In the fishing villages of Norway, kids as young as five enter the workforce as professional cod tongue cutters. Documentary filmmaker Solveig Melkeraaen tells us why kids slice up this delicacy, plus we meet former tongue cutter Ylva Melkeraaen Lundell, who explains how she mastered this skill—and how lucrative this job can be. Also on the show: Journalist Kenji Hall embarks on a quest across Japan to find the world’s best rice; Adam Gopnik goes to the movies; and we dress up a steak salad with pomegranate molasses and goat cheese. (Originally aired June 3rd, 2022.)
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This is mostr radio from PRX I’m your host Christopher Kimble in Norway cod season can be lucrative both for fishermen and for a group of young kids who are known as tongue Cutters it was shocking for me I had never earned my own money and you see in
The newspapers here in Norway the girls and boys who earn up to 12,000 a day and if you just have the motivation you can just stand there for like hours and hours and do it that was ilva melaran lundell she learned how to cut tongues when she was
Just nine later on the show we’ll hear from her and her aunt sve melaran a former tongue cutter who made a documentary about this tradition but first it’s my interview with journalist Kenji Hall who went on a quest across Japan to taste the world’s best rice Kenji welcome to Milk Street thank
You very much thank you for having me so life’s getting complicated coffee’s complicated Wine’s complicated and now rice is complicated I used to think it was like long grain short grain sushi rice Rosado rice and brown rice but you’re here to tell us that there are thousands of varieties and there’s a lot
More to know about rice than most of us know yeah that’s right most people probably think that white rice is supposed to be this Bland carbohydrate that’s how I thought I grew up in San Diego my mother is from Japan we ate rice all the time you know and I I
Thought it was supposed to be tasteless but in Japan there’s this real appreciation for plain white rice on its own I’ve been here for about 20 years now and the most common thing that I’d hear people in Japan say about rice is is How Sweet It Is and this completely
Threw me you know they’re they’re not talking about the sweetness of a dessert like a jelly donut or apple pie it’s it’s much much more subtle yeah I love that because I love the Simplicity of it and also the complexity of it too because as we’re about to discuss
There’s really nothing simple about rice so before we do that could you give me a short history of rice it came from China originally exactly it’s it’s believed to have come to Japan from China about 3,000 years ago I think it’s hard to overstate the importance of rice in
Japan rice is the only Agricultural Product that Japan is self-sufficient in growing the government actually keeps 1 million metric tons of rice in warehouses for national security purposes and rice goes Way Beyond just being a culinary staple it’s essentially a symbol of identity for Japan um it appears in the oldest surviving text
From the 8th Century during the feudal period rice was a for of currency and Sumo the national sport traces its Origins to an agricultural ritual performed for the Shinto Dees to pray for a Bountiful Harvest but you’ve also written that Japanese policy makers are now Fred about the sort of collective
Distancing from the grain so overall is Japan less focused on Rice than it was a generation ago well first of all Japanese people eat a lot of rice right the statistics say that it’s about 112 lb per person per year Americans only eat about a fifth of that 112 lb sounds
Like a lot but it’s actually less than half of what people were eating per capita back in the early 60s um there are a lot of reasons for this uh some of it is the availability of food imports diet Trends so yes Japanese officials are worried about something that’s
Called Cor banare which is a collective distancing from Rice partly because of what it does to the country’s low food self-sufficiency rate uh it used to be around 70% it’s now around 40% so you’re on your quest to find the world’s best rice um you go to the agricultural experiment station where
They’re narrowing 20,000 vidals I think I read that right down to just one so what do you look for in a rice daing especially if you have 20,000 versions to test right so it’s a couple of things it’s it’s taste but even before that yield uh the height of the stock they
Don’t want it to grow Too Tall because it can get blown down in a typhoon the timing of the Harvest is also important if it’s too early your rice will be consumed by sparrows and then flavor as you mentioned flavor is the ultimate determinant for whether a rice type
Actually makes it to Market so these rice tastings how do they actually work it’s all blind it’s done in a room that’s designed for tastings with Ivory walls and very very bright bright white fluorescent bulbs um you’re given Chopsticks a glass of water a scorecard
And a plate and on that plate you have five half coin-sized covered portions of steam rice they’re covered with a little plastic cup there are four at Compass points and then there’s one in the center the one in the center is your reference Clump so what you’re
Supposed to do is you’re supposed to assign a score to each of the four clumps in seven categories there’s whiteness gloss Aroma stickiness firmness sweet Umami flavor and then the last category is just an overall impression of whether you thought it tasted good and so the procedure is you
Uncover one Clump you sniff you lift the plate to catch the Light and then you eat it did you find like a wine tasting did you find some fairly substantive differences or was it very subtle both sometimes I would catch a hint of popcorn or a more pronounced Umami
Sweetness sometimes it was just a heaviness of starch on the palette the problem with a taste test like this is it’s not very scientific it’s it’s quite subjective you know every person has his or her own different idea of what the best rice should taste like for another
Part of your research you went to an annual competition that determines the world’s best rice and by the way that Rice the one the one sells for 50 bucks a pound I remember a few years ago we did a show here about really expensive fruit in Japan so is really expensive
Rice now part of that high-end food culture in Japan the short answer to that is no uh the world’s best rice is a very specialist ized product it’s made in very small amounts um Toyo rice is the company that makes this product they blend several of the top placed
Finalists chosen by judges in a blind tasting at the international contest on Rice taste evaluation this is the country’s oldest and most prestigious rice competition and the company says it has this proprietary method for evaluating flavor and enzyme activity in the kernels and so the kernels are
Milled to remove the brand but but it leaves this ultra thin Umami layer around the the white part and too rice officials swear by this they say that this is why this rice tastes so fantastic so back to the rice that people actually eat at home you know in
The article you say there’s one the consumers really like koshii Kari I just bought it by the way I’m going to try it tonight for dinner is this what you would recommend for someone who wants to up their Rice game at home I think that’s a great place to start Koshi hiar
Is the most popular rice brand in Japan it’s chewy but soft the kernels are quite large it has this pronounced sweetness that comes through koshika is actually been around since 1956 which is unusual because usually when new varietal come on the market old ones are phased out um even today I
Talked about the rice tastings that I’ve been to koshihikari is still used as the reference rice in rice tasting and when I took the blind taste test it was the one that I chose and it’s what most Japanese people associate with delicious rice uh Kenji thank you so much uh I’m
Starting to understand rice and I’m going to try that Rice tonight thank you I’d love to hear how it goes thank you very Much that was Kenji Hall his article for Taste is the tenacious quest for the world’s best rice now it’s time to answer your cooking questions with my co-host Sarah Molton Sarah is of course the author of home cooking 101 also star of Sarah’s week night meals on public
Television so Chris I just wanted to share something that I learned recently it’s fun you know Julia used to say you never stop learning and my son and his girlfriend came over for dinner and she brought a chocolate pie oh it was so good it was like ganache in the center
But the crust was really cool what she did is she makes massive batches of cookies and my son doesn’t eat a lot of cookies so they just sort of languish and get stale cookie crust she did she took them and grounded them up and then took out the really big chunks but there
Were still they were chocolate chip cookies there’s still some pieces of chocolate in there and then she combined it with some melted butter and press it into the bot like a gram cracker exactly but with left crust but I thought that was brilliant and she took them right
From the freezer and ground them up and you know I’m always looking for ways to use up leftovers I invite people over they don’t bring chocolate pie oh my God I was so good all right so with the chocolate pie in mind let’s take our first call Welcome to Milk Street who’s
Calling this is Sarah calling from Villanova Pennsylvania hi Sarah what is your question today my question is about using ground chicken to make meat bowls or Burgers the texture of the pre-cooked ones you can buy in the supermarket are very pleasantly solid meaning a good
Shoe if you know what I mean and I’ve been told by my doctor to avoid processed Meats so I’d like to try and make my own from store bought ground chicken but everything I’ve tried so far meatloaf meatballs Burgers has come out very crumbly and dry right and when you
Buy the ground chicken is it dark meat white meat or a mix I think it’s white meat but you know it just says ground chicken so I’m not really sure it does have a pretty high sat fat content so I considered grinding my own but I haven’t gotten that brave
Yet well you could grind your own the trouble as you know with chicken is that most chicken including organic is you know subject to you know salmonella and campy bacor so it’s it’s a bit you know you contaminate everything if you did but if you wanted to do that I would
Take chicken thigh which are more flavorful and more juicy and cut them into cubes the same size like 1 in cubes freeze them in the freezer and then grind them up and the reason you freeze them is you don’t want the meat to get too warm because then you have a
Bacterial situation then pulse them in a food processor till it’s ground to the way you like the trouble is then you’ve you know got a chance of contaminating a lot of things if you’re going to use the pre-round meat here’s what I’ve used with turkey burgers also is I add add
Sauteed onions that have been finely chopped and cooled sauteed and olive oil okay and I also added finely shredded raw Nappa cabbage now that may sound weird as heck but um it provides moisture and Nappa doesn’t taste funky like regular cabbage it’s something we used to do at Gourmet it provides
Moisture without the flavor or the texture it sort of melts into the chicken that to me is the best way to go but I’m sure Chris has some opinions I would just use a panad I mean it’s like making meatloaf is the same thing which
Takes a loaf of white bread you know cut the crust off put it in a bowl with a little bit of cream or milk and mash it up with a fork and then add that to the chicken mixture and just like with a hamburger it’s going to keep it moist
It’s going to keep it from being dry and crumbly and that’s the simple answer to solving the meatball problem well that sounds great and I will keep keep you posted we’ll have a little taste off and see who won well if Sarah wins just don’t call okay just email us if Sarah
Won all right okay then thank you take care all right thank you very much all right goodbye now bye welcome to Milk Street who’s calling yes hi my name is Ari how are you good I’m a long time listener a second time color actually oh
Good okay well how can we help you this time I had a question about making of tiu I’ve made it actually a couple of times and I know it can be made either with lady fingers or like a thin kind of uh sponge cake and I was wondering if
You could use other kinds of cake like products I was wondering specifically could you make for instance a chamu out of Pancakes you know once in a while on the show I get a question I don’t expect this is one of those well I think traditionally terisu was something made
With leftover stale cake right so they’d have a coffee mixture and some custard whatever and so it made sense because you had a dry stale piece of cake and it soaked up a liquid nicely the problem with a pancake I think would be if you put the coffee mixture on the pancake
You’d end up with well pancakes dissolved in a coffee mixture I think whatever cake you have to use to start with needs to have some structure and tends to be you want something that’s on the dry side I think a pancake probably is is got so much fat in it is just
Going to dissolve sitting in the mixture I mean Sarah no I I agree you’re the pancake King but it’s funny you got me thinking about pancakes and what else you could use them for which is really far a field and my mom used to make this blueberry pudding where you take butter
Bread and you layer it with blueberries that you cooked with sugar and maybe a little bit of lemon juice they burst and they were cooked was like a compost and then you layered the buttered bread with the blueberries and you let it this is like summer pudding yes it is Sumer
Sumer pudding it is summer pudding I was thinking wouldn’t it be great to make that with pancakes instead so layer pancakes with the blueberry mixture and instead of using sugar with the blueberries use maple syrup so so you’re saying that there are possibly other applications of using pancakes but just
Not P I agree with Chris on that I went farfield but I agree with Chris I think it would become a mush let me back up and ask you the first question which is why do you have leftover pancakes do you make a super big batch or something well
No I do have leftover pancakes but I also I you know I just like pancakes I was thinking wouldn’t be cool if maybe I could make like a maple ter Su combined Maple and coffee sounds pretty well I’m with you I make pancakes every Saturday
Morning for my kids and I make a huge batch because I eat most of them personally um and and I often put jam on them instead of maple syrup you know they have those what’s that appalachin cake it has very very thin layers like 10 or 15 layers that reminds me you
Could take a pancake batter thin it out and almost make crap and you could stack a whole bunch of layers and in between it I think they used to use apple butter that’s really a delicious cake so I think pancakes could be thinned out and used multiple layers of a cake and you
Just have to have a filling in between I see a pancake cookbook in your future no you and I have to talk cuz I’m with you ch’s pancake cookbook yeah the little book of pancakes right there we go so that’s it Ari yeah you could make a cake
Out of it if you wanted yeah sure it’s a good idea pancake cake okay or a pan cake but not for tiramisu anyway thanks for calling all right thanks for calling all right thank you very much bye-bye this is milk Street radio if you’re stumped in the kitchen give us a call
Anytime our number 855 426 9843 one more time 855 426 9843 or email us at questions milre radio.com welcome to milre Who’s Calling My Name is Deborah I’m from Beverly Massachusetts how can we help you I have been cooking pork chops for years I would Brown them lightly in a skillet
And then I would bake them covered at 350 for over an hour and they were exceptional all of a sudden they’re not I don’t know whether I’m doing something wrong I get bone in center cut chops I just was curious what you recommend for cooking pork chops it’s
Documented that the pork industry has reduced the fat content in pork the last 20 years substantially I mean Sarah that would be my first gu so it’s not you it’s the pork I mean one thing you can do is quickly sear them and then low liquid braze with whatever sauce or
Stock or whatever very very low heat and you can put in a low oven or you could put it in very low heat on top of the stove cook them very slowly if you have an instant read thermometer digital thermometer I would cook the chops until they’re 140 in the middle okay halfway
Through the the middle my guess is you’re cooking to 160 or 170 anything above 137 138 is fine and once you take them out they’ll probably raise in temperature a few degrees anyway so the other thing to do is to take the time to find a supplier who’s raising great pigs
And feeding them properly and getting the right pork is probably 90% of it and don’t overcook it it sounds to me like the recipe that you’ve been doing for years is more like a stewed brazed item because you cooking it in liquid for all that time and it will get tender but it
Will still be dry because the pork is so lean think of it more like a pork chop that’s cooked slightly pink inside and then remove it from the pan and make the sauce in the pan that’s left right it will be more moist how thick are the
Chops um an inch or more okay I also salt my chops about an hour before I cook them and then just Pat it dry so that you can sear it nice L cook it till it’s 1:40 and then remove the chops and put them on a plate and let them finish
Cooking in their own juices and then make your sauce in the pan and it will be yummy I wonder if you could use the of repeated steak method we’ve talked about here yeah salt them let them sit on a rack for an hour a room temperature
Put them in a low oven like a 250 oven on the rack on a baking sheet get the internal temperature of that pork up to maybe 130 or so something like that and then very quickly sear them on both sides in a skillet or on the grill to
Finish I have one last suggestion I prefer pork tenderloin to pork loin pork tenderloin although it’s very lean also tends to have a more tender texture and so I’ll take the whole loin and I’ll cut it at an angle an inch thick and then I’ll turn those cut side up and press
Them down so they’re like little boneless chops okay and then maybe salt those ahead at a time and then what I often do which is so old school Chris can make fun of me is um Pat them dry and then right before I put them in the
Pan I dip them in flour because it gives them a nice little crispy coating sauté them on both sides they cook pretty quickly and then take them out make a pan sauce shallots white wine chicken broth sounds delicious put some delion back in quick turn them a couple of
Times in the sauce to make sure they finish cooking through but don’t over to them and the little bit of flour from the coating will go into the sauce and thicken it okay there’s a Spanish topus pinchas moros which is tenderloin cut into little medallions you put spices
And salt on them toss them in a bowl Let Them Sit 15 minutes heat up a skill a little bit of oil and they cook in like five or six minutes yeah done from beginning to end it’s 20 minutes you’re finished they’re absolutely delicious they’re served as Tois in Spain but I
Often make it for dinner it’s really great I kind of gave up on this whole pork chop thing I love to make them with the stuffing applesauce and carrots and I just kind of gave up I said well don’t well look I mean then just brine them
You know take two hours and bright them and that’s the quick and easy solution to the problem because they’ll come out juicy then yeah okay yeah thanks guys all right thanks for calling bye-bye you’re listening to Milk Street radio up next two generations of cod tongue Cutters they tell us how and why
Kids Harvest this delicacy please stay with Us this is MIL Street radio I’m your host Christopher Kimble and this is ilva my name is ilva and I am 15 years old I live in Westby a little out from Oslo and I used to cut Tong my friends here uh they think it’s pretty weird that I’ve been doing
Something like this and I get that people think it is gross and like it smelled terrible um but then again you get really comfortable doing it and you just want to do it all the time when arctic cod migrate to the Norwegian Coast kids like ilva go to work as
Tongue Cutters a job that’s just for kids and not for adults and it’s been like this for Generations when ilva was nine her aunt sve made a documentary about the season ilva worked as a tongue cutter together they traveled up to her grandparents fishing Village so ilva could
Learn for me it’s a really beautiful place you got the northern lights up there and you show up in this this like big room full of fishers who have like big boxes of fish heads and there’s like a bunch of other kids I think uh the youngest could be like Four the kids are dressed in winter coats rubber pants and long gloves armed with knives they huddle around bins of fish heads and get to work so you take your two fingers inside the fish heads and put it on top of the needle and you
Take your knife it has to be really like sharp knife and then you kind of see like a little flip where you cut then you have your first Tongue during that cod season ilva cut tongues for up to 6 hours a day and that’s because tongue Cutters are paid incredibly well some kids pull in over $10,000 American dollars in just one season I just made I think one a th000 Norwegian money it was shocking for me I
Had never earned my own money and I spent my money on buying rabbits because that was like my big dream when I was nine there were two black ones I really liked so I called the one Lish and the other one I called Coco Chanel Ila’s friend Tobias who also
Appears in the documentary bought his own motorboat at the end into the season that’s how much money you can make from cutting tongues but aside from being profitable the tongues are also considered a real delicacy some people say they’re just like the Philly Mino of cod and ilva
Thought a lot about what became of her hard work yeah I thought about that actually a long time I D dreamed about it once when I just had this dream where my like cod tongues ended up on someone’s plates at a restaurant and that was just it was
A really cool thing to think about that you’ve literally made it Yourself that was ilva melaran lundell right now I’m joined by Ila’s Aunt sve melaran who directed the documentary tongue Cutters solve welcome to Milk Street thank you so much um let me start by saying that I love your film your documentary uh and it turned out to be a
Very different film that I thought it was going to be going into it but we can get to that later so it’s called tongue Cutters which is an interesting title to say the least um what are tongue Cutters let’s start with that yeah H tongue Cutters um in my movie it is small
Children up in the northern part of Norway cutting tongues out of cod heads and one of the reasons why I wanted to make this documentary is because me myself I was cutting tongues when I was a child so were you from Northern Norway was this you know something everybody
Did yeah yeah I was living in the same town where IL and Tobias is cutting tongues in the movie and um as it’s now it also was before that all the children in the village were cutting tongues my grandfather was a fisherman so that is how I got introduced to cutting tongs
And um I did it my whole childhood and I was saving money I remembered that the first thing I bought was a bike and I thought it was so nice to buy something that I really wanted to have on my own so the reason children do this I mean they make pretty
Good money doing it but it’s because they’re better sued to it because their hands are smaller or there just aren’t enough adults to do it it’s both actually the children have small hands so it’s easier for them to do this job and um they also do it because the
Fishermen they have enough job with the other parts of the fish so it has always been children doing this job so let’s talk about fishing in the 19th century off the grand Banks which is the the Gulf Stream below New Finland it was a huge industry here right I
Think one person wrote that you could almost walk on the backs of cod from here to New Finland it was so plentiful but by 1900 that industry had really been decimated and it’s now a fraction of what it was in Norway is cod still a strong business or is it also gone
Downhill oh it’s really really strong uh actually it is be come more and more strong the place where I grew up where Ila is going I think is like five fish factories and each day in the season in one fish factory they have like cod for about 3 million Norwegian
Croners in one day and it’s quite a short season because it’s a special kind of cod called scay which come into the coast from like January to March and it is much bigger than like the coastal Cod and that is also why they cut tongues of this
Special kind of cod because it is so huge and also then the head is much bigger and then you can actually cut tongues which is good size so the tongue is particularly desirable for the meat or is it just that nothing goes to waste or both actually in the
Latest years it has become a delicacy because it’s really soft and yeah really good quality but before it was like the fishermen they didn’t want to eat the nice part of the fish so they often took the tongues home and ate them because it was like the cheapest part of the fish
Okay so let’s talk about the documentary which really isn’t so much about fishing it’s about people and you’re going to bring somebody from outside of this fishing Village to come in and you ended up with your main character your niece how did you decide on her so I had been
Telling Ila about this for many years and when I told her that I was going to make a documentary she really wanted to join and then I was thinking oh that’s a good idea because I was thinking that it would be more interesting and more exciting to like follow a child into
This environment learning how to cut tongues and I was also curious about how she was going to connect with Tobias the boy in the movie H and he lives up there and have been cutting tongues from it was like five six years years old and it
Was also really important for me to see that the two kids also connected with each other so the movie becomes you know about the relationship between Tobias and ilva yeah um and I there’s that one scene I I just had to watch it twice I I was stunned they’re sitting each in it
Lounging in chairs eating a Tootsie pop or some candy and they’re talking about their family life and they get to the point where they’re discussing how their parents are divorced yeah you know it was really I don’t know it was sort of heartbreaking uh they’re so adult but they’re so
Young I thought it was so touching when they started to to speak about this and that they were so open about it yeah they they are talking really like mature about it h so it was one of the situations when you make documentary which you call like magical yeah so the
Other thing I noticed though they have these 6-in boning knives very sharp and they’re always being sharpened but I’m going like oh here’s a nine and 10 yearold with these very sharp knives and these needles and everything else and these fish heads and also towards the
End of the movie Tobias is is driving that small boat with the outboard motor and yeah out there in the in the bay overall the way they handle themselves and responsibility they’re given I mean in America you would never Lear on your old cut tongues with a 6in
Sharp knife it’s just you’d be in jail um so I I don’t think it’s just them I think it just feels like children are given more responsibility yeah that’s quite true and uh that was also one of the reasons why I wanted to make this movie because
I wanted also it to be like more a public discussion in Norway about is it good that children could take more responsib ility than we might think that they can right also because I was cutting tongues when I was a child I think it was good for me and I think it
Is good that children learn to take responsibility in an early age totally agree yeah well it’s not just that I think with the documentary brings out is they’re treated in some ways like adults right they they’re given an adult responsibility which I think is so good for kids and that seems
To be stripped away so much now in modern culture yeah yeah because here in Norway it is also being more and more like the children have like football or dance or but it’s like organized right because in the fishing factory I think it’s so nice that the children they also
Communicate with the grown-ups there and it’s like a community not not like okay here is a grownup which is going to decide what you should do and not you are like having much more freedom in this environment and also much more responsibilities and I think kids understand this immediately they’re
Being useful yeah yeah I mean kids know the difference between madeup play and actually doing something that’s useful you know as a kid I grew up helping with a dairy operation in Vermont so I drive a tractor truck I me I don’t think I was all that useful probably at age n but
But at least I was given a job yeah it’s fantastic and it was useful and it makes you feel it’s so important so when you you start a project like this you’ve done a number of them you think it’s going to be one thing and inevitably I
Assume when you make a documentary it ends up being something else like it changes as you film so what did you think this was going to be about and what did it end up being about H maybe I was I was thinking that it should be a documentary about children
Cutting tongues up in the northern part of Norway but I I haven’t been thinking that my niece should join and that this coming from the outside into this environment also could say something about how to manage difficult things in this case tongue cutting ER yeah I
Didn’t know that she and tobas was going to be is like a friendship for life and that they also should come so close to each other that they also could been talking about their parents’ divorce and yeah the way that is also something about growing up and take
Responsibility and when I see the film now I think that um it’s like two different kinds of responsibilities the one thing about tongue cutting I think that kind of responsibility is good for children to try to work and to feel as you say also that they can be helpful but this part
With the divorce I don’t think that children should take that much responsibility in that part of the life so in a way it’s more complex that I have been thinking in the beginning yeah well in five or six years I’m going to call you cuz my two youngest kids will
Be about the right age could I send them over absolutely to cut Tong absolutely because boy if that’s if they grow up like your niece we’re in good shape uh thank you so much s it’s tongue Cutters is uh just an amazing film and uh I highly recommend
Everybody watch it thank you thank you so much for making this interview with me that was filmmaker solve melaran her documentary is called tongue cutters you know I spent Summers and most weekends growing up on a Vermont farm milking hanging and even shoveling manure it was in fact the best
Experience of my life since vermers treat children just like adults everybody’s expected to do their part so when I had my own kids I tried giving them the very same experience but sad to say they didn’t end up shoveling much manure or milking cows it was really
More a fresh air Camp than a job so when I watched the documentary tongue Cutters I was reminded that some cultures view children as capable of doing hard work and pitching in to help out the community as my mother always told me I’ll give you as much responsibility as
You can handle and I think that’s pretty good advice especially when you think you can’t handle it this is milk Street radio coming up Adam gnik reviews his favorite movies about food we’ll be right back after the break I’m Christopher Kimble you’re listening to Milk Street radio it’s time to chat
With Sam for about this week’s recipe steak salad with walnuts and go chees Sam how are you you know it’s a beautiful day I have no complaints it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood always that’s good I’m gonna get my little sweater um so I I like steak
Salads a lot but I think you have a sort of different way of thinking about steak salads so what is that way steak salad is a Choose Your Own Adventure Chris right there you go you can always change up a steak salad that’s the thing you have so many options between toppings
And greens and things to really punch it up but my favorite thing that I’ve discovered since working on these recipes for Milk Street has been pomegranate molasses yeah it’s it’s a game changer really when you have it in the pantry it is amazing it’s so tart it’s not cloyingly sweet it’s just a
Perfect perfect matchup for a really good steak salad so the steak salad starts with cooking the steak to show how smart I am so I like to Brown my steak off in a skillet usually about to medium rare but I’m only seasoning it with salt and pepper because I don’t
Think I need too much more from it um I want my steak to be a steak I want it to be you know beautiful meaty and just tender and delicious to bite into so cook the steak and then what so I’m putting a a whole new dressing together
With this pomegranate molasses I am adding some of the juices from cooking off the steak as well as a really nice bright olive oil that’s you know fruity and really great for tasting and uh I’m whisking all this together with finely chopped toasted walnuts so I’ve got brightness I’ve got
Nuttiness and it’s all going to cling really nicely to my greens and the two of the things I like about the dressing some coriander in it but also we add a couple tablespoons of water to it which is just a great technique if you taste your dressing it’s a little too harsh
Just Add Water like it’s that easy right you know you can dial it back without really changing too much at all and if it’s just a little too sharp you know couple drops here a couple drops there you can really adjust it to your individual taste and then uh the goat
Cheese is is a topping at the end it is and I’m one of those folks that does not believe in having somebody crumble my goat cheese for me I really like to get my hand sturdy so after I toss my greens with the vinegarette I like to just
Crumble from a log of goat cheese on top and it makes it a little uneven but also a little bit more Charming so some of your friends hire a goat cheese crumbler you know if it’s a possibility these days of being a goat cheese crumbler for
Hire I’m going to throw my name into the ring why not so um I love we both love steak salad this is steak salad with walnuts and goat cheese a little pomegranate molasses and coriander in the mix a little different but but just as easy thank you Sam thank you for having
Me you can get the recipe for steak salad with walnuts and goat cheese at milre radio.com this is milkstreet Radio next up let’s check in with Adam Gnik Adam how are you I am very well and full of thoughts I have been thinking about a big question that you and I have never addressed together and that is what are the greatest movies about food that have ever been made when we think about food we’re talking about hunger
And contentment and what are the five best films that have ever been made about food well the the last five minutes of big night Christopher once again you and I are on Serendipity City the very first one that came on my list is big night we’re talking of course the
Great Stanley Tucci film and exactly right particularly those last five minutes when having lost all hope all love all self-respect and all possibility of a future they come together the two brothers and their assistant and one brother not the cooking brother makes an omelet for the other and they put their arms around
Each other and in that simple Act of affirmation we realize that they will have a future however thorny it may be based on not the act of showing off food making as they’ve done throughout the movie but on the simple Act of sharing I I thought that was all said the other
Thing I found so interesting is that the distance between people at the beginning of that last five minutes is great right and as the five minutes goes on they get closer and closer as you just said he puts his arm around him at the end and it’s that proximity the human proximity
Which really tells that story yeah I you know how it always is with good works of drama of any kind your memory plays tricks on you and I had forgotten that that whole scene begins with the Stanley Tua character making the omelet for the boy for the assistant not for the
Brother I had cut right to the brother but it’s a beautiful build and it’s all about why sharing is more important than showing off so that’s my very first that’s number one on my list number two is a brand new documentary uh the Truffle Hunters I don’t know if you’ve
Seen it yet I’ve heard about it yeah my daughter Olivia turned us on to it of course it’s the story of the the Truffle Hunters of uh Northern Italy of pedmont who are hunting for what may be perhaps right after caviar the most prize delicacy that there is the white truffle
And we never see people eating well once we see people eating the white truffle but essentially we don’t but we know everything that we could possibly know about the relationship between the Truffle hunters and their dogs it’s really again it’s a movie about attachment and the intensity of that
Attachment the hours and hours and hours man and dog spend together and it the film ends beautifully With A Very Old Man a truffle Hunter who’s promised his wife that he will not go out truffle hunting by night because as I hadn’t known night is when one must hunt for
Truffles um strangely enough because ground is damper and apparently the the aroma more fragrant for the dogs he’s promised his wife that he will never hunt for truffles at night again he knows it’s too dangerous he could fall he could become hurt and he sneaks out
Of a window with his dog at midnight to go hunting Truffles and it’s such a powerful metaphor again for the spark of Adventure and the appetite for romance that lives inside all of us that like the last 5 minutes of big night it immediately expands itself beyond the
Narrow range of delicacy hunting into the whole question of our appetite for the extraordinary well if I may add I I do a lot of rabbit hunting in the winter and yeah I finally figured out after a few years it’s about the dog it’s not about the rabbit really yeah and it’s
Not about sh something it’s about the relationship between man and dog that is the joy that’s fascinating because that’s exactly congruent with what happens in truffle Hunters you think it’s going to be about white truffles and it’s about mangy brown dogs and you love it all the more for that um my
Third film is going to be a bit of a surprise it’s not a film I think anyone thinks of as a food movie like uh truffle hunters and like big Knight it has one scene that is indelible and that’s bicycle thieves uh desa’s Great Masterpiece of post-war Italian neorealism it’s a study really
In the uh desperately impoverish life of a father and son you’ll remember that the son is called Bruno uh and the film is about how his bicycle is stolen in which totally destroys his uh ability to pursue his livelihood and out he and little Bruno go out in search of the
Bicycle but along the way at one point they end up in a little trara and it’s perfectly apparent that the father has no idea how he’s ever going to pay for the meal and yet he encourages Bruno to order pasta and everything on the menu and just watching the father’s face
Feeding his son while knowing he he can’t possibly make good on the bill and the son’s face desperately hungry and wanting both to eat and to please his father and also knowing that his father can’t possibly make good on the bill it’s the single most beautiful exchange
Of glances outside of big night I can think of and it embodies the way in which we try to please the people we love by buying them Delicacies white truffles or a simple plate of spaghetti and how conscious the people we love are of all the subtexts that we’re sending
Their way even as we seek to please them good one that that surprised me but I haven’t seen that movie in 40 years but uh it’s a it’s a glory of that now the next movie on my list is probably along with big KN the most predictable but I
Watched it again and I couldn’t leave it off is is this B bet coming exactly yes here we are amazing that’s exactly right be BET’s Feast wonderful adaptation of the great Isaac Dennison story but it’s an absolutely wonderful Fable of how French food comes to a little dark
Danish Village and how beet and her Feast overturn all expectations and it’s about the power of sensuality in the world uh the last film is one that um I think will be a surprise to people though it is in a way a classic and that is Charley chaplain’s The Immigrant from
Uh 1918 and the Immigrant tells the story of chaplain playing a Russian Jewish immigrant arriving in New York on a boat that goes right by the Statue of Liberty first half is about the life of the Immigrant on board ship the second half is entirely set in a cafe Charlie
Finds a quarter on the street he puts it in his pocket he’s desperately hungry and we see as he walks into this artist Cafe that the coin has slipped out of his pocket and down his pants and onto the pavement so we know what Charlie doesn’t that he’s penniless as he walks
Into this restaurant and Charlie goes about the business of ordering a plate of beans and a cup of coffee and eventually pie and realizes that he has no money to pay for these things to make it worse he recognizes the beautiful Ed perance from the boat and to cheer her
Up he offers to buy her lunch as well and they go about eating it and then Charlie realizes he cannot pay and he watches as all the waiters all of whom are 6 foot tall and 250 lbs beat up a poor drunk who’s also in the restaurant
And he finally turns to his waiter and says what was wrong with him and the card says he was 5 cents short it is the most beautiful study of the desperation ation of restaurant manners um I should add that at the very last moment Charlie and the girl look so picturesk in their
Suffering that an artist from across the other side of the restaurant sees them and he says I must have you as models well you come model for me in my studio and Charlie says uh of course could we have a little Advance on the modeling money and with that Advance he pays off
The bill and leaves an enormous tip for the intimidating waiter Adam that’s your top five uh we all agree the last few minutes of big KN probably uh Takes the Cake so to speak or the omelet to use the uh the material of their conquor that was Adam gnik staff writer
At the New Yorker that’s it for today you can find this episode in all of our episodes on Apple podcast Spotify Amazon music milkstreet radio.com or wherever you get your podcast you can learn all about milk Street at 177milkstreet you can download each week’s recipe watch our TV show or learn about our
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