Christopher Kimball: This is Milk Street Radio from PRX and I'm your host Christopher Kimball. You might know Jesse Tyler Ferguson from Broadway, or maybe the hit TV sitcom Modern Family. But recently Jesse has found a second calling in food. Today he shares stories from Passover Seder with Joan Rivers and why he always makes his peach pie with one special ingredient,

Jesse Ferguson: listen, every time I've made this pie, people lose their mind for it. So that's all I can say Chris.

CK: So that's all I can in the kitchen with Jesse Tyler Ferguson. That's coming up later on the show. But first we're playing with our food Susanna Gartmayer and Jurgen Berlakovich are two members of the Vienna vegetable orchestra. Instead of flutes, violins and drums they prefer carrots, leeks and tomatoes. This song is from the orchestra's album Onion noise Susanna and Jurgen welcome to Milk Street.

Susanna Gartmayer and Jurgen Berlakovich: Hello, hello. Hello, Chris.

CK: So, let's start at the beginning. Could you explain the basic concept of what is a vegetable orchestra?

SG: Well, we restrict ourselves to playing music on instruments built out of vegetables. And we do that since 26 years.

JB: Our our concert day looks quite different to other orchestras or bands in the morning, we get our vegetables, and then it takes a few hours to build all the instruments because our aim is to build as much instruments of fresh vegetables as we can. And afterwards we have to do a soundcheck and the soundcheck is also something that takes quite a long time because we have ten people on stage, then we have our concert in the evening. And after the concert, we serve soup, but we don't serve the soup of the instruments, we cook the soup during the whole process during the day with fresh vegetables when the audience comes on stage or just to the stage and we serve the soup and talk with them when that's always a nice ending.

CK: So, I read that you've created over 150 different types of instruments. So that just explain the leek violin to people because I think people have a hard time understanding that concept.

SG: Oh, well, it might have happened that you have a sack full of leek and they will rub against each other. And they will make some squeaking sounds. But if you put a little bit of water on the leek, you can really play a very nice squeaking sound, it can get mellowly like a little bit.

CK: You write or someone someone said if we need a pumpkin that has to sound just right. They'll go back to the storeroom 20 times until they find the right one. So, part of the process is selecting just the right vegetable, just the right lakes, just the right pumpkin to get the sound you want.

SG: Yes, sure. I mean, the pumpkin, for example. The best it sounds when it's already starts to rot inside a little bit because then it has a little bit of a hole. And it like it has a perfect sound body for the bass sound.

CK: So how do you I looked at your website and you had a Q&A section. And one of the questions was How long does it take to prepare a vegetable instrument? You notice that it took zero minutes to prepare the tomato? What do you do with a tomato?

SG: The tomato was our first instrument. And there is one composition that is called Our Tomato. And we put two tomatoes together. How do you say that?

JB: We clap, like we clap our hands. But we have tomatoes in our hands.

SG: Yeah, and the sound changes very much in the time from very dry pop to very to a nice piece

CK: So, are these mostly percussion like sounds, in other words, if you made a flute out of a carrot, for example, or a carrot xylophone or a radish bass flute, could you actually create individual notes that could be part of a composition?

JB: Well, relatively, you know we can play very short melodies and things like that. And we can tune them, we can tune carrot cell phones, for instance. Pretty Exactly. That doesn't mean that they will sound like that one hour later because one of the problems with carrots is that they dry out, you know, while they dry out, they change the pitches. But when you build a carrot flute, for instance, you can play it more or less like a flute or recorder. And also, other instruments have the possibility to play little melodies and little tones.

SG: We did this piece, it's half of the people are playing flutes, and the other people are playing instruments that we call frogs. The sound the frogs make,

CK: or the croaking of frogs

SG: Croaking. Yeah. So, it really depends on the vegetables that we have which one happens to work best for the croaking sound for example, it can be parsley, wrapped together can make a very special sound also quite deep warp warp warp like like a frog.

CK: Would you say that what you do is inspired by any particular period of Austrian art or musical genre?

JB: Yes, for sure. On one hand, most of the people in the orchestra in one or the other way come from artistic fields that dealt with avant-garde approaches and approaches how experimental music is made and the history of experimental music. So, I think most of us would agree that one approach is music concrete, because that is something that's very obvious in our way that we just use, more or less the idea of everyday sounds in our day, everyday objects, like vegetables, and just to try to build music out of that. That's for sure one approach. And I think another approach, simply due to the fact that we just started around in the end of the 90s. And in the end of the 90s, abstract electronic music became very popular, because laptops were affordable. And a lot of people started to produce very strange digital and electronic sounds. And that is also something that inspired us to try that but not with digital means but by organic means.

SG: And also, since we are in Austria, and living in Vienna, all of us, we have this very big orchestral tradition here. And that's actually how we started. It was like a comment on a classical orchestra to come on stage with vegetables. And then it developed from there.

CK: Do you ever sit there during your performance? And think to yourself, I've always people came here and paid to listen to us play vegetables? Is it just a wonderful feeling once in a while to think that you live in a world where you can have a vegetable orchestra? Or is it, is it just something you do?

JB: In my case, I'm always extremely happy because I see that a lot of different people come to our concerts, young, old, and also a lot of people who have very different musical tastes.

SG: Yes, there's a very nice moment that happens at very many concerts. People can't imagine how it is because they read vegetable orchestra. Sometimes they even think it's a comedy show. They come there with the wish to be entertained and to laugh. They start to laugh when we play because it's going to be funny. And then they realize, oh, it's not funny. They really mean it serious. And that's a very nice moment when people start to listen and also start to take it serious as music.

CK: Susanna, Jurgen this was fabulous. I need to attend one of your concerts. Thank you so much.

JB: Thank you very much.

SG: Yeah, thank you for having us. It was great.

CK: That was Susanna Gartmayer and Jurgen Berlakovich of the Vienna vegetable orchestra. Now it's time to answer your baking questions with our special guest host Cheryl Day. Cheryl is the author of Cheryl Day’s Treasury of Southern Baking.

Cheryl Day: So, Chris, I know we talked about making pizza awhile back, and I'd love to hear how that's going. Are you still making pizza?

CK: Yes, I am still making pizza and the kids sometimes eat it. I have one of those little propane outdoor pizza ovens,

CD: Which I love. Griff just got one of those.

CK: They get to have like to 1000 degrees or something. It's a little tricky though. I found you have to get it hot enough so it bubbles up and you know like it would in Naples or something Right, but not so hot that it ends up burning the outside before the inside is cooked. My favorite is raclette cheese, which is grated with some prosciutto is really good. The other one I like is seasoned beef or lamb cooked in a skillet briefly and then put that on top and then finish it when it comes out of the oven with arugula.

CD: Have you tried making anything else in that oven, that's something we're playing around with.

CK: Yes, I have I've done tomatoes and peppers and just a whole mass of them. Put them in a nine by 13 in there and cooked them and then took them out and chop them up and put them with some olive oil and salt. And use that as a dip or whatever that was great because everything got really charred.

CD: We're playing around with pie galette in ours right now. So, I'll let you know how that turns out.

CK: That's a good idea. Because you get the top if you don't cover the fruit with the size of the galette, you get a really nice caramelization right.

CD: Hopefully

CK: Yeah, that's good idea. Well, everything in cooking is hopefully.

CD: That's true. That's true.

CK: Okay, on to the calls.

CD: Welcome to Milk Street who’s calling?

Caller: This is Danielle.

CD: Hi, Danielle.

Caller: Thank you guys for taking my call. I've been trying to solve this for at least five years. (Okay) so I made a lemon buttermilk pancake. And I made it when I was at my mother in law's house in Cleveland. I live in Texas. She has an old house, old oven. But I have not been able to recreate the beautiful cake that I created there. What I really loved about the pound cake is that really dense grandmother's kind of pancake with a little bit of a caramelized crust on the top, moist. And I remember I use more eggs than I usually use in a cake. So somewhere between six and 10. But I don't remember all of the things that went into making that beautiful cake.

CD: Do you remember what kind of flour you used?

Caller: I might have used cake baking flour. I can't remember that’s the problem. I do recall sifting the flour. I do recall letting my ingredients come to room temperature, so the eggs and butter were sitting out. And I don't know if that made the biggest difference.

CD: It does make a difference. Temperature definitely matters. Well, I don't know how to recreate what she made exactly. But I do have a great recipe for pound cake. I am a southern baker myself, and I make old fashion cakes that I think you would definitely like so the one that I would recommend. It's the cold oven pound cake. It's a very traditional, I would say pound cake but it's very forgiving. But it has you know your usual ingredients, lots of butter, sugar, baking powder, salt, vanilla, it's very versatile. You can use different types of milk, you could do a lemon syrup on top, you could make a glaze. And the cool thing about it is is that you mix it all of your ingredients at room temp, and you mix it where everything's light and fluffy. Then you pour it into your bundt pan. And then what you do is you put it in the oven, and it's not preheated. And then you turn the oven on when you put it in the oven. So, it's called cold oven poundcake that recipe is over 100 years old. My grandmother used to make it and I swear by it. But the great thing is, is what happens is it's a slow rise. It doesn't dry out because everything starts to work all at the same time, and it rises, and it gets this nice crust on top. That would be my recommendation. What do you think Chris? Do you have something you love?

CK: You might try cake flour, which absorbs liquid a little differently than all-purpose but a cake flour in a pound cake will lighten it a little bit but I think you'd like to dense mixture.

Caller: I like dense. It reminds me of my grandmother's pound cake.

CD: Right. Chris and I have talked about this a lot on the show. It is important room temperature ingredients. The eggs especially and also how you incorporate the eggs, making sure that the ingredients are mixing. Grandma did not rush when she was making this cake not like how we do today.

CK: Each egg 20 seconds

Caller: So one egg at a time

CK: One egg at a time and that makes a huge difference.

CD: The other thing would be to make sure that with your Bundt pan, make sure that you're buttering it, coating it lightly in flour and then also when it's time to turn it out of the pan. Don't wait for it to be complete cool, because otherwise you'll be making a trifle out of that cake.

CK: I've done that.

Caller: Oh, I didn’t know that

CD: It’s not a bad thing

CK: Poundcake trifle

CD: That's right.

Caller: So, the other question that I had was, what two other questions feed of the mixer? And then also, I never know which attachment to use with my KitchenAid for cakes. Is it the one that looks like a beater or is it the one that looks like a paddle?

CK: paddle

CD: paddle

CK: Do usually for egg whites, you want to beat a lot of air into something. But if you want to do a cake batter, that's usually a paddle,

CD: and speed medium to high when you're creaming your butter. The most important step is when you're creaming the butter and sugar together because you want to make sure that you're aerating all of the ingredients, you're making sure that everything is dissolved properly, and you don't have clumps of butter. And then you're going to want to take your spatula, I tell you, I give you every step in that recipe and I'm sure we'll be happy to give you that recipe and then just follow it and then you can make it your own After you master it.

Caller: Well, thank you guys so much for answering my question. You've given me a wealth of wonderful tips today.

CD: Oh, great. Thanks for calling.

CK: Good luck with it.

Caller: Have a good one.

CD: You too.

CK: Take care. This is Milk Street Radio. If you have a baking mystery, please give us a ring the number is a 855-426-9843 more time 855-426-9843 or simply email us at questions at Milk Street Radio.com.

CD: Welcome to Milk Street is calling.

Caller: Hi, this is Lauren calling from San Francisco.

CD: Hi, Lauren. How can we help you today?

Caller: Well, I've been making a Mindy Segal recipe for shortbread for years, it's a slur to sell shortbread that you do a sandwich cookie with a halva butter cream. They're amazing. But it's a huge chore to roll out shortbread and cut it, let it chill. And that process just feels exhausting. And it's so messy. And it's my favorite cookie. But for that reason, I am almost never making it. So, I've always wondered, are all shortbread recipes created equal? And that I can just do a log and slice and bake? Or do you really have to roll out certain types of shortbread? T

CD: That’s a great question. Are they all created equal, probably not. But I would say that if it's a shortbread cookie recipe, you should be able to roll and slice that with no problem. And then that way, the only thing is, were you doing different shapes or something like that or not really.

Caller: Yeah, I usually just do a square to keep it simple. I don't have a ton of cookie cutters.

CD: So, you can do a square, you can actually roll it and then just kind of you know, pat it flat on the surface go around each way, it doesn't have to be round, you can just kind of flatten the bottom. And then you can slice it square, or you can also slice it round. And I don't think you'll have any problem with that recipe.

CK: I just do a log, you know, they're easy to manage. And that is cut out individual rounds, shortbread would be kind of a pain to roll out and then cut shapes out of because you know you have to reroll and take the scraps that couldn't get too hot, you got to put the refrigerator, but the log would be the by far the easiest solution.

CD: I also scoop shortbread cookies.

Caller: Oh, interesting.

CK: Just with an ice cream scoop you mean

CD: Absolutely. And then I have like a little stamp. Yeah, that I stamped the tops with, or you could take like the back of a

CK: That's a good idea.

CD: Well, thank you. Or you can take the back of a measuring cup or something. But I do have like we have a cute little cookie stamp that I'll dip in sugar and then stamp the top and it makes it festive.

Caller: Totally.

CK: I have a stamp a wooden one for making ___ cookies. (Oh yeah) in Turkey. And it's really fun and it looks great and easy.

CD: And easy. To me that would be easier than (yeah) slicing personally.

Caller: Perfect. Well, I'll give both of those a try the slicing and the scoop approach.

CD: Do you make a lot of cookies Lauren?

Caller: I do and I'm sometimes shipping things to friends. This recipe though every time I've made it. I have friends who I made these for maybe seven years ago and they keep talking about them. But they're such a headache. So, I'm excited to try it with a shortcut.

CD: Oh, wow. Well, I hope that works. Let us know.

Caller: Thank you so much. I'm excited to try this.

CK: Right. Thanks for calling. Welcome to Milk Street who's calling?

Caller: Hi, this is Julie Huff.

CK: How are you?

Caller: I'm so excited to hear your voice.

CD: Hi, Julie. We're excited for your question.

Caller: I have a question about key lime pie and lemon meringue pie. I am actually in the process of writing a cookbook.

CD: Exciting. Congratulations.

Caller: Thank you so much. It's something my family has been working on together for a couple of years. yours, and we're just really having a great time with it. I was at this wonderful restaurant in Key West called Blue Heaven. And the chef's there, makes a mile high, lemon meringue pie. The reason why it's mile high is because her meringue is very high and very fluffy. And this chef was very gracious and said that she makes it with her hands. That's how she gets her meringue so high. So, I have experimented a couple of times using my hands, and I have not gotten my meringue to be mile high. And I thought maybe you guys would have an idea.

CK: I have an idea, but that was not a full disclosure answer your question? Well, first of all, when you make a meringue for a pie, are you starting with sugar syrup,

Caller: I use egg white, cream of tartar and sugar.

CK: Okay, well, if you want to get a meringue, that's going to have great texture and stick around, you need to use a sugar syrup. So, you'd have the egg whites, a little cream of tartar, probably little salt, and then you would start whipping them. And then meanwhile you do a sugar syrup. So, you melt the sugar, a lot of recipes, say over 240 degrees, I use 238 or 239. And then you drizzle that syrup over the egg whites that are mostly beaten already, you sometimes have to beat them for four or five minutes until they cool down. And that'll give you a great sort of Italian meringue. The other trick is I've used sometimes is I do make a cornstarch gel with water and cornstarch and also mix that into the egg whites. A lot of people do that for cake frostings they have a cornstarch base. And that will also give you better texture and make it hold better. But it's all about a hot sugar syrup drizzled into beaten egg whites. That's how you get that texture. And that's how it will not fall apart after a couple hours. Cheryl, is that sort of in the ballpark?

CD: And here she comes.

CK: Here we go. Don’t listen to anything Chris just said.

CD: So, I don't have that much time on my hands. To do all of that. There's a couple of kinds of meringue I like to make though. My first question is, is her meringue, is it like an Italian type where you would torch it at the end? Or is it the billowy kind that softer? That you would bake in the oven.

Caller: I don't know I have only ever made the kind that you bake in the oven. Maybe that's one of the things I'm doing wrong.

CD: That's my preference too. But I'm guessing that that's not what she does. She's probably doing more of a marshmallow-y kind of like the type that Chris is talking about. But how I achieve that is I do my sugar, my cream of tartar and my egg whites. And I put those in a metal mixing bowl over a double boiler. And then I’ll whisk that I do that until the sugar is dissolved. Then I'll start to whisk that in the mixer until it cools down and it is coming out of the bowl. Just really, really tall. And then you just can pile it onto your filling. And then torch it. Maybe what she means by her hands as she's piling it. You know she could kind of be using her fingers maybe to get like a really fun texture. And then that method you would torch it.

CK: She may have meant that she whisked it by hand in a double boiler like you did.

CD: She might of meant a lot of things.

CK: That’s true. It wasn't very useful response.

CD: But so that's the method that I'm pretty sure that she uses to get a really tall because the way that you make it that she baked it in the oven. It's a softer texture meringue you're not going to get it a mile high.

Caller: Oh, thank you so much. Well, I'm going to make a couple of key lime pies this weekend and I'll let you guys know how they come out.

CD: Report back. I hope that was helpful.

Caller: It was extremely helpful. Thank you so much.

CK: Well, thanks for calling. Our pleasure.

CD: Thanks, Julie.

Caller: Thank you.

CK: You're listening to Milk Street Radio. After the break Jesse Tyler Ferguson shares his most memorable meals like Passover Seder with Joan Rivers. That's in just a moment.

This is Milk Street Radio. I'm your host Christopher Kimball. You might know my next guest Jesse Tyler Ferguson for playing Mitchell Pritchett on the long running sitcom Modern Family. Here's the scene from season one, where Mitchell and his husband Cameron, played by Eric Stonestreet, go to Costco.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson: Mitchell, I found the diapers. They're over here, Cameron, guess what I found? coffins. They sell baby formula, and they sell coffins. You can literally buy everything you need from birth to death. Oh my god.

CK: Jesse Tyler Ferguson also loves food and cooking. A few years ago, he co-wrote a cookbook Food Between Friends with recipe developer Julie Tanous. And in 2023, he launched a podcast where he visits restaurants with some of the biggest names in entertainment, politics, sports and food. He shared meals with Bryan Cranston, Marcus Samuelsson, Margo Martindale and Padma Lakshmi. The podcast is called Dinner's on Ne. Jessie, welcome to Milk Street.

JF: Thank you. Thank you, Chris.

CK: So, you've had I have to say an amazing career had television show you won a Tony and 2022 for your work in Take Me Out. But you obviously also love to cook for you. It's it's really more than a hobby, right?

JF: Oh, gosh. I mean, I, I admire people in the culinary world so so much. I've had the esteemed honor of hosting the James Beard Awards. (Oh, yeah) twice. And I have never been more nervous about doing a good job for a group of people. I, I just have such deep respect for all the chefs I admire and cookbook authors. And, you know, I think if I had had time, when I was younger, I would have, I would have taken myself to culinary school. And you know, it's still my fallback plan if things started to dry up over here so

CK: So tell me about Fully Committed. This is a one man show. (Yeah) You performed on Broadway back in 2016. I mean, it's really a challenge. You got 40 characters. How do you get the different characters, the voices, the body mannerisms? And then obviously, you have to switch back and forth quickly. (Yeah) So how do you prepare for it? You know, how do you do it?

JF: Well, it was incredibly intimidating. When I was asked to look at this play. It's a play that hardly been done before. It was done off Broadway and they were going to do a Broadway revival of it, I think, about 20 years after the original and they asked me to play this role in just for a little subtext. The character is a head reservationist at a very, very fancy high-end restaurant. And he shows up to work this one day, and his coworker has called in sick. And so, he's manning the phone lines by himself. And the joy of the play is watching him, not only play the reservationist, but then also play the people on the other side of the phone call trying to get a reservation. So, he plays the chef that he's calling into, he plays the maître d, he plays the hostess, he plays his father at one point, he's calling him in on his cell phone. So, it's just having this really chaotic day at work. And he's manning this phone line. And it's all done on a telephone. So, it's really fun to just sort of watch an actor juggle all of these different tasks. Fortunately, when I was asked to do this, I had about nine or 10 months before I was actually going to have to be on stage doing it. So, I started learning the play immediately. Because it's just, it's all it's all me, there's no one else on stage to, to and it's not even like a long monologue. It's me and dialogue with myself as different characters. So, it's, you know, it's it was a quite a challenge. And I actually did not understand how this play was doable. And fortunately, the archives at Lincoln Center Library, record a lot of these performances and so I watched Mark Setlock, who was the original actor who did off Broadway, and I was like, oh, that's how it's done. So, I sort of had a bit of a blueprint and you know, a great director that I worked with, and then the biggest thing that really helped me was, I worked with a dialect coach from Juilliard, Kate Wilson and she helped me figure out the different voices and accents of these different people that maître d was French. And, you know, the, the chef was sort of like a California dude and you know, it's like it was sort of like leaning into these stereotypes and it ended up being really fun. It was a huge challenge.

CK: Okay, turning to food, you have a love affair with hatch green chilies. So, you want to explain to me, I mean, I like them too, but you really like them. How come you love them so much?

JF: Well, I was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was born in Montana, but then moved to New Mexico pretty early in my youth. And, you know, they're indigenous to the area. And it's, it's, it's more than just the taste of a hatch green chili. It's also the season when they're harvested and roasted, and the way that it makes the air smell, you know, there would be certain areas of town where, you know, they'd be roasting the chilies outside, and you could just, you could smell it in the air. And then I ended up working at a pretty famous New Mexican restaurant called Sadie's and, you know, they put green chili on almost everything. So, I just, I was immersed in it. And, you know, I think it could have gone two ways I could have been so sick of it, because I was you know, living it day and night. But I really love the flavor and of the heat of it. I love the season when when it was harvested. I just I have a great affinity toward it.

CK: You talk about your dream dinner guests. Adele, Michelle Obama but Joan Rivers. I loved Joan Rivers. So, tell me why you love Joan Rivers.

JF: Well, I always admired her comedy, I always admired the risks she took in her comedy. I love that kind of comedy that goes right up to the line of inappropriate and sometimes even crosses over a little bit. So, the toe kind of goes right over it. I don't know. I just feel like there's something really safe comedy is not interesting to me. I like being kind of nervous and like, like, oh my god, I shouldn't be laughing at that. That's the stuff that just really makes me laugh. I had met Melissa Rivers, her daughter at an event and obviously told, Melissa is like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm such a fan of your mom's. And Melissa went home and told her mom that she had met me. And it was right around Passover. And so, I got a text message from Melissa saying my mom wants to know if you want to join us for Passover dinner. And Justin and I were like, (um) absolutely, we're not Jewish, but we will absolutely be there. And that was our first-time meeting Joan. And it was just a dream night. I mean, I gave her everything about it was just so perfect and wonderful. And we felt so special being there. And we developed a bit of a friendship with her. And I'm so grateful that our lives intersected for a little while.

CK: So, there's a chili recipe in your cookbook. And there's a photo of you sitting outside eating the chili from a thermos. You said, when you were a kid, you and your dad would go out looking for a Christmas tree. And during the first 10 minutes you would find a perfect one and then spent eight hours tromping around. Chili was always part of that adventure.

JF: Yeah, my mom would always make this chili for us. And we would take it Christmas tree hunting, like, you know, you could buy a permit for like $5 and go into the woods and cut down a tree and bring it home and my dad really liked to make a day out of it. And like it was a family thing. And, you know, is me and my siblings usually and it was his day with us and and the thing is, we would we'd find a really perfect cute tree in the first 10 minutes. And you know, he doesn't want to chop down a tree and turn around and go home. No, he wants to spend the day with us. So, he would you know, like we'd put a marker on it like usually a stick in the ground. And then, you know, continue to walk around. And of course, by the time we were ready to leave, we can't find the original tree and we're scrambling and we're looking for anything to cut down to take home and usually it was like some misshapen bush that ended up being our tree.

CK: Yeah, I did a couple years going out in the woods with a chainsaw and they didn't look very good. So, pancakes and waffles. We talked about those you use blue cornmeal and your pancakes. Buckwheat waffles do you find when I noticed that the blue cornmeal pancakes? I think there wasn't any regular flour was all blue cornmeal. Do they get a little dense? Or do you like mixing it up with regular flour or what's the what do you like?

JF: I mean, I've done it both ways. They they're more of like a Flapjack run when they're done with just the blue cornmeal. I just really love the way that the edges get super crispy. Yeah, they they are they can be I wouldn't call it dense seems like such a negative adjective, flap jackie

CK: Yeah, we find at Milk Street we've been using rye a lot, because it's got a bitterness to it, which I think works well with something sweet. Right buckwheat, like buckwheat too. So, rosemary peach pie. People putting herbs like rosemary with fruit like peaches, I get it. But on the other hand, I kind of sometimes when people do that, I'm going like, maybe you shouldn't have put the rosemary in the peach pie

JF: It's definitely an aggressive herb.

CK: How do you how do you think about doing that? Is it, well, I rosemary, peaches actually do kind of go together? I have to say but yeah

JF: They're great. Listen, every time I've made this pie, people lose an eye for it. So that's all I can say, Chris, I don't. know I don't go overboard on the rosemary. Okay. But yeah, I like it. I think it's great.

CK: You have the weight of data on your side. So, let's just chat about cauliflower. I know on our social media, every single time we post a cauliflower recipe, preferably a roasted whole head of some kind with dripping tahini thing. People go nuts and we get, you know, sometimes a million views. Have you had it with cauliflower yet? Or are you getting close? Because I got to say I'm about halfway

JF: I have. I've had it with cauliflower. I and I know I have a cauliflower recipe in my cookbook. And it is it's good. But it's one of those things that like, you really have to figure out how to dress it up. And I think we've we've found something that worked really one that we hadn't really experienced before. But I have to be honest, like if I'm in a restaurant, and there's a cauliflower or a broccolini I'm always going to do the broccoli. Yeah, I've actually enjoyed some cauliflower mash. Sometimes my husband decides to eat paleo, so I create some pretty delicious cauliflower mashes is but it's all about what you add to it you know

CK: What about restaurants, you talk in the book about some of your favorite restaurants. But what you know, I have obviously, strong opinions about this. But when you walk into a restaurant, what is it in the first couple of minutes that strikes you as being either great or not so great.

JF: I mean, I'm big on ambience and lighting. If you can start there, then I'm at least relaxed and ready for a nice meal. I hate brightly lit spaces, and super loud spaces. I like to build to have conversations, obviously, I like to have a podcast where I'm taking people out and having conversations over dinner. So, you know, I like to be able to fellowship with people.

CK: Can I just stop you there? I cannot agree more. I mean, I went out with an old friend of mine last week. And I we sat down it was very early. So very few people there. And I said, you know, I really love restaurants where you can actually hear the person speaking and half an hour later, I couldn't hear half of what he was saying because it was so noisy. What Why do restaurants or why do you think restaurants do that? Because it's I don't think it's a mistake. I think they think that a noisy restaurant makes it feel popular or something I don't I don't understand.

JF: Well, I think that's part of it. And sometimes it's appropriate. I don't know like I like going to Patis in New York City for Sunday brunch and having like, it's all bustling and busy. And you know, the tables are all kind of close together. And you can overhear other people's conversations. That's there's something kind of nice about that. But I've been to other restaurants where I feel like I'm literally in a club and I can't hear anything. And then the waiter comes over to the table. I'm like, how am I supposed to hear you like I mean, what? What's going on? I'm assaulted.

CK: There's a quote, I read an article. If you're at a restaurant standing anywhere near Jesse Tyler Ferguson, chances are high that he'll be eavesdropping on your order. (Yeah) So is that true? Do you really like eavesdropping while other people ordered dinner?

JF: I do. And that's part of what I also love about the my podcast is you get it here the waiter come over and tell the specials and, and you know, we get we discuss what we might want to eat, what our dislikes are what at what we like what we might share. All of that stuff is the stuff I love to hear other people talk about when I'm at restaurants. And I love to also I do that thing where I scan the restaurant, I see something that looks good. And I try and figure out what that is on the menu and see if that's something I might like, you know, it's obviously we eat with our eyes first. So, you know, I think that presentation of food is really important. And if it's being presented to other people around you, why wouldn't you look?

CK: Jesse, thank you. It's been. It's really been fun. It's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much.

JF: Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it.

CK: That was Jesse Tyler Ferguson actor and host of the podcast. Dinner's On Me. Actors want to be cooks and cooks always want to be actors. There seems to be a natural affinity between the two professions. But what about actors who started in a totally different place? Brad Pitt was the mascot for the restaurant chain El Pollo Loco and dressed up believe it or not as a giant chicken. And Whoopi Goldberg was once a makeup artist for a funeral home. One might conclude that actors are good at playing many different parts wearing a kitchen apron or even a giant chicken suit. You're listening to Milk Street Radio coming up the language of grilling from our friends at A Way with Words, that's right up.

I'm Christopher Kimball and this is Milk Street Radio. I'm joined now by JM Hirsch to talk about this week's recipe citrus marinated pork tacos. JM, how are you?

J M Hirsch: I'm great.

CK: So we're talking Mexico City. We're talking pork tacos, I’ve had them on the street. Pretty straightforward. You know, onions, cilantro topping, couple hot sauces. But you had something I think a little more interesting than I did.

JMH: Yeah, but first, I have to tell you I a bit unorthodox when it comes to my tacos, I actually don't care about the meat in the taco. I know that's heresy, but I'm a toppings guy. And so, I care about the avocado, the p___ , the pickled red onions, pickled jalapenos, everything else that you pile on to your taco. The meat to me is secondary. However, when I was in Mexico City, I worked with a home cook Eddie Gonzalez, who is from the Yucatan. And she told me she was going to teach me a pork taco that would make me forget toppings even exist. And I have to confess she succeeded. It was really, really phenomenal. Now the magic here is the sauce as it always is. So, she takes thinly sliced chips and pork loin and sloshes them about a mix of sour orange juice, garlic, cilantro, cumin and allspice. I mean, that is a heady bunch of seasonings. And that sour orange juice, of course is key because it's very flavorful, very bright. It also tenderizes she slaps that on the grill, pulls it off in no time, throws it on to a fresh tortilla. And oh my gosh, I didn't even want the avocado. It was so good. It was just really really breathtakingly good.

CK: So sour orange juice not being something at your average supermarket. Is this just orange juice and vinegar? Is that how you get there?

JMH: We use a combination of lime juice, orange juice and a little white vinegar. It approximates it, comes pretty close, never going to be the same, but it's awfully good.

CK: It's very thin strips of meat. So, you don't have to let it sit too long before you cook it.

JMH: Yeah, about 30 minutes is plenty. But you know, it's not just the marination that matters. It's also as you know from your time in Mexico, the cooking because charring is a flavor unto itself in Mexican cooking and something we don't tend to think about or appreciate nearly as much as Mexican cooks do. And so, getting a really good char on these pieces of pork matters a lot, because boy, it adds that depth of flavor. That's wonderful. And again, it all happened so quickly because it's very thinly sliced. And so, it's not a lot of work, but boy, does it have a lot of flavor?

CK: You know, when I was there the two things that surprised me one was a lot of people bought a stack of tortillas from a local guy knew we didn't actually deliver them and they were delicious. The other was, I figured like Taco parties is a very American kind of thing. And I asked her about it. Oh yeah, every Friday night, we have people over we have a bunch of toppings. We have a taco party. So, I guess some things are the same in Mexico as they are here. So how does she actually cook the meat is this in a skillet is this barbecue?

JMH: So, she used a comal on the grill. Lovely. To make up for that here and make a little easier on ourselves. We broil it because that's the easiest way for us to ensure that we're going to get that sort of char that we want, and the flavor really appreciates.

CK: JM thank you citrus marinated pork tacos you had in Mexico City but the recipes from the Yucatan and it's so good even you did not ask for toppings. Thanks.

JMH: Thank you. You can get the recipe for citrus marinated pork tacos from Yucatan at Milk Street Radio dot com

CK: This is Milk Street Radio. Now let's check in with our friends Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette of A Way with Words. Grant and Martha what's going on?

Grant Barrett: Hi, Chris.

Martha Barnette: Hey, Chris. Well, you know Chris, you're always grilling us about this and that and we figured today we talk about grilling foods specifically, grilling from a linguistic point of view. (Okay) so let's start with the word grill itself. Grill comes from a big family of words, all of which involve the image of a grate now that's g- r -a- t -e. Grate, that's designed to let heat and air pass through. And grill itself goes all the way back to the Latin word cratos, which means wickerwork. Now you may be wondering, why wicker? Well, before we cooked food on metal over fire, we cooked on structures made of woven reeds, and the diminutive of this Latin word, cratos is craticula, which means little wickerwork. And over hundreds and hundreds of years, craticula became French gril and then moved on into English as grill.

CK: So, it took hundreds of years for people to figure out that if you cooked over wicker it burned up. I mean, this just didn't work out too. Well, I guess he could smoke over wicker but

GB: But also, it doesn't have to be right over the hottest part of fire. (That's true). And you're thinking about long term use, you can quickly weave something out of reeds, and it has one or two uses and that's just fine.

CK: The disposable grill.

GB: Yeah, disposable grill for that same grill, by the way, gave us grid iron, g-r-i-n iron. It's a platform for cooking made of iron and other metal. It's got parallel bars and, and a frame and it's got these little stubby legs, and you set it up over the open flame and put your food on top of it. And it is indeed the same one as in football. I know that everyone's always wondered that if you go up into the stands and look down. And you look at those chalk lines on a football field. It looks like the grid iron. It's got those same parallel lines. So that term has been used in that way since the 19th century.

CK: Yeah, or the people looking down a bed for beers and or dreaming about barbecue. I think I think that makes sense.

MB: And Chris, that's not all there are two other relevant words we should talk about from that same linguistic family. Because also related to grill is griddle. And of course, that's the piece of metal that you use for heating food. And lots of griddle’s have parallel lines running along their length. And then there's also the shortened version grid, which is an arrangement of parallel intersecting lines. So, we have the electrical grid that you're either on or you're off. We have the traffic jam called gridlock. So, gridlock griddle grid, iron and grill. They're all connected by this same ancient root.

GB: Gridlock, by the way, was coined specifically about traffic in New York City. Did you know that?

CK: Really?

GB: Yeah. And now it's spread everywhere. Unfortunately, yeah. And so, I don't want to get all up in your grill with this stuff, Chris, because we could go on and on with this. That grill, by the way refers to your face looking like the grill of a car, especially if you have braces or decorative jewelry on your teeth.

CK: up in someone's grill.

MB: And speaking of frameworks, there's another framework for grilling. There is also the word barbecue, which comes originally from a language of the Caribbean where people used a kind of wooden frame to cook that way

CK: a barbacoa right?

MB: Yes, yeah. Sadly, the Spaniards adopted that as barbacoa. We adopted it as barbecue.

CK: They also use in in Jamaica, when they do the jerk chicken, they use pimento wood, I think that's what it is. And they put the wood which is maybe a foot or eight inches in diameter over hot coals. And they cook on top of the wood. So that the the chicken is cooked right on the wood

GB: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's really common. And that leads me to this other thing. So, a lot of people will use charcoal briquettes when we cook but that charcoal briquette is kind of this little ecological story. So, a lot of our cooking involves that char flavor. That char in charcoal probably doesn't actually come from anything having to do with carbon, or char, but actually probably comes from an old English word meaning to turn, especially in the sense to transform. And of course, the coal just means coal because it's always meant coal back as far as storage history goes. And briquette is a French word for a little brick. So, it's like charcoal briquette, this little story that means little brick of col it turns into something else. Which I think is very cute… but it's a little story. But there are a lot of things that turn when we make food on the grill. Right Martha or when we cook meat.

MB: Right like for example gyro. The gyro, there are lots of different pronunciations, but apparently that one's the closest to correct gyro and that comes from a Greek word meaning turning. It's a linguist relative of gyrate.

GB: Another one which you probably know is doner kebab. doner is Turkish for turning also and kebab means roasted meat in shish kebab. The shish is a word for skewer in both Turkish and Armenian. (I did not know that). And so that shish has a relative not etymologically. But at least quantitatively iin souvlaki. The word souvlaki, which is a Greek dish has a family heritage that goes back to a Latin word meaning all - all that pointed leatherworking tool used to make holes of that same word is related to suture su t u r e.

CK: So, we started with grilling, went back to the Romans did football had five beers and ended up with a shish kebab. I think you guys covered a lot of real estate Grant and Martha a whirlwind segment on Milk Street. Thanks so much.

GB: Our pleasure,

MB: Happy Grilling.

CK: That was Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette hosts of A Way with Words. That's it for this week's show. But don't forget, you can find more than 275 episodes of Milk Street Radio and our website, Milk Street Radio.com or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find out more about Milk Street at 177 Milk Street.com Become a member get 1000s of recipes, access our online cooking classes, and get free shipping on all orders from the Milk Street store. can also learn about our latest book which is Milk Street 365 the All-Purpose Cookbook for Every Day of the Year. Please check us out on Facebook at Christopher Kimball's Milk Street on Instagram at 177 Milk Street. We'll be back next week and thanks as always for listening.

Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio is produced by Milk Street in association with GBH co-founder Melissa Baldino, executive producer Annie Sensabaugh, senior editor Melissa Allison, producer Sarah Clapp, Assistant Producer Caroline Davis with production help from Debby Paddock. Additional editing by Sidney Lewis, audio mixing by Jay Allison and Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts. Theme music by Toubab Krewe, additional music by George Brandl Egloff, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio is distributed by PRX.