Spilled Milk

Episode 640: Tiramisu

Episode Notes

Today we are sinful, decadent and irritating Molly as we talk tasty gloop desserts and boudoirs. We discuss mayoral duties, friar juice and the right temperature for serving revenge before learning about some suspicious substitutions.


 

Molly's Tiramisu

Molly's Now but Wow! - The Last Repair Shop short film

The Food Podcast (also produced by Producer Abby)

Producer Abby's book recommendation newsletter: the rolling ladder

Episode Transcription

Matthew Amster-Burton  0:04  

I'm Matthew and I'm Molly and this is spilled milk, the show where we cook something delicious. Eat it all and you can't have any and things are very serious around. Yes,

 

Molly  0:11  

we definitely did not just record a completely useless giggly intro

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  0:17  

that British definitely won't put at the end of the show. Definitely

 

Molly  0:20  

not. Okay, today we're talking about tiramisu. Yeah,

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  0:25  

I think this was suggested by me maybe maybe I didn't see I didn't see like if you if you suggested it, like via email or on Reddit or something, let us know. But I think I put it on here after wife of the show Lori and I went a little bit tiramisu crazy recently. When did you go tiramisu crazy? Well, in order to tell you that we're gonna have to set off down memory lane.

 

Molly  0:46  

Okay. Okay, here we go. Let's link arms and go. Okay, so

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  0:49  

I had definitely had tiramisu before, but never really was one of those foods that like didn't, didn't love or hate and just kind of knew was out there and never really thought about, or maybe thought about is like a thing, a thing from the late 80s. Right. But then we went to see Japanese breakfast and built a spill at the zoo. And one of those outdoor zoo concerts. This would have been like last summer last summer was a great show. And the two Dibella pizza truck parked there. And we had already gotten like chicken strips on a different place. We were like, huh, they have dessert like we want some dessert. They've got tiramisu. Let's give it a try. Okay, and so we got like a tub of tiramisu from from to Dibella, which is a local local pizza chain in Seattle. And it was so good. And we were like sitting like watching one of our favorite bands like sitting out in the sun. Eating eating tiramisu. It was a what do you what do you call? What's the word that life experience? It was like a peak life experience. decadent. That's what it was. Oh,

 

Molly  1:50  

that word really annoys me.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  1:53  

I couldn't no i You okay,

 

Molly  1:54  

okay, great. You've done it. Congratulations.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  1:57  

Wow. What about the word chocoholic? What do you think of that?

 

Molly  2:00  

sinful? That word is sinful. That I hate the phrase sinful, sinful chocolate cake.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  2:07  

It was yeah, no, it wasn't. It wasn't that we were eating a dessert. It was that we were eating a dessert like outdoors. Like Well, Beltsville was

 

Molly  2:15  

playing. Yeah, no, that's pretty great. I remember hearing the word tiramisu and like the name of the dessert long before I ever was interested in tasting it. I remember maybe in the 80s or early 90s, when like Northern Italian food became a thing. This is an ad. I remember. My parents fawning over the idea of tiramisu and then tiramisu quickly became passe.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  2:42  

I have a question that like is not going to come out and like the form of a sensical question, but maybe we'll figure out what I mean. Like so tiramisu presumably is like a thing that is like, you know, popular in Italy, or some region of Italy. But we may learn on this episode that like, all of a sudden became popular in the US, along with a bunch of other Italian things. Has there ever been like a thing from our region that suddenly got popular like a food thing? I don't mean like grunge I guess I guess like, there was this like coffee, third wave, third wave coffee, maybe cedar plank salmon? Oh, cedar plank,

 

Molly  3:21  

salmon. That sounds right.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  3:23  

I don't know. It wasn't an interesting question. It turns out no, it was interesting. That gives me that gives me it gives you pause.

 

Molly  3:29  

It gives me pause. Yep. P A Ws. So cute. Okay, so here's the deal. I did the research for this one. And for once, I actually looked at my cookbook shelf night as a starting starting point.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  3:45  

Your sturdy sturdy, makes a great starting point.

 

Molly  3:50  

And I remembered this cookbook that I have. It's called sever cooks authentic Italian to remember whatever magazine made these sever cooks authentic French sever, blah, blah. I think I had other ones. The only one I've kept is sever cooks authentic Italian came out in 2001. According to that book, tiramisu was invented in Treviso, which is in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy. Okay, and so according to this sever cookbook, it was invented in Treviso at a hotel restaurant called El Tula, which was noted for its good cooking. Now, that said, According to Wikipedia, there is like, you know, a real long standing face off between the Veneto which is the region that Teresa was in, and for Yulee Vinnytsia Julia, which is the region immediately

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  4:44  

east of it. All right. I definitely knew those were two different regions because

 

Molly  4:48  

both of them claim to be the originating region of tiramisu. So I don't think this is ever going to be settled. And that's fine. I don't care that Not much. But anyway, in 2013, the governor of Veneto sought EU protected status certification for the dessert because he wanted or I guess a lot of people wanted the dessert to be codified as only including the ingredients it included in like 1970

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  5:20  

is so out of being like when this restaurant allegedly created it, so

 

Molly  5:23  

So the restaurant allegedly created it, I believe in the late 60s. So again, nobody can seem to agree on exactly when it was created. It was the late 60s or early 70s. Okay, and it was somewhere in northeastern it'll, that doesn't

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  5:38  

surprise me. That's kind of what I would have guessed like, and then it blew up in America like 20 years later, like 15 years later.

 

Molly  5:45  

Yeah, yeah. So well, so anyway, basically, you know, the the region of Veneto wanted it to be that you couldn't have things like strawberry tiramisu or that tiramisu was only based on the relatively small number of ingredients that were in the original recipe for it. We're going to talk more about

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  6:05  

you know, what seems like a good job. You know how like sometimes like the mayor of your town will like have like a get into a dispute with the mayor of another town over like, you know, who's going to win that win the big sports game or like who makes a better hot dog or something like that? I want to be like a mayor or governor whose entire job is just food based disputes. You

 

Molly  6:25  

know, this kind of seems like Haven't you been like a judge at like the chili cook off

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  6:28  

a judge at a Korean barbecue cook off many times, like a

 

Molly  6:33  

very small scale your rights may oral role. You were the in that moment you were the mayor of your own personal self. I was I own as well. And you decided the dispute over who made the best Korean barbecue?

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  6:47  

That's that is true. I did. I did assist with that. I want this to be like a lavishly paid position. Full benefit. Okay. Okay.

 

Molly  6:55  

I've been trying to find one of those. Like

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  6:57  

with it, and I want I want to, like have some sort of like, modality, or scepter.

 

Molly  7:01  

Oh, I was just thinking a sash like i Miss America. You're

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  7:05  

right I Rog, i The scepter would be for special occasions. The sash would be for every day. Yeah.

 

Molly  7:10  

Okay. Anyway, so yeah, this stuff. You know, invented in the late 60s, there abouts. Probably, it went gangbusters in the 1980s. It

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  7:20  

does seem like a restaurant dessert. Yes. Right. I'm sure I'm sure listener catabolized. He said it wasn't Mr. Ken

 

Molly  7:29  

albala is gonna be like, Why didn't you call me? I could have set up this one. So I

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  7:34  

feel like I feel like I've like like working up the courage to actually call him at some point. But it's kind of funnier if we don't i

 

Molly  7:40  

Well, because if the show is to correct about things, I don't know, then then what do we have to joke about

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  7:49  

right and like, and also it's the whole basis for our friendship with Ken That's right,

 

Molly  7:53  

is that he knows things and we know things that we don't know. We don't know things, but we're not going to ask him and write them. Okay, so in the 1980s. Also, that's like when the word started appearing in dictionaries to like, okay, Italian and English language dictionaries. So so let's talk about what this stuff is because so at its most basic Tiramisu is coffee flavor layered Italian dessert that is made from ladyfingers, which we're going to talk more about in a minute. In Italian, they're called several Yardi. Oh, nice, dipped in either strong coffee or espresso, and then they're layered with a whipped mixture of egg yolks, sugar and mascarpone.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  8:32  

Yeah, and I'm sure we will get into this further but like my favorite thing about Tiramisu is that it's a gloop desert. It's very gloomy, and I love just getting to eat gloop. Like you know, I feel like I sometimes want to eat like just whipped cream

 

Molly  8:47  

hold up. This is so surprising because you are condiment phobic and gloop equals condiment.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  8:53  

Like I don't want savory glue, but I only want sweet glue. I would, I would eat Augustus glue. Well, the first time I've made the Willy Wonka joke that

 

Molly  9:06  

probably I Yeah. Okay, anyway, so it's usually topped with cocoa. Sometimes the individual like layers of mascarpone whip, stuff are topped with cocoa. But anyway, some recipes also have you whip egg whites into the mascarpone mixture, not all of them. And then a common variant, which I didn't even know was optional, involves soaking the ladyfingers in alcohol or adding alcohol to the mascarpone mixture. Yeah,

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  9:35  

that does seem like like a key part to me. No.

 

Molly  9:38  

So apparently the most commonly used one is Marsala wine. I don't even know what that

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  9:45  

tastes like. I know what it tastes like mostly from like I went through a period when I was making chicken marsala pretty often and haven't made it in probably 15 years. Wow. Okay, it's delicious. Okay.

 

Molly  9:57  

Sometimes people use Emma Reto some times people use a coffee basically Kerlick Tia Maria or kalua or rum and I have to say rum is the Laker. I imagine in like that tiramisu. Yeah,

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  10:10  

it sounds really good. I think I think the one we just had may have a little friend Jellico in it. What is French Alico? Taylor Angelica is like a how do you say oh to notice? Does it taste like monks? Oh, it tastes like monks. Yeah, I think I think it's like a hazelnut liqueur. All right.

 

Molly  10:25  

Hmm. Interesting. Okay, I'm gonna like this app. Anyway, that said there was no alcohol in the original recipe.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  10:31  

Okay, yeah, yeah. Frangelico hazelnut liqueur.

 

Molly  10:35  

Oh, and doesn't have anything to do with monks. The bottle

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  10:39  

was designed to look like a Christian fryer. Okay, it's like you're like drinking the juice of the fryer.

 

Molly  10:45  

So the name means pick me up or cheer me up, which probably has to do with the caffeine it contains. And it's eaten cold.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  10:55  

You can't write a joke on the agenda and then refuse to read back out.

 

Molly  11:00  

I wrote on the agenda. It is eaten cold, like revenge. Now,

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  11:04  

I know revenge is a dish best served cold

 

Molly  11:09  

and cold. Do you let it come to room temperature? That's right.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  11:12  

Like I recommend taking revenge out of the fridge like four hours before. It's

 

Molly  11:16  

like It's like cheese. So I want to talk about lady fingers and mascarpone a little bit I want to move on because I think I've always felt like tiramisu was a fiddly thing to make because I thought lady fingers were I don't know going to be hard to find or like you'd have to make them ladies everywhere but it's true. There are ladies in fact, I can even donate my own my own ladies I mean Okay, so let's talk about what lady fingers are so I've never actually like encountered them outside of tiramisu have you? I

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  11:52  

feel like I have but where and why? I don't know. Okay, I've never made tiramisu. So I don't I don't know if I've ever like popped open a box of lady fingers. Okay,

 

Molly  12:03  

well so they're a dry and quite airy so like low density egg based like sponge cake biscuit thing that's roughly shaped like a thick finger.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  12:15  

Okay, I Yeah, no, I know what they look like. We may be maybe we're gonna get to this but like, do you ever make them yourself before making the tiramisu Are they are they only something you buy?

 

Molly  12:25  

I think that you can make them I've also seen recipes for tiramisu. That's that substituted like a genoise for the lady finger and don't ask me how a genoise differs from a sponge cake biscuit. Have

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  12:41  

you ever seen one that substituted Ritz crackers? Or Twinkies?

 

Molly  12:47  

Oh wow. Galia.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  12:50  

Somebody someone on Tik Tok has made twink Amis

 

Molly  12:56  

good one, okay, Matthew. So these are a principal ingredient not only in tiramisu, but also in Charlotte's I think you can imagine the imagine them lined up around the outside of a Charlotte. Don't ask me anything more about Charlotte.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  13:11  

Charlotte is like it's like a gloop cake that is trying to be held up by cookies. That's

 

Molly  13:17  

okay. I think it uses like Bavarian cream or something. But that Bavarian cream in there anyway. lady fingers are also used in trifles is tiramisu, a trifle? Hold on. You're getting ahead. Okay. All right. Okay. So plain ones are also given to babies because they're like a good texture for a teething biscuit, but they also are sturdy enough to not fall apart.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  13:38  

Okay, I'll get to that. So now I kind of wish I bought some lady fingers. No, me

 

Molly  13:43  

too. In British English. They're called sponge fingers.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  13:49  

And in some some regional American, they're called the boneless hand

 

Molly  13:58  

Thank you. Natalia. There are several yards.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  14:02  

I think about the boneless hands at least what's really happy my favorite part of it. Like my favorite part is it was called the butler's hands but closely behind or possibly tied to my favorite part is that there's no plot. It was just there were boneless hands. That's right.

 

Molly  14:19  

I think it had something to do with like, like somebody's grave being dug up and she had no bones in our hands or so

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  14:26  

I don't think you mentioned that the first time around because that almost sounds like plot and I remember there definitely wasn't. It sounds like a grave plot for anybody

 

Molly  14:34  

who has not been listening to this show for like a decade or more. What we're talking about is a story I wrote as a young child and it's called the boneless hands

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  14:43  

and it was it was a scary story where nothing happens.

 

Molly  14:47  

But there were boneless ham.

 

In Italian lady fingers are called Several Yardi in French they're called boudoir hours really? Yeah, unless somebody on Wikipedia is messing with me again, that's possible. Anyway, according to a legend as John Legend, yes. ladyfingers originated in the late 1400s in the court of the Duchy of Savoy were created to mark the occasion of a visit by the King of France. So maybe this is why they're called savoiardi in Italian, okay, that makes sense. So, and then let's talk about mascarpone because I used to always think of mascarpone as mascarpone cheese. Me

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  15:37  

too. And also while we talk about it, I'm going to be afraid that I'm going to accidentally say marscapone and someone will make fun of me. Oh, yeah, no, I think that happens a lot in the world. marscapone is kind of like the new killer of of dairy.

 

Molly  15:52  

It is. That's right. But you know, if you say it enough, you'll become the kind of guy that people want to have a beer with.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  15:59  

That is a good point. Now political humor.

 

Molly  16:02  

Okay, so mascarpone is not cheese. It's actually the solids that remain when the liquid is removed from heavy cream. I'm not sure how the liquid is removed. I mean, aren't you like making butter at this point? Well, but

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  16:18  

it sounds like you're not churning the cream or coagulating it Do you think if you just press on it really hard was thinking of a sack? Like what if you what if you put cream? I do not know if this is how if this is how mascarpone is made, but what if you what if you creepiness?

 

Unknown Speaker  16:38  

What if you put in a husk?

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  16:39  

What do you put cream at?

 

Molly  16:40  

Risk? Okay, so mascarpone originated in the mountains of Lombardi

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  16:45  

what I'm imagining is Greek yogurt, but starting with cream instead of Yeah,

 

Molly  16:49  

it takes its name from the local dialect word in Lombardi for ricotta since it resembles ricotta in texture. Okay. It's not cheese.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  17:00  

No because it's not it's not coagulated or fermented,

 

Molly  17:03  

I guess. I guess that maybe that is that the minimum definition for cheese? Ah, lowest denominator

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  17:11  

cheeses but but yes, I think it's got to be one of those things. Okay,

 

Molly  17:16  

so you wanted to know if Tiramisu is a kind of trifle? I do

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  17:20  

want it. I forgot what I asked that a few minutes ago. I forgot that I'd put that on the agenda. Yeah,

 

Molly  17:24  

you did. So I looked at my I looked at a number of cookbooks in the joy of cooking it is on the same page as trifle. But basically Wikipedia gets straight to the heart of this and they're very definitive on it. They say Tiramisu is prepared similarly to trifle, but it does not include fruit and the original recipe for tiramisu calls for the lady fingers to be dipped in coffee rather than spirits. So I guess what I'm understanding here is trifle has to have fruit or some fruity component and leaker.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  17:57  

Okay, that makes sense, but they're clearly related. Sure. They're both gloop desert. Sure.

 

Molly  18:03  

There was a whole lot more stuff on the Wikipedia page for tiramisu that I didn't get into like totally fine. Is it related to Zupa and glaze say, oh, and I, I was like, I don't I don't care.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  18:15  

I had a Zupa in glace a when I was a kid and like, like, one of my parents took me to like a nice restaurant. Like I haven't thought about that in ages. And like that makes does it

 

Molly  18:27  

come in like a like a martini glass? Like zapped by your own? Yeah, it's

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  18:32  

similar to that. I think Anyway, like I liked it and might have been what sparked my love of gloop desserts. Okay, I'm gonna start a Wikipedia page gloop desserts and see how long it takes first for someone to delete

 

Molly  18:45  

Okay, you go do it. Okay, so the original shape of tiramisu apparently is round but the shape of lady fingers like that lens they lend themselves really well to like a square or rectangular pan.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  18:56  

Oh, yeah. Like how what how big of a round like it's a gloop like it you know, so you

 

Molly  19:02  

can also if you look at various tiramisu recipes, some will have you assemble it almost like on a serving platter. Okay, like a you know, something that doesn't have sides. So in that case, you kind of are assembling this weird like pile. Okay, yeah. I don't like the thought of that. I want there to be you know, sides or walls on the container maybe like a grid 10 dish or a nine by 13 pan? Yeah, I want to be able to take like a serving spoon and dig in there. But yes, for sure. But I don't want it to be like a pile of glue on a platter. Yeah,

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  19:35  

like I I agree with you. But also I'm not going to say no to a pile of glue on a platter. I forgot to mention that the two Dibella tiramisu that that kicked off wattles and my recent tiramisu fugue state is available at at various supermarkets around Seattle. Also, we just we just ate some that I picked up from QFC so it's called Philomena has tiramisu look for it in the deli section.

 

Molly  20:05  

Okay so what's what is it near?

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  20:07  

It's near like the to develop fresh pasta and like refrigerated pizzas. Okay, okay,

 

Molly  20:13  

that must have been a tough choice on like where to put it in the grocery store seems

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  20:16  

like that. Yeah, yeah, there's

 

Molly  20:18  

like no good place for that. Should you put it like near the cozy shack rice pudding?

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  20:23  

I was thinking about too much. It should be like a gloomier globe settings. Yeah, like near that and the the Reese's colliders. Have we talked about Reese's cups?

 

Molly  20:33  

Is this like a flip top yogurt thing? Kind

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  20:36  

of? Yeah, it's it's up its appeal. Its appeal. It's a it's a peel off foil. Like it's in the category of things you can eat for breakfast and sort of convince yourself that they're yogurt. But it's real. It's like a little pudding.

 

Molly  20:53  

There's another one that you like that some other brand. There's a Chobani flip. There we go. Yeah. Chobani flip.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  20:59  

Again, it's dessert that you can eat for breakfast and I'm fine with that. So I

 

Molly  21:03  

looked up a bunch of tiramisu recipes. There's one in the new New York Times Cookbook the one that Amanda Hesser edited. It's sure I'll do cheese version. Oh,

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  21:13  

I

 

Molly  21:14  

used to shop at Bell dude. Yeah, well, so that one has multiple types of liquor in it. It has Marsala wine, I think triple sack and something else. But it also has like some orange extract in it. And I did not like the sound or though I

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  21:28  

don't Yeah, I don't want the orange flavor in there.

 

Molly  21:30  

But one thing it did have that that she mentioned as being a nice textural touch and I liked the sound of it is it had shaved chocolate on top instead of cocoa.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  21:40  

That does sound good. When you said it's extra, like the the big wine was like a couple of boxes of nerds

 

Molly  21:55  

instead of a cocoa powder,

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  21:56  

and then like, served it at the finest Italian would

 

Molly  22:00  

turn it into a trifle because nerds are fruity.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  22:06  

As soon as you bought the vault like the trifle alarm would go off.

 

Molly  22:10  

But wait, I'm not. Okay, so I looked at a bunch of tiramisu recipes, and I finally decided on the one that my friend Riley made recently for a mutual friend's birthday. It comes from a website called preppy kitchen.com. I

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  22:24  

love it already.

 

Molly  22:25  

It's their easy tiramisu recipe and it uses rum, dark rum. It's quite boozy. And that is what I liked about it. In fact, it was too boozy. I think for some people at our party.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  22:39  

Sure. Yeah. When we run the supermarket for probably regulatory reasons, was not very boozy. And we wanted a little more but still very tasty.

 

Molly  22:48  

So we'll link to this. This one from preppy kitchen. I can I can attest to its deliciousness and its busyness is it

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  22:56  

called preppy kitchen because the like the founder of the site is a prep cook but also a preppy Cook. I'm not sure I didn't read that car into it. All right. Anything else to say about this tasty gloop?

 

Molly  23:06  

I think I want to make this sometime. I

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  23:09  

think I do too. I've been thinking that also I wonder how hard it is to find lady fingers. I don't think it's hard. I think like worst case like de la Rente. Yeah, certainly has them. But I bet they've got about metropolitan market. Okay, okay, well, we'll see. We'll see. I'm gonna start looking at you and ask for them be sure and do so in our creepy voice.

 

Molly  23:28  

I'm gonna say do you have boudoir?

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  23:31  

Can you show me show me to the boudoir? Okay, wait, did you say five fingers? Sponge fingers? Do you have sponge fingers? Yes. Like Don't tease me about it like it's a medical condition. Okay, I would love to read this spilled now please do

 

it's from listener Ren who asks, I just listened to the snacking cakes episode and love the long winding conversations about what a snacking cake is and isn't the memory lane and conversation about defining snacking cakes jogged a memory for me of a cake my great grandma used to make. This was my favorite cake for some time when I was little, and I requested it as a birthday cake. Not sure how we got candles in it as it consisted almost entirely of watermelon. My great grandma would take a whole watermelon, remove the rind and then simply slice the whole naked watermelon into one inch round. So we had huge circles of fruit. She would then stack enormous circular slices on a plate, but between each slice was a layer of vanilla pudding. This sounds like how I would serve watermelon is killing I remember when we sliced into the cake most of the pudding would glue both sides. I don't know why I love this cake so much is because kids are stupid. But now I feel special and quirky in my memory which I love. This same grandma used to substitute anything and everything in recipes. And my dad feared eating at her house because we didn't know if she'd substitute mayonnaise for sour cream or hot dogs for hamburger. Wow. All those are two things that frequently get st. said in the same breath that cannot be substituted for each other. It's like bacon and eggs. We save that together all the time. I'm sure you could substitute one for the other milk and cookies Exactly. Do you have memories of a grandparents food quirks or special recipes? And of course define that however you want with love Ren the same ran with the husband who eats fortune cookie papers. I remember this. Okay.

 

Molly  25:33  

Matthew, you have memories of a grandparents food quirks or special recipes. So

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  25:38  

I kind of do. My grandfather on my father's side. Grandpa Marvin, the main one was an excellent home cook, who loved to cook Chinese food. I remember I do remember him as being like the first person that I saw put ketchup on scrambled eggs, which I still think is gross. But you do you. But he would make this dish that I think he probably came from the Joyce Chen cookbook that he called velvet chicken. That was you would like make like a chicken puree kind of and then and then like fry up bits of it in oil. So it wasn't like you weren't like velvet weren't getting the meat. This was this was a different thing. And so you'd make like a kind of a batter? Like yes, I know. But, but it was delicious. And like, as you might imagine a huge production. And so like I remember him making that a number of times that is very good.

 

Molly  26:31  

Wow. So I don't remember my paternal grandmother's cooking really much at all. She had a stroke when I was pretty young. But I always heard stories of her sending shoe boxes of Christmas cookies to my parents, she would pack them in a shoebox. And of course they would come completely pulverized. So you have to use a 10 I know I know. shoebox is just like way too deep. There's too much movement in there.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  26:58  

And then plus you left the shoes.

 

Molly  27:03  

So smelly. Anyway, and then my maternal grandmother, I don't remember what my grandfather was into.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  27:11  

He was into some weird shit. I can assure you of that. My

 

Molly  27:15  

maternal grandmother I do remember the first time I ever had soup, like made from a packet, like a powdered packet that you would just like stir boiling water into was in her kitchen. And it was like a like a Lipton like chicken Florentine soup. Oh, wow. And I drank it out of a mug. And I don't remember thinking it was that great, but I thought that it was completely ingenious. Yeah, it is. Yeah,

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  27:42  

there you go. All right. Great question listener Ren. Thank you. Molly. Do you have a now but wow, I

 

Molly  27:48  

do I do.

 

By the time this episode comes out, people may already be very familiar with this because that is a short film that is nominated for an Oscar. Oh, it also won a Critics Choice Award. It's a short film called The Last repair shop. I should say that it was recommended to me by my friend Lindsey who is the host of the food podcast, which is also produced by our producer Abby sercotel. Oh, excellent. Yeah. Anyway, Lindsey told me I had to watch this. She was not wrong. It is a really touching film, about a small group of crafts people working out of a warehouse in LA to maintain over 80,000 musical instruments used by the children of the LAUSD.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  28:41  

Okay district. I'm gonna watch this 100% Yeah,

 

Molly  28:44  

yeah, so this this repair shop has been continually in operation since 1959. And anyway, LAUSD is one of the last, one of the last school districts in the country that provides instruments and free repair to it. Okay, so anyway, super cool. This short film was directed by Ben Proudfoot and Chris Bowers. Chris Bowers. Also, I found an interesting conversation between the two of them online. Chris Bowers is a composer. I think they may have done at least one other short film together anyway. It's really beautiful.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  29:19  

When he composes. Does he, like go into the warehouse and just compose using whatever student instruments he finds around course, of course, is there any part where like, someone like has to rebuild a bed soon, Matthew,

 

Molly  29:30  

I think you're just gonna have to watch out for yourself. Yeah. So that's the last repair shop. I think you can just find it on YouTube. It's like 39 minutes long. Okay.

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  29:38  

We'll link to it. Yeah. All right. Our producer and also the producer of other podcasts is Abby circuit tele who also has a great newsletter called The rolling ladder that we'll link to in the show notes. Yeah, you can rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts and you can hang out with other listeners and everything spilled. milk.reddit.com and just talk about your favorite groups. Yeah, go look it up. lube it up. I'm Matthew Amster-Burton

 

Molly  30:01  

Hi Molly Weisberg

 

wow we transformed the hulking carcass of that tiramisu into a bear stellar

 

Matthew Amster-Burton  30:15  

skeleton just just like some picked over ladyfingers Yeah, what what are your thoughts? Like crammed Altera, Vizio at your mouth? Cookies like your boats. That would be a great monster. Yeah.

 

Unknown Speaker  30:38  

Okay. All right.