington Carver the God's strongest soldier in the war for peanuts.

I'm really enamored by the idea of using crunchy peanut butter in a cookie because I feel like texturally that's gotta add something to it. Uh Sounds delightful. Oh, it does. Don't be seduced by the crunchy side.

I I have a question related to this. Uh this comes from me because I been uh this whole time we've been asking him or think about it, but I my boyfriend and I have had a lot of back and forth arguments about whether or not once you've opened the peanut butter and used it once, you store it in the fridge or in the uh pantry. 'Cause I always grew up we kept it in the fridge. But apparently that's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. So so it it it it depends. So there are certain brands like Laura Scudders you need to keep in the In the fridge. It depends basically on if it's if the oil is going to separate, you really need to put it into the fridge'cause it it can go rancid. If you're getting gifted. Yeah. Or Skippy or anything. They have th those things are so processed and it's so filled with salt and sugar that it's not going to get any bacteria or anything and the fat won't um

It's not gonna uh go bad. And if you are a true devotee, it's not going to last long enough for anything to go bad because you should be able to go through an entire half gallon of peanut butter in six days. You know how they keep finding like like jars of honey in like Egyptian tombs that are still good? I'm just picturing the alternate history where where Skippy Peanut Butter was like invented in in in ancient Egypt and we're just finding tubs of the stuff untouched by time.

I used to have a friend so it it's easier to find now, but still not not everywhere. But for a long time peanut butter in Europe was like not a thing. You could not find it at all. And um I had a friend in England who just loved the stuff and so every time I would go to England, she she was like, Can you get me two or three of those really big things from Costco. I'd show up with like a gallon of peanut butter. Yeah.

Well I I do remember how much it threw me for a loop on that one episode of Bake Off where they were like, Hmm, peanut butter and Jelly, what a strange flavor combination. He's like, yeah, you know, some some like American military friends of mine put me onto the flavor combo, and they're like, I don't know, I don't trust like that. They're like, my god, it's delicious. It's like, yeah, stupid. It's like we all do beans on toast. Yeah. It's not that weird. It's not that weird. Weird.

Well this next question comes from Torches. To all, is there any historical food or drink you've wished you could try as it would have been at the time, provided it could be made accurately or at all today, or like you got in So is there a historical food or a dish that you wish you could have had as it was made back in the day? What's that w was it the dodo that got like eaten to extinction? Uh'cause it was too delicious and trusting of humans? I think that could be interesting, you know.

Nota would be cool. In New Zealand and other islands there was also the moa, which was another big bird. Yeah. The giant grounds on the snake. I I would I would totally go with an ancient Roman dish that used Sylphia. Yeah. Yeah. What are they all about? And the Asifetida, which they ended up using as a replacement. Clearly it was somewhat similar because they were like, Oh, this is a decent replacement, but I'm like Hẹn gặp lại các bạn trong những video tiếp theo. Was it real?

What was the what was the good stuff? Yeah. Like the banana Cavendish thing. It's like what what really is the yeah. I I was thinking like what ridiculous item from one of like Horace's depictions of a uh a Roman uh banquet would I wanna go with? Um I don't know. It it's all so esoteric. It's like I don't even know what I'd be like trying to taste in those ridiculous things. Yeah. I mean when in doubt, extinct species is a pretty good way to go.

I like the dodo idea. Though I would feel bad knowing knowing now that they were eaten to extinction, I'm like I I couldn't do it. It's it's like I couldn't eat an ortelon, you know? It's like no, I'd feel too bad. Was it um was it like that Darwin expedition that was like we we're trying to bring samples of this species of like tortoise back with us, but they're just so delicious. So I'm imagining like don't worry In general.

We'll rescue like two we'll go in our time machine, we'll rescue two dodos, and then once we have like eggs, we'll eat one of them and then you eat one and you're like That was really good though. I don't know. Another dodo's looking pretty tasty. It's not to eat, but I'd love to like see whi

play out in front of me, the whole process of trying to bring pineapples back to Europe'cause they like cultivated them in the Americas is like, oh my God, this is delicious and they like bring them back to like plant and grow in Europe and th like the climate's wrong so it doesn't work. It's like

How did you acquire inert pineapples, you morons? How did you- So it's like 200 years of them trying to cultivate it and failing until they figured out how to make greenhouses correctly. I would love to see that play out. Like these kings are all excited, like oh I'm finally gonna taste this. I wonder if at that point you just like you forge a pineapple, you know, you get like a much more normal fruit, you like cut it up real nice. Sorry.

How are they gonna tell you it's not real pineapple? They don't fucking know. You just take you take a pine cone and you stick a little a bunch of little apple pieces around it. Pineapple. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. You cut up a grapefruit real weird and they'll be like, Hmm, this could be pineapple.

It's not so much the the food itself for this one, but the experience of having it. Uh Max, one of your videos was on the the Byzantine honey fritters, which is like direct ancestor of modern Greek lukumadas. I'm sure the the taste is Pretty

fundamentally similar. It's just the the various spices that you would put on it. But like the experience of just like walking up to some vendor in Constantinople, getting a little basket of them and just like going into one of the forums and just snacking on it before going to watch a chariot race, like, oh my God. Lucumadas in Constantinople, uh my my poor soul. Yeah. Would that I could experience that.

Yeah, I I feel like in a similar vein to the pineapple conversation, I think uh going for some sort of extinct varietal of fruit, like there's so many different kinds of apples, you know, there's gotta be some that have just they've fallen out of fashion and so we've sort of lost some to time. I'd love to just go be like, all right, let's go back a two hundred years or something and just start picking apples and see what they do. He's like really Tip to the modern ones. For sure.

Uh well this next question comes from Senator Muskmellon to everyone. Uh you get to make your ideal sandwich with no ingredient too expensive. What do you make? I think we might know each answer, but Peanut butter ain't that expensive. Peanut butter and dodo. You slice roasted dodo. I mean a fried chicken sandwich is good. I bet a fried dodo sandwich would be even better. That's that's rough because I I I'm not gonna lie, I have

Very plebeian tastes when it comes to a lot of foods. Whenever I have like something that's really expensive, I'm like Okay. Uh It didn't need to be that expensive. Like I caviar. I'm like, okay, I can see why people like this, but not for the price that it's at. But you know what? There is one ingredient where It's like, oh okay, and that's Kobe beef. Oh True Kobe beef. It's like, uh huh. Okay, I can see why. Why that's what that is. Unfortunately it is worth the hype.

Listen, I love a good fluff andter sandwich. The only reason I don't eat it very frequently is because I know how to make marshmallow fluff myself, but I don't do it super frequently. But the fact that I can do it means that I don't want to just like buy a jar of the stuff. So but yeah, no, I I'm gonna make the most like basic basic ass inexpensive Nutella and marshmallow fluff sandwich and everyone just gets to deal with that.

You know what's really good? Uh going back to this is where I I always go back back to peanut butter. Um peanut butter and jelly on a uh ever so slightly stale croissant. Oh And there is this place in London that makes croissants that are like the size of a a small child. They're absolutely massive. And so I would love to make a massive croissant peanut butter and jelly sandwich. With a slice of bacon actually. I always feel Baking on PBJ is good too.

For me like croissants are so much empty space on the inside I always feel a little bit Do you want to recap how you eat croissants as well for uh anyone maybe missed it? We don't need to get that c much into it. uh and with very like solidly crusty outside. So I would like pop the ends off and put like butter in there or like jam and I would like peel them up. I would sort of unroll them. Um and it's I don't know. There's nothing wrong with what you're saying. Oh the validation.

Yeah. Yeah. Um but uh for me like when you get a more standard like quasant like you can get it a base. Again, like there's there's a difference. Let it get slightly stale. And and not like really. Like honestly, leave it out for like twelve hours. And it's just a little firmer than you would want it, but it's perfect for a

For a while, Paris Baguette was like releasing these things that were like they basically took a croissant, they put stuff in it, and then they flattened it and like caramelized it. They were so indulgent. Like I have a sweet tooth and I ate like one and I was like, I gotta wait another three weeks before I have another one Yeah. Yeah, one time we went to get food at Paris Baguette and I made the mistake of getting one of those like instead of lunch. Like I was sick all afternoon.

It was a lot. It's like calorically dense, like the way uranium has a lot of energy in it, you know? Oh God. Uh Max, your suggestion of the the croissant in in London is reminding me of the best sandwich I maybe have ever had, which was at the Boudin's Bakery in San Francisco, up on the second floor of this like giant factory. I got like some variety of a steak sandwich on their sourdough, and it was possibly the best sandwich I had ever had at that point in my life, maybe even still.

I don't even know like what it was. I they I don't even think they brought menus. They were just like, You want like a steak sandwich? I'm like, Yeah, sure. And it was incredible. I'll meet you in San Francisco and we can see if they still make it. Let's do it. Ha ha. Yeah. Sounds good. You guys have a very full uh itinerary of of food items to I think you gotta get the sandwich in San Francisco, hop a plane, you can bring a PP and J for the flight, fly.

Um no, I feel like I should say like a cheesesteak or a pork and provolone with some broccoli rob if I wanna rep my hometown. But I think the real answer to this is a Popeye spicy chicken sandwich, so it's just however much budget for spicy chicken sandwich from Popeyes I can get. Like that's gonna do me. Uh Spent eighteen hundred dollars on what? Yeah. That's twice as many sandwiches.

I think uh the best sandwich I ever ate uh was a simple uh egg salad sandwich from Pret à Manger, and it was because I had forgotten to eat for the previous So it was uh may as well have been the ambrosia of the gods at that point. Which is the finest sauce. I was like, wow, what an incredible sandwich and then the next day I went back and had another one. I was like, it's fine. So Yeah. Uh anyway.

Uh I think we've got time for one last question here before we wrap up the podcast. This one comes from Mylaceum Comms Open. To all, if you could become able to eat one normally inedible object, what would it be? This includes things that are inedible to you, but not to others due to allergies you might have, and also it tastes like you think it should taste based on how it's. So for example, I would choose to eat volcanic lava. I think it would taste like Das war meine Antwort!

Normally inedible, whether that's just to you due to allergies or something like lava, uh, what would you want to eat? You can't tell me lava doesn't taste like the best toffee you've ever had. You can't tell me. Anyway, failing lava because it's already been taken, it's gonna be molten glass because it's probably like really good sugar candy. Straight from the forges in Venice. Yeah, exactly. I'll go to Murado and be like, hey, do you give out free samples? And they'll be like, What? What?

This isn't Costco. Uh I I would say like a really wonderful lacquered piece of mahogany. Like where it's really shiny and smooth. It's a perfectly tempered chocolate bar, yeah. Chocolate and caramely. Mmm. Delicious. Either that or any of the little Yeah. I'm wondering like the molten stuff obviously is uh is a winning formula. I'm thinking like molten bronze could be good or like just freshly cast bronze.

Uh I don't know. This is something Greek in my blood that's like it probably tastes really good. There's a s a part of me that thinks that if I could treat a box of crowns like they were kind of a box of chocolate and they each have like a slightly different flavor to them, that's really appealing to me. I feel like they'd have a nice snap.

Um and I I know I could probably eat a crown without getting sick because they're toys for children, but I still think that it would be nice if they had different flavors as well. Um so I think a a box of Flavoured crowns.'Cause then you know, they're just gonna once red is cherry or something. Maybe a different red is strawberry. I don't know. Blue blue raspberry. Options are endless. I mean to be fair. Many of us have tried eating crayons at some point in our lives.

Indigo did that very task as well. Especially when they were. Yeah. Plato. Play-doh always smelled really. I've definitely just actually eaten play doh it just And that is You can play it out. I know it's edible. It's edible, it's not recommended. Yeah. It's not nutritionally complete. The th the thing is they know people are going to eat it and so they have made it edible.

I'm just thinking like uh do you guys remember the Dragonology book? Yes. It had these little inlaid panels that were like, this is dragon scale texture. This is I There are some textures that I just find pleasing in an unidentifiable way, a vector that goes off into a dimension I can't perceive. It's like I want to unidentifiable, untranslatable. I don't know what. I think eating those things would fix some part of me. Just like a really glittery substance, you know. Um

Now this is validating me because the first thought I had was like marble. And it's kind of a similar thing of like you see a beautiful architecture, it's like how just one bite. We're like That's why the Parthenon is not fully there anymore. didn't blow it up. They just started eating it. Malcontents keep coming in and breaking off chunks like it's a gingerbread house. Yeah, yeah. Eaten. Yeah. Uh well I I uh we I think would eat anything uh to find out what it tastes like if given the option.

But the one thing we cannot eat is this podcast because it exists only in audio and as far as I know you can't eat sound yet. Uh but one thing you can do is take us Maybe You can trick. This is a Games through mediums. You could you I'm kinda surprised that someone's some of those weird like gastro uh scientist people have it like sound into a substance and then been like, It's been changed. We played Mozart into it. No wait.

I received as a gift for a Holiday Secret Santa a box of chocolates that advertised the fact that they infused certain frequencies into the chocolate for like purposes. The fucking crystal people got to chocolate. Yes. No. Didn't taste any different. It was just regular high quality chocolate. Still chocolate, so A win win.

But I think that that is the uh the wrap on this podcast. Red, are you ready to take us out? I would also eat seashells if they were edible. Um Thank you all so much for listening to this fun and funky bonus episode of the Overly Sarcastic Podcast. We will be back in I think probably one week with a more standard episode.

Uh until then, uh obviously our channel is still there for the picking and also Max Miller's Tasting History channel. Uh go and watch everything on that and uh bake some of the recipes because it's awesome and fun. I made Sally Lund Buns like four separate times, but I kept eating them all in one sitting. So they're delicious. They are, yeah. Kinda hard to miss. Um I don't think we have anything particularly crazy to announce this time, so until next time, I have been ready.

I've been blue, and Max, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's good to see you all. It's been a while. Yeah. Always find the catch. Okay. Bye. No, that's his podcast. You can't steal the branding! Thanks so much for listening to this week's cooking bonus episode of the Overly Sarcastic Podcast.

Regular episodes will resume in one week, but if you miss us in the meantime, be sure to check out Overly Sarcastic Productions on YouTube. Got a question for the pod? Head over to Ask OS Pod on Discord for a chance for your question to be featured in a future episode.

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