029. Essential Chef Gadgets and Perfecting St. Patrick's Day Meals

In this episode of Cooking Like a Pro, Chef Cal and guest Chef Sadie Krueger bring you culinary insights to elevate your kitchen game. Delve into kitchen essentials, St. Patrick’s Day menu ideas, and learn new cooking tips from the experts.

• Discover the must-have kitchen gadgets and pots for cooking like a pro.
• Explore delicious menu ideas for your St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
• Learn about Chef Cal’s favorite bean dish and cooking techniques.
• Insights into the benefits of grains and legumes as kitchen staples.

🔪🍗 🔪🍗 How fast can you bone out a chicken? 🔪🍗 🔪🍗 Check out Martin Yan and how fast he can on Yan Can Cook. 

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Let's Connect!

I'm Christa DeMercurio. I started as a stay-at-home mom who relied on cookbooks, measuring everything and following recipes to the letter. But watching my chef husband move effortlessly in the kitchen, I knew there had to be a better way.

So, I learned—studying his techniques, practicing his methods, and mastering the strategies that keep professional kitchens running smoothly. Over time, I became confident, capable, and free from recipes controlling my cooking.

I’m here to help you do the same. On Cooking Like a Pro, together we share everything you need to cook with confidence, save time and money, and actually enjoy being in the kitchen—without the stress and frustration.
P.S. I still reference cookbooks and internet recipes too!

❤️Culinarily Yours, Christa DeMercurio (Mrs. Chef)

Email: christa@culinarilyyours.net

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Chapters

• 0:04 Intro
• 1:28 Let's talk Chef worthy kitchen gadgets
• 12:51 Martin Yan bones out a chicken
• 15:30 Sharpen your knives
• 20:45 St. Patrick's Day cooking
• 31:15 What goes good with Blueberries?
• 31:44 Legumes and grains

Transcript

Christa DeMercurio:
Hey, food fans. Welcome to Cooking Like a Pro with Chef Cal and me, Mrs. Chef his wife, Christa DeMercurio. We're dishing out culinary intuition, insights and imagination to spice up your meals and make cooking more fun. On today's episode, Chef Sadie Krueger joins my Chef husband on the show. They're going to discuss their favorite kitchen gadgets as Chefs. They also explore menu ideas for a great St. Patrick's Day meal. Let's dig in. Today's episode was broadcast and recorded live on AM FM radio.

Chef Cal:
Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. You have found us cooking like a pro hero. Chef Cal, so glad that you joined us today here. Find us at cookinglikeapropodcast.net you can send a question in there and my wife will answer it, but my wife won't answer it tonight because my wife's not here. I have my, my good, good friend, Chef Sadie Krueger. Sadie, thanks for stepping in. Mrs. Chef had her, had some family obligations.

Chef Cal:
So I appreciate you coming by to chat with us.

Sadie Krueger:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Chef Cal:
Well, gosh, I don't even know how many. Well, I mean, you still look young, but so I don't know how many decades we've known each other, but it's, it's been several. But anyway, cooking like a pro. So today we wanted to talk about a variety of things. And I've been looking at some pots and pans and talking to my stainless steel guy, and we just kind of got to talking about the different things that are out there and that are available. And I think what you really want is you want specific types of pans, not what they're made out of, but the sizing of them. You know, you want certain things like a stock pot, right? You want a big stock pot. And to be honest, if you, as far as the material goes, you really just want to go with stainless steel regardless of that.

Chef Cal:
And besides the just going with, you know, stainless steel, the, the next thing you have to have is you have to have a heavy bottom pot. You want all of the paint, your pans, regardless what kind of pan it is, you want the bottom to be, to be very thick because that's what's going to keep your whatever's cooking in there from burning. And a real heavy bottom pot will kind of spread out the heat and allow it to things to cook more evenly. So one of the things you definitely want to do is do you have a favorite pot? Pot pan.

Sadie Krueger:
I like my little. It's a two quart pot. I use that all the time.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, I get that certain size that just works good at home.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah, it's a workhorse.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. And so, you know, besides stock pots, you got sauce pots. Sauce pot. Now, when I talk about stock pot or sauce pot, we're talking about a pot that has a handle on each side. So it has two handles, and you get a saucepan. So now you're talking about pans that have just one handle. So you have sauce pans, you have saute pans. The.

Chef Cal:
The one with the square edges instead of being smooth like you, so you can't really flip on it. That's called a. Yeah, that's called a sauteur. Sauteur. Most of the time. That's really. We kind of refer to that as a frying pan.

Sadie Krueger:
And a wok.

Chef Cal:
And a wok. Yes. There's a paella. There's a lot of them. There's a lot of them out there. And that's one of the things that's exciting is as you build your kitchen and your inventory, you come up with different gadgets and such. And we're going to talk a little bit more about gadgets in the next block, but you start purchasing appliances that work for specific things, like, you know, this item. You.

Chef Cal:
You. Every time I want to make a paella, I know I got a paella.

Sadie Krueger:
Pan or my egg pan.

Chef Cal:
Well, an egg pan. Yeah. And that's either going to be, you know, if you're doing it for eggs, and it should be 6 inches. Right. And then if it's 8 inches across, then you're talking about something you'd usually.

Sadie Krueger:
Use for an omelet or a large quesadilla.

Chef Cal:
You know, large quesadillas. The standard size pan for saute is 12 inches. That's the standard size pan you're going to use in a rest. But the one thing about those. Those pans that you cook on top of the stove, remember, a lot of those pans are also going to go from the stovetop straight into the oven.

Sadie Krueger:
If it doesn't have a plastic handle.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. So. So you have to make sure that the. The handle is. Is high temp. It's something that's. That's going to, you know, be able to handle the. The 4, 500 degrees, whatever you have.

Chef Cal:
Your. Your oven. I'm kind of a, you know, most recipes that you see out there, when it comes to cooking in an oven, a standard oven, you're. You're looking at a, Oh, I don't know, something like around 350 degrees, but I always like cooking things really hot. I like cooking them in a really hot oven because in the restaurant business, you're always trying to cook things really fast because the customer wants their food fast. And. But you have to, you have to really be spot on with your timing because at 500 degrees, you can, you can, you know, burn something up super fast.

Sadie Krueger:
I know it's not practical in the restaurant, but what about cast iron? I love my cast iron pan, but it just seems like a dying class of pans.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, the challenge with cast iron is that it's. Well, I guess if you want to get more minerals into your diet, you can by doing that. But generally we'll start off with copper. Super thin use. I mean, the heat comes right across the top, the bottom of it. So you table side cooking, they do a lot of that. And then you go with aluminum. Aluminum.

Chef Cal:
The problem is it starts to the pit and aluminum. Just. Especially if you're cooking with anything with acid, you know, you're going to get your, you know, more than your probably FDA regulated aluminum in your, you know, lasagna.

Sadie Krueger:
You know, you don't want to do that to your sauce. Right? Your spaghetti sauce.

Chef Cal:
No, you don't. You don't. So really stainless steel. The stainless steel is where it's at. But when you go into cast iron or enameled cast iron, certain things, yes. Dutch ovens, of course, because you're cooking in the ground and you're, for the most part, you want something that's. That's super thick all the way around. Cast iron is something that I have cast iron pans, and I use them specifically for specific things.

Sadie Krueger:
Fried chicken. What's your favorite dish for cast iron?

Chef Cal:
It's going to be anytime I want to blacken something.

Sadie Krueger:
Okay.

Chef Cal:
Anytime I want to blacken something. Let's say we want to blacken. Red snapper is a fairly popular dish to blacken. And you just hit your fresh fish. Make sure you take out all the pin bones. You don't want any skin on it either. And you're going to lightly brush it with butter and then tap it down into. Into a Cajun seasoning.

Chef Cal:
And you can just buy Cajun seasoning. You can make your own Cajun seasoning. It's just you're going to have some ground chilies in there and things like paprika and chili powder or maybe some spices. So you got this rub, basically, and you're just going to take this buttered piece of fish and you're just this fillet and you're just going to tap it down into the seasoning. And you're going to have your cast iron pan white hot. I mean, as hot as it can literally get. That was one of the biggest challenges in the restaurant business. No big deal, because we got those big old hoods over top of us.

Chef Cal:
Right. But in at home, I've ran people out of the house before. Because once you put that spicy, spicily seasoned fish on there and it smokes, what you need to do is it needs to have the fish perfectly cooked and have it blackened on the outside. And it's difficult to do that unless your pan is super white hot. Talking maybe a minute and a half on one side and then maybe another, you know, 90 seconds or so on the other side too. Goes real fast. It's got this real crispy spice on it. And then we serve that with a raspberry sauce.

Chef Cal:
So to help kind of counterbalance that captacem and all the seasoning on there.

Sadie Krueger:
I like the sweet and spicy.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, that's one of the things when we look at these flavor profiles is how do we get things to match? How do we take one thing, and especially in wine pairing, it's even more evident. But in food, the same thing. If you have something that's maybe a little bit bitter, then maybe you need to add something that's a little bit sour, or maybe you need to add something that's a little bit sweet. So there's a lot of different things you can kind of consider. But if you're not looking at that, that flavor profile of, okay, I'm tasting what I'm eating, you're not going to pick it up anyway. Okay. And so there's a lot of them out there. The nonstick pans are pretty good.

Chef Cal:
But you know what's interesting is we take a nonstick pan and you, you know, and you use it for a period of time. And then at my restaurants, in the past of my first restaurant was a French restaurant, but. And we cooked, we just went through pans like crazy. And then we would take them all to get them coated once a year, we'd ship off half the pans during the slow season and have them powder coated. And if you think about it, they would lose that powder coating, you know, every six months. And I was going into somebody's food, right?

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah, they have the ceramic coated ones that are really nice and a little less.

Chef Cal:
I've seen those at Costco. They're a little pricey for me, but they had a nice, like a small wok shaped one but like a wok, but smaller with a handle. Oh, yeah. I want to. I want to. I want to put my shopping cart, but that's way too much. But, you know, I've got so many pots and pans. If I bring pots and pans home, I think Mrs.

Chef Cal:
Chef's going to be a little bit upset about that. But anyway, we're going to go ahead and take a quick break. You have found us at Cooking Like a Pro. We will be back in just a moment. Welcome back to Cooking Like a Pro and Chef Cow. I'm back here and chatting with Chef Sadie, and we're just talking about kind of stuff you find in your kitchen. And one of the things that a lot of people, you know, I think, spend, unfortunately, probably too much money on because they. I mean, you want good.

Chef Cal:
I'm going to talk about knives, and you want good knives, but you, you know, you. You only need so many, right? I mean, your main. What's the main knife you use at home, Chef?

Sadie Krueger:
Oh, my Chef's knife. Chef's knife, yeah.

Chef Cal:
Okay. 6 inch, 8 inch, 8 inch, 10 inch. Okay. I use an 8 inch, too. It's a bit. Fits good in my hand. I do like a 6 inch for certain things. If I'm cutting things that are closer to my hand, a little smaller, I kind of like a six.

Chef Cal:
Tens are just too big. You see those tens and twelves is every once in a while, and there's like, you know, I don't know. It's not a. I don't need a weapon, you know, But. But anyway, then. Okay, how about second knife? Second favorite knife?

Sadie Krueger:
Probably my paring knife. I use that a lot.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, paring knife. So that's a short knife. Usually they're in between three and four inches long. And we're talking about the blade, the length of the blade, not the handle. And just a short knife that's going to be used for trimming vegetables and fruits and variety of things. But you have something kind of small, something, you know, if you're going to, you know, peel tomatoes or something like that. Slicer is always nice to have a slicer. The reason you really want a slicer.

Chef Cal:
Now, slicer, when we talk about slicer, think of something that you would cut, like a prime rib with something long. Because if you don't have a nice slicer and you're cutting, you know, prime rib or ham or turkey or something that's a long piece, a long and muscled piece of meat, the challenge you're going to have is you're Going to see a kind of a sawing action going on. If you're trying to use a French knife to do what the job of what a slicer should do.

Sadie Krueger:
And of course, a good bread knife.

Chef Cal:
Good bread knife. So the difference between a slicer and.

Sadie Krueger:
A bread knife, the ridges, the edges a little more serrated.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, it's got that serrated edge to it, so it. So it chews through. And you really need a good serrated knife. And when I get a serrated knife, I always want one that's offset. And when they say offset, that's a knife that you can grasp the handle with. And let's say you're cutting on a cutting board and the blade itself takes a little jog down or jig down about an inch before it goes to the blade. So the blade is on the cutting board and your hand. Hand is.

Chef Cal:
Is still has room for your fingers underneath. So, you know, that's. That's kind of the best slicer that I use for bread, tomatoes, anything that has a skin. Anything that has a skin on it. Right. If you need to kind of chew through that skin. So make sure you have the right knives. Cleavers.

Chef Cal:
I actually, I was going through my knives the other day. I found a cleaver. Actually, I was going through a drawer and I found this cleaver that Martin Yan had signed for me. I don't know if anyone's seen him. There's a video out there. He. He bones out an entire chicken, and it's like seven seconds. Maybe it's less.

Chef Cal:
I remember it's fast. And he did it at a conference, a Chef's conference I was at once. And. And then he was selling the knives also. So I went up and had him sign one for me. But, yeah, yeah, you have to look that up. Martin Yan, if you get a chance out there, folks, look it up. Martin Yan, he was really one of the.

Chef Cal:
The first Chefs, I would say, that brought Asian cuisine, Pacific Rim cuisine to. To the States. He really didn't see a whole lot of that earlier on. I probably give him a lot of credit. Also, Roy Yamamuchi, he's more Hawaiian, like Alan Wong. But, you know, you know, Hawaiian is. Hawaiian's kind of in the middle. I mean, obviously I would described as being tropical, but it's still got those Asian twists and flares, and it's still got some of that.

Chef Cal:
Yes, I'm from the mainland, so, you know, it's still got a little bit of, you know, I guess, American homeland influence. But yeah, you know, I like. You know, the thing I like to eat over in Hawaii is Spam. One of the few places they still have Spam.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah, they do. Spam sushi.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to remember what that's called. It's got a name. Yeah, I've done it before. I can't remember off the top of my head, but other knives. Boning knife. Boning knife's always good.

Chef Cal:
To have a bony knife, you want something that has a real good bend to it because, you know, if you're taking a, you know, a breast off of a raw chicken, you need something that's going to be flexible enough to bend. You know, you're not going to get that out of a cleaver. You're not going to get any bend out of your French knife, you know, so you want something that bends well, maybe a fillet knife for you. For seafood, it's always kind of a nice one. And then utility knife is. It's generally going to be about 6 inches long. But basically a utility knife is kind of a knife that you use for everything. It's kind of like that.

Chef Cal:
Like if you just don't need a specific knife, that's the one you grab, you know. So that's why it's called utility stainless steel, though I'll stick with stainless steel or carbon steel. Both of those work. Both of hold a good edge. High carbon stainless. I mean, you can spend as much as you want on knives. They have them out there that are sharp as swords, you know, I love.

Sadie Krueger:
Mine with the Japanese steel.

Chef Cal:
Oh, yeah, I have a couple of those. That's Sankui and I think what the other names are. But they. Yeah, they're. Those are comfortable knives and they'll hold. Hold a nice edge. Let's see a. Oh, and moving on from knives, the one thing related to it is, is knowing how to sharpen your knife.

Chef Cal:
Remember, a sharp knife is always safer than a dull knife. Right. Because on a dull knife you have to apply more pressure. More chance, I guess, of slipping is kind of the main reason. But I mean. And if you cut yourself, you know, you definitely want to cut yourself with a sharp knife because it's going to heal faster, you know, if you have to get stitches or something. And I've been around for. I've seen a lot of cuts, seen a lot of cuts.

Chef Cal:
I. I've cut myself my share. Generally it's not in cutting food, it's just doing something stupid. I remember the worst cut I had. I was cutting the rind off a piece of Cheese. I wasn't paying attention. I was. I had the knife.

Chef Cal:
Paul's pulling it towards me, doing this big British thing. And at the end they have a big cheese courses and stuff. Wham. All the way down to the bone. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, the doctor fixed me up and I was a. That's, that's a. That's for a different story.

Chef Cal:
I have to put that one in my book. That's, that's. I'm one of the few Chefs to have my own gynecologist, happened to be a gynecologist that was there at this black tie event that I did. And, and he took me back to his office and back down in town. And that was like three in the morning. At that point. He put the little stitches in me. I got my, you know, pieziotomy and boom, I was off.

Chef Cal:
I was ready to go. It was funny. We're going back in the office. What was it he said? Come back in a couple weeks. And I walk in the office. I walk in the office and there's like 20 women in this, this office. And, and I go up to the front and I say, this is a Chef cow. I'm here to see the doctor.

Chef Cal:
And she, she kind of, you know, leans forward. She goes, we only see women here. And I said, well, just. Just tell the doctor, you know, that Chef cow's here. So I go and I sit down. Oh, yeah. You know, all 20 women are looking at me like, what is going on with this guy? This is way before the training. Whatever.

Chef Cal:
Anyway, yeah, so he called me and you know, a little bit later, you know, a few minutes later, I went walking in and, you know, I didn't have to get up in the stirrups, just, you know, anyway, anyway, that kind of. Yeah, that, that one. That went off the rails on that one. But anyway. But sharpening knives keep them sharp. Have a. And then also have a steel. A steel is just.

Chef Cal:
If you've ever seen someone in the kitchen and they're just kind of flaring back on a long, long piece of metal, and then they're just sharpening it by going on one side and going on the other side. That will help straighten out the. The tips of the blade. But generally, once the knife gets a dull, you got to hit it on a stone. So. And you know, there are a lot of sharpening. I don't know. What do you have at home? Do you have like a little plug in sharpening thing that you run knives on? How do you sharpen knives at home?

Sadie Krueger:
I have an Old school steel. Like a. Yeah.

Chef Cal:
Oh, a stone.

Sadie Krueger:
Stone. Yeah. And then I have a steel to keep the edge on.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Well, you know, there's so many people, though, that buy these things that are out there. I've never had one that didn't. That didn't actually hurt the knife. I shouldn't say. I do have one. So actually, the one I use, I've got a diamond and it's got the three different. Actually, there's a total of six different levels of diamond smoothness you can shave when you get done with one of those.

Chef Cal:
Anyway, I did want to. Gosh, we're not going to have time to get into that. Maybe we'll jump into. We can talk a little bit about it. Just other necessities, things that you. What are some of the gadgets that you have in your pantry at home, Chef?

Sadie Krueger:
Well, let's see. I love my microplane for zesting lemons and ginger and garlic and all the things.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, microplates are great.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah. I love my silpat mat.

Chef Cal:
Yep, Silpat. And, you know, and. Well, go and explain what it is because most people probably have no idea.

Sadie Krueger:
It's magical. If you're baking cookies or, you know, bread so you don't have to line it, it's a nice nonstick mat that you can bake on.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. So it's 10. So it's high temp. So, you know, it goes right in the oven with your cookies or whatever, and it kind of forms a little protection on there. It definitely gives you more time. And we used to use them all the time when we were competing. I like my. My stick blender, I guess they call them.

Chef Cal:
I call it burr mixer, but I use that thing all the time.

Sadie Krueger:
Oh, my milk frother.

Chef Cal:
Milk frother.

Sadie Krueger:
I do love that. In the morning.

Chef Cal:
For coffee.

Sadie Krueger:
For coffee.

Chef Cal:
Okay. Colander. Or if you get a super fine colander, you get a chinois something. That's literary. Chinois will take the. It will take the seeds out of, like, blackberries. You know, if you're making like a BlackBerry jam and you want turn it into a jelly, not heavy seeds or anything in it. That's what I've always called it.

Chef Cal:
Whole food. Yeah. So you can use that there or you can go through some cheesecloth kind of that hanging around. Or coffee filters. Used to use a lot of coffee filters. I could have a coffee grinder at home, but I've never used it for coffee. I use it for seasonings, for spices that I want to grind up a.

Sadie Krueger:
Separate one Just for that.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, the coffee would taste pretty. Pretty funky, I think, if I did that. But. Okay, so we were going to talk about St. Patrick's Day. Here's one of the things. When I was a corporate Chef for 60 restaurants one time, they. And they had a corned beef sandwich.

Chef Cal:
And the thing about corned beef is it shrinks so much. So most. What most people do, the way I seen it when I was being raised, was they just throw it in a pot of water, boil it till it's tender, you know, or you can. But here's what I found after working with it for quite a while in a test kitchen, is that it doesn't get tender in the cooking process. It gets tender in the resting process. So if you take your corned beef and say you cook it for a couple of hours and then leave it in the oven, cover it with foil, plastic, whatever you want to cover with, and let it sit in the oven for another couple hours, another two to three hours. And all that connective tissue which holds the muscle fiber together. Remember, the muscle fiber is.

Chef Cal:
That's the muscle. The connective tissue is within them that holds the muscle fiber together, and it allows that time for that to melt. And so you get this beautiful roast of corned beef that has more flavor because the flavor didn't get boiled out in the water. And it also has a lot less.

Sadie Krueger:
Shrinkage and also the temperature of the water that you're poaching it in. Right. So, you know, it doesn't need to be boiling, but like 165, you know, just low and slow in the crock pot. Yeah, yeah.

Chef Cal:
You had mentioned crock pot. And you're right. The thing about a crock pot, I wouldn't, you know, take a big piece. Take a piece of corned beef and. And, you know, throw a, you know, five pound piece of corned beef and, you know, 15 gallons of water. Right. But in a crock pot, then you. What you're doing is you're preserving all that flavor.

Chef Cal:
And especially when, I mean, you put it. Plug it in in the morning.

Sadie Krueger:
Mom used to tell me, yeah, your pickling spice. Yeah. Maybe a beer. Your broth.

Chef Cal:
Beer in the bra. Beer in the broth. Yep. That's always a good thing, too. So how about accompaniments for. To go on the corned beef, not as a side, but going on it.

Sadie Krueger:
As like a sauce.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, something like a sauce.

Sadie Krueger:
Well, usually I do like braised cabbage.

Chef Cal:
Braised cabbage on side with it.

Sadie Krueger:
But you could do maybe like a whipped feta. On the side with the potatoes.

Chef Cal:
Probably anything creamy because, you know, because it might have a little. Little. Well, it's brined, so it's. It's been cured. If you smoke it, well, then you have pastrami, so it's not going to be smoked. But yeah, I think for me, sauce, I is. I take a. The.

Chef Cal:
The mother sauce of hollandaise, and I just add Dijon mustard. And the French call it the Dijonnaise. It's what we serve with lamb, you know, mint jelly. But then they serve that with lamb. But it goes great, I tell you. Hollandaise with lodjon mustard in there. Oh, man. Over.

Chef Cal:
I mean, you could just. Yeah.

Sadie Krueger:
Hard to go wrong with the hollandaise, right?

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Yeah. Butter. Yeah. Fat. You can't go wrong with fat. And egg yolks.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah.

Chef Cal:
But then. Okay, so you said braised cabbage. You know, you can also take your cabbage, quarter it, and then just barbecue it. That's something's kind of fun to do, too. Give it a little. A little different texture and definitely a different flavor. There's. I have a great cabbage dish that I.

Chef Cal:
I got from where was. I went to a restaurant down in Napa. It's called Mustards, and they had a. I used to serve this with a Cornish game here. And then I would eviscerate and we would roast it off and. But it was red cabbage. And they sauteed this red cabbage. Just cook it down to.

Chef Cal:
It was. You know, the texture was pretty much gone. It was like just on the other side of al dente. But then they flavored it with brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, and cumin. And the thing was, is those three flavors were just perfectly balanced so you could get all of. So that wasn't overly sweet, wasn't overly spicy, wasn't overly tart, but it had all three of those components, and they're perfectly matched with this red cabbage. And. Oh, man, was it good.

Chef Cal:
You know, I mean, you go out to a restaurant and you. I wouldn't say steal the recipe, but you get the. You get the idea.

Sadie Krueger:
Oh, yeah. You reverse engineer it and maybe like a cabbage au gratin.

Chef Cal:
Oh, yeah.

Sadie Krueger:
Nice. You know.

Chef Cal:
Okay, so how about a starch then? So, you know, grains. I guess we're going to talk about grains in the next section.

Sadie Krueger:
Soda bread. Right. It's kind of a classic. And roasted red potatoes, but roast.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Steamed potatoes. Roasted potatoes. I mean, well, they'll call for, like, a steamed potato, but here's where you can get. Be creative. Instead of steaming that Potato. Or boiling that potato. Roast it.

Chef Cal:
Get some more flavor on there.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah, Butter.

Chef Cal:
Go see, you're an olive oil. Or some of butter. They've been lying to us for years. Butter is good for you.

Sadie Krueger:
I love butter. I'm not a butter hater.

Chef Cal:
Well, it's the top three. Top three ingredients. Right. In French cooking. Butter, butter, butter. So that's something that Julia Child would say. I won't do my Julia Child. My Julia Child impression anyway.

Chef Cal:
But. Yeah, so. So St. Patrick's Day, other root vegetables, carrots, turnips. Yeah. Is a good one. Sometimes you'll see more of a medley of vegetables, but more of like a cauliflower, broccoli thing. We used to do that with our chateaubriand.

Chef Cal:
And then. I see. Okay, how about dessert? Okay, what is. I used to do a mint pie. It's a. It's a chocolate mint pie. Chocolate cookie crumb, kind of a crust on it. And then take cream to mint with a nice whipping cream, a little bit of white cream to cocoa and green cream to mint to flavor it.

Chef Cal:
And it all just set up a nice little wedge of that. So that's a good one. It's kind of like a grasshopper for dessert.

Sadie Krueger:
I remember that dessert. It was really good.

Chef Cal:
So say you wanted to do appetizers, you know, for. For something like that. You know, the appetizers for St. Patrick's Day, people coming over early want some stuff for them to pick on. Do whatever you want. But the one thing I would say is you want. You never want to have a. An appetizer be repeated in the meal, you know, so you wouldn't.

Chef Cal:
You'd want to do something, I mean, a little bit different, you know, whatever it happened to be salad. You know, I always like a nice, good spinach salad. I think a spinach bacon salad with some grated eggs and maybe some red onion.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah. Or some endive with a little goat cheese in it.

Chef Cal:
You're a goat cheese. Yeah. Person. Yeah. Did you go with me when we went down to that goat cheese place down in Cottonwood? Yeah. That was great, huh?

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah.

Chef Cal:
Oh, yeah. It was a Chef's association. That was a long time ago. And we brought a bunch of food and we matched the food to the goat cheese.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah, I think I did a wasabi.

Chef Cal:
You can remember that far back.

Sadie Krueger:
It's like a poached shrimp and, you know, canape. I think I did something like that. I think you did. I remember the goats goat cheese cheesecake. You had a pastry Chef at the time.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, I think I helped with that, I believe. I like the goats themselves, just, you know, they're cute and I can't remember what the name of that creamery is, but yeah, it's just down south of us, but. But the thing about their goat cheese is. And most people go. They get turned off on goat cheese. I don't know how we got around to goat cheese, but they get turned off by it because of the acidity to it and some. And again, I love goat cheese, but I don't want something where acid is the number one, the first and the most powerful thing I taste, you know, and that was the one thing that they had down there. And I like a creamy goat cheese.

Chef Cal:
Taking goat cheese and maybe folding it with a little bit of cream cheese or maybe just a touch of sour cream. Yeah. And then throw in some, some herbs, whatever flavors you want. Speaking of flavors, what is this thing you brought into this to the studio here? This looks like an herb. I've never seen this before.

Sadie Krueger:
It's in the broccoli family.

Chef Cal:
It's in the broccoli family, yeah.

Sadie Krueger:
And it's almost like a.

Chef Cal:
You eat it.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah.

Chef Cal:
Okay.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah, like, like you would broccolini, but it's flowering, so it's essentially like a flowering.

Chef Cal:
It does look like flowering broccolini.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah. So it's so pretty, you know, for spring when you've got the flowers and the flowers taste so good.

Chef Cal:
Great in a salad, go great on a grind. I bet it'd be great on fish. And you know, that's a sense. One thing that people don't do is they think, oh, I'm just going to put it on there. It sprouts. You can still cook them. Just cook them quickly. I mean, just a really quick.

Chef Cal:
In the pan, a little bit of seasoning, you know, butter, whatever you want to do with the flavor profile and then just put it on top or olive oil. Olive oil, yeah. Well, that's one thing about. Yeah, the thing about the herbs, you know, they. A little bit. Generally goes a long way. So just think about the protein. Make sure that you're not overpowering it.

Chef Cal:
But it's always nice to have that cleansing. It's usually more of a cleansing element, you know, generally you're gonna get bitter, you know, out of these things. A lot of em are kind of peppery, you know, and so they add a little bit of. Little bit of spice to it. Also chop them up, throw em in.

Sadie Krueger:
A salad and they're good for you, you know, that's where. Don't say that like, you should eat something green with every meal.

Chef Cal:
Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll work on that. Yeah, I'll have chocolate chip mint ice cream. Okay. That's green.

Sadie Krueger:
And then a little bite of the broccoli.

Chef Cal:
A little bite of the broccoli. While we're talking about stuff you brought here. So this is a strawberry crisp.

Sadie Krueger:
It's a crumb bar.

Chef Cal:
Strawberry crumb bar. Why strawberries?

Sadie Krueger:
So my students, we actually went over to Providence farm this week, and we helped.

Chef Cal:
They hide a bud for me.

Sadie Krueger:
I will. We helped plant some strawberry starts. We got this in the ground. And then some other students, they helped to get the ground ready and raked up some stuff.

Chef Cal:
Very cool.

Sadie Krueger:
So, yeah, we're gonna partner with them and do some farm to table food.

Chef Cal:
Now, if people want to get product from there, can people go up and purchase it there or how's that work?

Sadie Krueger:
They're just getting the planting in right.

Chef Cal:
Now, but when they harvest scene, that's down on 273.

Sadie Krueger:
Yep. They have a fruit or a farm stand that they're gonna put out in the parking lot of that new trailhead right in front of their farm.

Chef Cal:
Oh, there you go. Help the. Help the local people and. But it's a great program. It really is. I've been there numerous times. I like the fact that they grow plants in water. That's kind of cool.

Chef Cal:
That's actually the first time I'd ever seen that. So we're going to take our last quick break here at Cooking Like a Pro again. Chef Kyle with Chef Sadie. Back in just a moment. Welcome back. Welcome back. Cooking Like a Pro. I should have some blueberries.

Chef Cal:
We should be talking about blueberries. Blueberries, Yeah. I like that. Blueberry hill blueberries. Let's see. Well, you did this. This little crisp thing here. You could have done that with blueberries.

Sadie Krueger:
Definitely.

Chef Cal:
You know what goes real good with blueberries? Duck. Oh, yeah. I do a pan seared duck with a kind of a balsamic blueberry sauce.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah, I was gonna say lemons, but yeah, of course.

Chef Cal:
There you go. Well, I'm, you know, me, I'm. I'm a carnivore, but. But we were going to talk a little bit about legumes and grains. Kind of, you know, pastas kind of fall in that category. But. But legumes, the thing about them, basically, we're talking about a bean, right? A bean that's out there. Could be any kind of bean, white bean, chili bean, chickpeas, anything that falls in the bean category, but they're always high in Vitamins and minerals, of course, because they grow.

Sadie Krueger:
Fiber.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, good fiber, soluble fiber. So that's always a good thing. And they actually work real good as an alternative to. I think most people that I know that are vegetarians, that's how they'll get their protein. They'll get the protein by some kind of a bean dish or beans and.

Sadie Krueger:
Rice make a complete protein. So typically, yeah, they're gon go together.

Chef Cal:
So, you know, beans are good grains. All kinds of different things you can do with grains. I'm a real fan. The thing about grains is, for the most part, unless you talk about wheat, berry or maybe black or wild rice, those take a long time to cook. But most grains cook really quickly. Couscous and things like that. I always like quinoa anyway. Go ahead, you were gonna say.

Sadie Krueger:
So have you ever sprouted any beans or quinoa while I was cooking them? No, just sprouted overnight. And it helps increase the nutritional value. It's like doing a sprout. So you can.

Chef Cal:
So how do you sprout it in water? Have your chicken lay on it and.

Sadie Krueger:
Just drain it and let it sit there. And you just rinse it a couple times a day.

Chef Cal:
So you.

Sadie Krueger:
And let it sit in the windowsill like you would sprouts, you know, but not in the sun, in the windowsill.

Chef Cal:
So it kind of reconstitutes and starts growing.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah, it'll get a tail.

Chef Cal:
It will sprout.

Sadie Krueger:
It'll sprout. Yeah. And so you can, you know, you want fresh beans, obviously, but a lot of work. I mean, if you're doing it already.

Chef Cal:
I mean, how many tails do you need to get a portion? I mean, a lot, right?

Sadie Krueger:
No, I only do, like a fourth a cup and at a time.

Chef Cal:
Okay. All right. Well, here you go, folks. Let it sprout. Sprouts. That's not my life. I mean, that's one thing that's gotten real popular over the years lately. See, sprouts a lot more than you ever used to.

Chef Cal:
I like them as an alternative on a sandwich. I mean, lettuce is 97% water for the most part. I mean, a little bit, maybe less water and whatever. Romaine or something. The iceberg certainly is all water. But a sprout. You'll get all that flavor.

Sadie Krueger:
You get that.

Chef Cal:
That spice, that bitterness, especially radish sprouts. Radish sprouts is something that I. That I really enjoy. But they can. Well, they can overpower again. You know, it's all about, you know, balance. But. Yeah, but it's just a great different flavor.

Chef Cal:
You know, when you taste it, it's. It's definitely different. One of the things that I. I see. I see a recipe here. It was risotto, but they're using fennel. And fennel's a very, very underutilized. Not.

Chef Cal:
You don't see it being used, you know, much. It's got that.

Sadie Krueger:
That licorice kind of flavor to it.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, it's really good when you char grill it because it can be kind of woody, you know, so you want it fresh, you want tender. Certain things that certain dishes you use it in, of course, fennel seed. You'll see in a lot of ground things, you know, sausage, and especially Italian sausage. You'll see that. Different types of beans. White beans. Oh, I love white beans. I had this white bean dish once cooked.

Chef Cal:
Where was I? I was in Southern California at the Universal Studios. So good. I remember it was. It was white beans and then had bacon, caramelized shallots, pimento, and then red wine vinegar. Something. You just sit there and eat a whole bowl full.

Sadie Krueger:
I usually do white beans, diced, stewed tomatoes and spinach. Kind of like a nice little soup with that parmesan cheese and a crusty bread.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Throw some sausage in there. But a lot of things that fall in that. Lentils. Lentils are always something that I enjoy. Again, all these things are just great fiber. Lentils cook real quick. I'm a big.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah. Lentil curry or lentil with salmon is so good.

Chef Cal:
See, you always come up with these weird seasonings. I've never seen your seasoning cupboard, but sounds like it's got a lot of interesting things in it. I mentioned quinoa earlier.

Sadie Krueger:
Love quinoa.

Chef Cal:
Super, super good for you. And very flavorful. A lot of these things, they have a nutty kind of a flavor to them, you know, and it's just something you don't really get in a lot of other things.

Sadie Krueger:
And it's a complete protein on its own.

Chef Cal:
Complete protein, yeah.

Sadie Krueger:
So it's a great substitute if you're not eating meat.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. I mentioned wild rice. In fact, more wild rice is grown up here in Northern California than anywhere in the world.

Sadie Krueger:
Yeah.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. And I remember they used to dry it. They put it in a kiln. They would dry it. And I. I had one restaurant and our. All of our house salads, when you ordered, we had this puffed wild rice, and it was kind of like, this is kind of soft and crunchy, but it wasn't like, really hard. And we used to sprinkle it over all of our salads.

Chef Cal:
Had a beautiful little salad and variety of garnishes on there, and it was topped with that. So basically it kind of became the, like the crouton, that. The textural component. A lot of, you know, things like fava beans, lima beans, those. You really don't see those being used much.

Sadie Krueger:
You know, kids don't really like those. I mean, I like them, but, you know, I like the giant ones. Have you seen the giant fava beans?

Chef Cal:
You're honking ones. Yeah, you could.

Sadie Krueger:
Those are soft and buttery, and I think you can get away with those a little bit more. How about black eyed peas on New Year's? Yep, I like to have that. Right.

Chef Cal:
For good luck. Yeah, good luck. That's. I didn't really get mine in until a couple of days after that. Maybe that's why my luck's going the way it is. It's going great. Oh, turtle beans. Or, you know, black beans.

Chef Cal:
Black beans are great. And one thing that I'll tell you when I'm cooking my black beans, and this is a great little tip for you out there, folks, is I'll take like half stock, maybe it's a vegetable stock or poultry stock, and then the other half of the liquid. And remember, most all of these starches will increase two and a half times their size. So kind of think that in mind when you're dumping it in a pot, whatever you dump in there, rice, beans, whatever, is going to increase about two and a half times its size. So understand that for volume, the one thing is I do a half stock and then the other half I do is coffee. Like we say, the leftover coffee, you know, at the end of the night. Not that in the out of the cups, but, you know, just, you know, you got coffee, you know, always have to. You never know how much coffee to make.

Chef Cal:
So you always have some leftover. And I tell them to keep the coffee and cool it down and put it in the fridge. And then I would just use it to make my bean soups.

Sadie Krueger:
It's kind of a Creole kind of.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, yeah. And it gives it a. Just kind of a uniqueness. I don't know how many people would pick it up, say, oh, that's, you know, Folgers or whatever. But, well.

Sadie Krueger:
And black beans are the highest in fiber, and black foods have been linked to longevity. So it's good to eat some black foods.

Chef Cal:
Oh, black. Black beans.

Sadie Krueger:
Black rice.

Chef Cal:
But anyway, yeah, beans. And again, it's great. It's a great side for anything. I know chili, you know, chili beans. Chili's always something I like, you know. You know, vancamp, pork and beans.

Sadie Krueger:
Staple. Classic.

Chef Cal:
Classic staple. Yeah. It's been around for a long time, I'm sure. But anyway, so there's a lot of different things you can use. We didn't get into rice, you know, wild rice. So you know that there's more. Actual Calrose is the. Is the standard medium sized, medium grain rice.

Chef Cal:
It's called Calrose. And there's more Calrose grown in the San Joaquin Valley in California than anywhere. Anywhere, really. Look it up.

Sadie Krueger:
That's awesome.

Chef Cal:
Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

Sadie Krueger:
Well, like you mentioned, lentils, those are even more fiber than black beans. So those are great to get into your diet. And one of my favorite, my little recipe with that sweet potatoes in there with your lentils and a little bit of lime juice and cilantro. Simple, easy, super good.

Chef Cal:
What is that? More kind of Hispanic or what?

Sadie Krueger:
A little Indian. Almost a little Indian.

Chef Cal:
That's one thing that I'm really enjoying a lot now is the Indian flavors are coming in, you know, and you can find those in certain stores. You can find, you know, because almost all of them have, you know, a Mexican state, you know, section, and they'll have an Asian Pacific Rim type section. But, you know, if I want Asian ingredients, I just go to an Asian store. But a lot of, you know, green papaya, different things that. That were kind of unique that I could buy at an Asian store and then bring on and do kind of some cool stuff. Long beans, Chinese long beans. I just love those things. They just go round and round on the plate.

Chef Cal:
I wouldn't even cut them, you know, get people, they can figure out how they want to eat them themselves. But anyway, a lot of fun things you can do with the different rices and legumes. And again, it's just. These are all just alternatives to just the basic potato, whether it's a mashed potato or baked potato or scalloped potato, sweet potato. A lot of things you could do with potato, but. But that side is generally going to be some sort of starch.

Christa DeMercurio:
Thank you so much for spending time with us. Until next time, we hope you'll be cooking up a storm in the kitchen. So we'll be with you again next week with food, flavor and fun right here on Cooking Like a Pro Podcast.