I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Great. So for those of you who didn't try it, there's various examples of stock out there. Just absolutely plain vegetable stock, and then with salt and bay leaf, and then with garlic and a little red wine, I'm sorry to say, because I forgot to take it out. And then with more red wine. So please taste them when you get a chance. It's partly to illustrate the depths of flavor. Well, maybe so. So if you haven't tasted them, why don't you go do that now? There are cups right there. We never made just garlic.

[01:05]

I mean, that's the one I forgot to take out. So it's garlic with a little wine. And then the other one has a lot of wine in it. The first one didn't have wine in it. The first one had nothing in it. No salt, no bay leaf, no nothing. Had a little bit of peppercorn, but nothing else. Yeah. And the second one has bay leaves and a little soy sauce and salt. And the third one has garlic and a little red wine and olive oil. Too much olive oil. Because it was greasy or because of the olive oil? It tasted greasy to me, but apparently not to anybody else. And by the time you made soup with it, you thought it'd be fine. I mean, you wouldn't ordinarily add oil to stock anyway. That's just a way to illustrate depth of flavor, what garlic does.

[02:07]

You were talking about sauteing the garlic. Yes. How long did you let the kombu sit in the pot? The kombu, the vegetables cooked in the, once the water came to a boil, the vegetables in the stock cooked about 35 minutes. The kombu, wasn't that in the original pot? Yeah. One thing I just want to, the people from City Center are not here tonight because it was hard for Jim to get here, and Dana, she just had surgery yesterday. She's fine. She's fine, but she wasn't able to come.

[03:09]

Yeah. And Susan, the woman who is the new tensor at Brain Gulch, I was out there a couple times this week, and I guess it was yesterday she came up to me and she said, there is no way. She's overwhelmed. Yes, she's overwhelmed. I think she'll be fine. The food, I had lunch there Tuesday and Wednesday, and it was great. I had also lunch there. Yes, Sunday, I think she was already on duty. It was very sweet. On Tuesday, there was kasha. I don't know if you remember, but I mentioned that I liked it, and then Mel liked it. And he was at this meeting that I was at. What? That was your emergency call for Plan B. No, that's couscous. Couscous. So let's start. Is there anything left over from last week?

[04:11]

Any questions or whatever? Well, I cooked on a Saturday. The thing I experienced was that I felt like I was rushed. I did apply some cooking oil. I guess my question is, When you have like an hour or so to make something, how do you just slow down and let everything happen without... Well, you do things that you already know how to do, for one thing. And two is I don't toast the oregano and the thyme before I put them in when I'm making breakfast, when I'm making, you know, if I'm making scrambled potatoes. I don't do that. The thing that I think you have to cook before you, you have to cook curry powder, and you have to cook chili powder, or they taste very raw.

[05:13]

It's better to toast spices and herbs, but it isn't like, you know, you have to. Yeah. Unless you cook them a really long time. But it's better to just, that's, well what's that, that brings us right, I want to talk about, first about cooking, about cooking for mass quantities. things take longer and things don't work the same. I think I mentioned this before, but about flour, if you make, if you make, uh, if you're making a white sauce and you're making a roux, you know, flour and oil or butter or whatever, usually you just, you, you melt the, you melt the oil or butter or whatever, you melt the fat and then you put the flour in and you basically fry it for a while. And, uh, you know, low heat. If it's white sauce and you can be, if it's gravy, you can be on a higher heat. It just doesn't matter if it turns brown. Or maybe you want it to turn brown. But when you do large quantities, it just doesn't work.

[06:17]

The flour never cooks and you all, you know, it retains that floury taste for a long time. Somebody at Pasajara made a creme anglaise where you, it's basically, a creme anglaise where you, it's a custard sauce. with cooked flour in it. And Julia says took it for, I don't know, half an hour or something like that to take the floury taste out. Well, she had to cook that. She was making two gallons or something, or a gallon, I think, two gallons maybe. And she had to cook it forever. Just forever. So what you do is you toast, you cook the flour separately, you toast it. Just you put it in a, you put it in a frying pan or in a pot and you just keep stirring it until it, um, it loses the ride. It, it actually steam comes off of it and it loses that pasty taste, that raw taste.

[07:19]

And if you're making gravy for a stew where you want the sauce to be brown, then you actually really, really toast it until you let it turn golden. don't work. But let it turn golden in the, you know, the darker, the, you know, the darker the better up until burnt. And depending on what you want to do. But you've had tofu stew that's sort of gray. I mean, it looks better when it gets toasted. And we, you toast it in a pot. You either in a frying pan or in the, uh, a big pot that you cook in. Depends on how much you're, You're doing. Yeah. No oil. No oil. You just toast it the way you might toast, like if you were toasting a relatively small quantity of nuts or something like that. Yeah, pretty well. That's right.

[08:20]

That's right. You do it with chili powder or curry powder. You really should before you add it. And you just put it toasted in a frying, a small frying pan, probably, and then walk it in. Then, I think I said this already, but even if you're baking cookies, or if you're baking cakes or custards or something, if you have an oven full of these things, it takes longer than what the recipe says. And you may find hot spots in your oven because of it, too. Because it's not sort of isolated like one little cake pan in the middle of the oven. You have things closer to the sides, and they're going to get the reflected heat. So you have to really check and turn things around. And I'm sure I said about checking the ovens. I told you the horror story about this woman who cuts a part of it and didn't check the ovens, and they'd gone out.

[09:22]

So it happens. Yes? Like, it doesn't take that long to cook, doesn't it? Well, you may not need to, but just to be mindful of that, that it may be necessary, like if you're cooking custard or something. You know, if you're cooking a cake, you'd rather not turn it if you can help it, but just to kind of look at it and see if one side is starting to burn or looks like it's completely done and the other side is still raw or something. And also when you put things in the oven, if you have two baking sheets on two different, one on each shelf, try to set them so that the heat can circulate around them so that you don't put it right against the edge. Put it away from the edge a little bit. We may not have that much choice in this oven with the big baking sheet. I think it pretty well fills it. So that's just too bad. But to the extent you can, leave some little room for the heat to circulate.

[10:25]

get up, like, up to the top, for example. I think I mentioned that the best mixing utensils for large quantities of stuff are your hands. And somebody's talked about, you know, pureeing, like, if you were pureeing something, if you were going to make soup and it had, the vegetables were supposed to be pureed and it also had a large quantity of liquid, it's just easier if you're doing it in a cuisinart, particularly If you just do the vegetables with as much liquid as you need, so you don't have to have any more batches than absolutely necessary. Or you just kind of, you know, think about it. Think about what you're doing and how might it work more easily and more efficiently. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yes? Okay. And just keep tasting. And I think I said already about when I was talking about changing recipes, it's all about walking things in, herbs and spices especially.

[11:35]

So just keep tasting it as you go. I think we're really good here about using the ovens, but it's something to be aware of. What might you be able, if you wanted to have three hot things, what could you do in the oven? We do cereal in the oven here a lot. Or is there something that you could bake? Or some way that you could make it so you're not actually cooking and serving up three things. What could be served up ahead of time? So just think about using the oven. What? Not tacos. No. You've already cooked it, just to keep it warm in the oven. Well, or baking it, you know, like if you really wanted to have, if you wanted to have cereal and stewed fruit, and you, for some reason, you couldn't just, you couldn't feature having yogurt or cottage cheese or something.

[12:38]

You wanted to serve custard. You could bake the custard and cook the cereal on top of the stove that time. But the point of that is, too, that you serve it up in the things that you cook it in. So to serve up three hot things is really, really difficult in the best of times. And here, where you're also supposed to be in the zendo and so on, to me, it doesn't make sense. And something might be kind of warm or room temperature or something, but hot, no. Yeah. Sure. I toast, I mean, ideally, if you, if you're using dried herbs, it's usually good to toast them. Yeah, it brings up the flavor. You just toast it until you can, until you can smell it. Well, I don't know that I would mortar and pestle it.

[13:46]

I mean, if it's dried oregano, I would just usually just crumble it into the frying pan where I was going to toast it. Yeah, I mean, it's usually pretty dry. But then you would toast fresh. No, no, I wouldn't toast fresh. Or the rosemary. Either way, I mean, I think dried rosemary is proper good, but either way. But I don't know that I would toast it. I guess I posted. I don't know. I don't do it very often, to tell you the truth. To confess to you, I don't do this. Is there a best time to put the dried herbs in the jar? Is it better? Usually. Usually. I mean, I guess I'm trying to think if there's some... For dried herbs, I think just about always. Though saffron can lose flavor But most dry herbs, I think so.

[14:46]

That's not necessarily true for fresh herbs. And especially something like basil loses its flavor. Other fresh herbs, like oregano or something, you might want to put it in and let it, so the flavors marry. It's often good to put some in and then save some back and then add that at the end. Another way to use the ovens, if this is helpful to you, is to roast something or another. That you want to roast the onions or something, or roast the potatoes for scrambled tofu while you're sauteing the onions or something. So then you have two things happening at one time, and you move things along faster. Often, it actually uses less oil, which is nice.

[15:48]

For example, if you try to fry potatoes, they really stick unless you use a significant amount of oil. So you can cook them with less oil. Mushrooms, you can just have oil on the bottom of the pan. That will do. Great. Yeah, I would just, like we talked about last week, I would at least blanch them. And, you know, then they'll also, they'll fry easier then, because some of the starch is off of them. So then they won't stick so much. And so then you could either roast them or fry them. Yeah. It also, roasting things, caramelizes the sugar, which is nice. It brings out the flavor. Cooking things dry, which I'll get to, often really, it brings up the flavor a lot. Have you ever had fried zucchini?

[16:50]

It was a completely different event from boiled zucchini. Or baked. What? Or baked. Or? Baked. Baked. Oh, baked, yes. I'm sorry. Like an eggplant. Yes, yes, yes. Like a zucchini. Yes, yes. But you said baked as well. Yes. No water. Meaning no water, but also, I'm going to get to that. I'll come back to that. I'm talking about ovens now, so... I was going to get back to your question about roasting onions. For years, I tried to, you know, roast onions and make them about the way you get them in restaurants. And although mine were very tasty, they didn't look anything like what you get And so finally, I asked the chef, I apologize, how they did it. And he said, what? I said, are you putting any sugar on it? I said, no, I'm just putting the onions.

[17:52]

So he, this guy, recommends that you make a mixture of sugar and vinegar, your favorite vinegar. And you coat the onion, you quarter the onion, And then you coat them, and then you roast them, and then you get that beautiful black coloring on the outside. Well, another way is to just use really high heat. Well, then they become charred on the outside. I've done that. And very tasty on the inside. Would that be possible? Well, what do you have? Sometimes, oh. Too high heat. Too high heat. And also, if you put things too close together, then they'll tend to boil, because they'll give up their liquid, and it won't have a chance to evaporate, and so they'll just sort of steam there, and they'll never caramelize.

[18:58]

It's also true, and I mean, sometimes you just don't have a choice about this, but it's also true about sauteing onions, or anything that you're cooking, If you can avoid filling the pan too full, you have a better chance. And also, the higher the heat that you cook at, short of burning things. But if you cook with high heat, then you're going to boil off the liquid. You have a better chance that they will saute, that the sugars will caramelize, rather than that you'll have boiled mushrooms. And they have a lot more flavor. Well, when they're talking about sweating it, they actually are talking about, it will kind of sink. They kind of melt.

[20:00]

And that's okay. But I think they have a lot more flavor if they're cooked at a higher heat. And you can do that without But you have to stay there and stir them all the time. You cannot walk away from them. And sometimes it's hard. It's because you just have too much that you have to cook. And you have to remember that you're cooking this kind of family cooking. This is not top-of-the-line gourmet cooking. And it's going to taste good. And you can only worry about this so much. But there are times when you do have that choice. And it's nice to know, or you might just quarter onions and roast them. You're going to have to wash and roast them. They're that important. Yeah, there's like whether you toast the toast the spices or herbs or not, and whether you really are able to have high enough heat and a big enough vessel to cook in, or you have time to cook enough batches that your onions really do, saute is the proper word, but fry, as opposed to steam.

[21:28]

And they taste better. Or you use, I made scrambled tofu last Last Saturday, we had a one-day sitting, and I made breakfast. And I didn't want to spend a lot of time. And so I, may I have Copa, may I have Copa, I bought one of those roasted peppers at the Berkeley Bowl, you know, in an olive bar. And because bell pepper takes a long time to cook. I mean, I would not have peeled it or anything, but it's still, it takes longer than onion to cook. And so I bought one of those. And I bought a can of corn. And we sauteed the onion, and we put in some oregano and salt and stuff. And we put in the chopped up bell pepper and the tofu and cooked it, and we dumped in the drained can of corn. And I read the label of it. It was just corn and water and no salt. And that's what we had.

[22:31]

Well, that was scrambled tofu, and it was delicious. It was fine, you know. Now, you were making fresh corn, and you cut it off the kernels off the cob. It could be a little better. It could be a little fresher. But this was pretty good. This was fine. We enjoyed it. Did you see the gravy? Yeah. And if I'd had cumin, I would have put some in, but I didn't have any, so we didn't. So when you scrambled tofu, you take the fork and mash it? You take it in your hand, and you squish it, and you crumble it up. And does it yield water? It depends. Some tofu does and some doesn't. Depending on the firmness. Yeah, and who made it, and I don't know what all, but sometimes it does give up a lot of liquid and sometimes it doesn't. Like that stuff we used the other day, didn't give up much liquid at all. And I remember doing it in Paso Haro, and it would be, you know, you'd get this water flow, you know, and then that would have to evaporate. Yeah. I made a spinach salad, of course.

[23:33]

And then I looked to the side, and I go, hey, there's like a two-pound peg. And I thought, OK, so I grabbed it. And then I had, like, I don't know, I guess maybe I always felt that you should pick up some process. But then again, I don't think like that. I'm a dirty pig. Well, I mean, again, that's the kind of, you know, you know, very special dinner for your friends or your family or something. You get the organic, whatever spinach, and you deal with it. But for here, for, you know, I mean, Mel is saying, can we keep it simple? And you're thinking about spending a little time in the zendo or getting some kind of a break or not pulling any more people than you need to out of the zendo. So I guess I've talked about high heat already. Yeah, I did. So then still about cooking.

[24:40]

I've already said a lot of this when we were getting the stock organized. Use a timer. I do, anyway. When there's a lot going on, I don't remember. If I'm just cooking at home, and there's no pressure and there's nobody else around or something like that, that's fine. But when I'm here and it's easy to get distracted or somebody might come in the kitchen at any time, then I use a timer. So that's one thing. Especially for things like if you're roasting nuts. Right. Yes. Another thing I often do is if there's some kind of a garnish For the soup, say, for miso soup, there's maybe green onions or something, or wakame also, because it turns yucky if it cooks too much. But it could be all kinds of things. Anyway, I put it in the soup pot ahead of time, so I'm not going to forget it. And it's just there, and it can be warming up a little bit, too.

[25:40]

And I warm the pots, if I possibly can, before I serve up. There is a warming shelf on this stove. That's where all the pot holders are and everything. You can take that stuff off and put pots up there to warm up so that the food has a chance of staying hotter. You can sometimes hold the pots in the oven after you've served them up, but you may have the oven for cereal pots, for example. You'd have to put your scrambled tofu somewhere else so it can't go on the warming shelf. We talked about, you know, somebody got organized to make pot cozies sometime. That would be nice. You know, quilted, like a tea cozy. Quilted covers for the pots. That'd be nice. And then I don't know why I put this here. I guess just sort of other, you know what deglazing is? That's a useful thing. If you saute the onions, you basically, I mean, you make soup.

[26:41]

You saute any vegetable that has some kind of sugar in it so that you're caramelizing the sugar. So you saute your onions, your peppers, your carrots. You don't have to necessarily saute your potatoes for a soup or your celery, though often you deserve the celery and carrots going at the same time. But so you saute your veg. You deglaze the pan. You add the stock. And then you adjust the seasoning. And you season the vegetables. If you're using garlic, you'd add it then. Before you added any liquid, you'd add garlic. Fry that. Cook that first. So deglazing is what you do. Usually it's with wine. It's like you've been frying stuff in this pan, and then there's little wonderful brown bits that are sticking to the pot. And that's where a lot of the flavor is.

[27:45]

dump the wine in, and you scrape those things up. And then, of course, you cook the wine down. That's when you cook your wine to make sure it's going to be, the alcohol's out. But it's a very useful technique. Yeah, and it's a way that liquid then loosens those little brown bits. And I think some people think that shocking the wine in that way somehow helps the flavor. That's how you make risotto. But I don't know that that's good. And Charlie doesn't think so either. But that's what you do when you make risotto. You saute the, you cook the rice in the oil. And then you put the wine in and cook it. And then you start adding the salt. Because that also infuses the wine flavor into the rice. I mean, Julia uses white vermouth a lot, or used to, I don't know.

[29:03]

But my feeling, I mean, my experience is that white wine and white vermouth, unless there's like a lot of butter or something rich in it, It makes things taste a little sour. Red wine tends to have, that gives the body. So I tend to use red wine with vegetarian stuff almost exclusively. Partly because I try to not make these. I just don't cook with a lot of butter. I just never have red wine at home. Well, that's a good reason. Also sherry for some things. Sherry is great. Like for black bean soup. And for Chinese. Black bean soup with sherry is delicious. Or dry Madeira with white bean soup. And Marsala. Yes, what did I say?

[30:04]

Madeira and then Marsala. Thank you. Madeira might be good too. Yes, but a little bit. But you could use a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar, because balsamic is very rich, and it's not so sharp. But you have to be really careful, because you could make your soup really sour and sharp. And with this wine, just the way we did in the kitchen, at the end, Oh, not necessarily. No, no. You would put it in by the time when, that's what I would use to deglaze the pan. But you want to make sure that it has a chance to really cook. Because it's really, you know, there are people that are alcoholic and if they get some alcohol, it can trigger that need to have more. So it's really, really important that people be able to trust the food that they eat at a Zen center that it's not going to be

[31:05]

you know, live alcohol. Yeah. Right. You could just use some stock. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. But you just have to make sure you have enough time because, again, with mass quantities, if you put in the stock and then It has to come back to a boil before it starts cooking up the alcohol. And is there going to be enough time for it to come all the way to the boil and then actually boil for 10 or 15 minutes? You may not have that kind of time. So that's why if you deglaze the pan with the wine and cook it before you add the stock, it's just going to come to a boil much faster. It tastes different, right? When there's alcohol still in it.

[32:08]

Yeah. No, it can taste kind of raw. Yeah. Taste everything. Taste things. I was having every one of these subsets of cooking taste. Keep tasting as you go along. And we talked about reheating, I think, last week, about not reheating things twice. That's restaurant rules. to not reheat things twice. Somebody, I think it was Malcolm, was saying something about that actually bacteria really can grow explosively. Also, not to keep things around for a long time. I think my rule of thumb was always on the fourth day, if it didn't get used, it got tossed. Something around that. If it's something, if it's a dairy, maybe the third day. after three days? Or four.

[33:09]

I would say four. On the fourth day was my rule of thumb, is my rule of thumb. You know, especially when you're cooking for a lot of people, and some people have kind of more delicate systems and stuff. You know, at home, take your chances. Do what you want. But if it's been, you know, if you have the slightest doubt about it, also just cook it for a while. But again, with these kind of quantities, you often, you don't have time to really heat something and cook it forever. And also, it may lose all nutrition and stuff. So if you have some need to do that at home, OK. But I don't think it's a good idea for feeding other people. It's not a hot idea for yourself. But as long as you cook it a long time, it may not taste like much, and it may not have much food value, but it's not going to make you sick. But that's depending on how you want to feed your brothers and sisters in the door. So let's see.

[34:12]

Let's talk about ghoul, and then we'll take a break, and then we'll talk about disasters. We talked about ghoul a lot already, didn't we? I don't remember. I must have gotten sort of off on ghoul, because I had it in my outline for now. So I'm going to run through this, because I don't remember. I remember certain things that I said, and I don't remember all of it. That it's, here's the place to see your ego come up and to work with your setting it aside. Gruel is leftovers. You know how it's medicine. The evening meal is medicine. And it needs to be just tasty enough that people are interested in eating it. But it's not like some other dish or something. You want it to taste good. And usually, if good tasting things go into it, it tastes good. It amazes me how many things work in Google.

[35:16]

So if you have any questions we talked about, put a little together in a bowl and taste it before you dump something in that you have some question about. But a lot of things will work. And you'll probably be surprised. And I think I said, for me, I think salad works. It's a good thing because it lightens it sometimes, and it gives it a little zip. It's okay to use leftover cereal, at least up to some point, particularly not oatmeal though. It turns into such glue. Couscous is okay if you cook it separately, heat it separately, because otherwise it turns into glue. Remember to salt the gruel. I told you, I'm sure I told you about Barbara Collins' kitchen. They had a sign that they were, rather, next door to the salt booth. And here's a good place, a good place to use some soy sauce, because it will deepen the flavor. But you may or may not want it to actually be tasteable.

[36:21]

You may just want it to add to the depth of the flavor. It shouldn't be super dry, because it's hard to eat. But also, I think, from a world of What? No, like so it pours on the ladle. But not so wet that it's like soup, which I think you probably wouldn't like either. No. But anyway, so somewhere in between so that it has, you know, so that it's relatively easy to eat. And plan on it when you're cooking the other meals so that you cook enough that you have some or that you have enough food for the gruel, which also makes it a lot easier for everybody because then you're not going to run out of food at breakfast so much. So plan for gruel and then that way you don't have to worry. Use up your leftovers. Even if you had some other idea and you didn't think there was going to be leftovers and you were going to make this great pasta, well, or maybe somebody the day before didn't use up their leftovers.

[37:30]

use up the leftovers. And if it hurts, it hurts. It's good for you. It's really good. And bread can go into gruel. And you can make, you've had croutons, right? You've had stuffing. You've had bread pudding. And so there's such a thing as savory bread pudding in the and you can toast it, or you can stick it in the oven and let it dry out, you know, put it in after lunch. You know, with this, with the... I don't like, you know, to dry it out a little bit, and or you can toast it. When I say toast it, I just mean put it in the oven for a while, and you know what, 300, so that it dries out. But at any rate, it's fun. Do you use crunchy bits to do it? You might. You've had stuffing made with dried, really toasty pieces of bread.

[38:35]

And cubes of bread, probably. And then you probably may have also had stuffing made with bread that wasn't toasty. What's your view on nuts? Oh, it's fine. If you have nuts left over. My basic notion is that you don't put fresh food in the grill unless you need to. Or, for example, if the menu during the day didn't have a whole lot of protein, then maybe you make it a point to put nuts in there, or you make it a point to put some tofu in there, or something like that. But since it's not going to get reheated again, I mean, I know people take it home, and that's why I'm doing this, cook it for half an hour, really cook it if you're going to reheat it yet again. Because the food is leftovers already, so it's getting reheated. So then if you reheat the gruel, that's the third time. I've always had a very strange experience. I've left the gruel and take it home, but greedily.

[39:40]

And then when I get it home, it doesn't... it's weird. No. It doesn't taste... It's not the wonderful... I mean, it could be that nice. It's always a day old. Well, do whatever you want at home. Fresh and hot. Fresh and hot. But the basic notion is it's probably not going to get heated up again. It's going to get thrown out. So it's a real waste if you're adding a lot of fresh food that you don't need to add. And I heard recently or read somewhere, I don't know, that protein keeps people awake. Because maybe you want to stay awake for your last two periods. I'm not sure where you come down on that. But maybe you don't want to keep people awake. And I think I talked about having backup plans. Because there are those times when you think you're going to have lots of leftovers, and then you don't. So, have a plan.

[40:44]

I suppose when we get a disaster kit, that could also, maybe that would count as a disaster, though you would be able to go to the store usually. I mean, you'd know after lunch, you'd know whether you had roommates or not. But at any rate, I think we talked about We talk about knowing where a few things were at the bowl, so that if you needed them and you had an idea, like where are the soba noodles, and where's the stock, and where's the, just a few things, so that you wouldn't spend three hours wandering around the Berkley bowl tearing your hair out. And, oh, right, that's right, I remember somebody said, a little pasta that goes fast. That's easy to eat. Zucchini or something like that. So that's a good place to stop. So let's stop for about five minutes. I feel like I'm just roaring through this.

[41:49]

Oh, please. Would you? Yes, thank you. Yeah, this is the list of things that are particularly important to buy organic. No, it's not organic. It's the bad soy sauce. Oh, that bad soy sauce. Yeah. How would that cheaper or make quicker? They try to make it fast. Yeah, I saw that. And I went and checked my cupboard and I had I happen to have Kikoman right at the moment that I don't necessarily, but that wasn't on the list. So there were a couple of questions right after we broke and then I asked people to hold them. I was just going to ask, what kind of... Oh, what wine with what beans? That sounded really good, but I couldn't remember. The white beans? Right. Sherry with black beans. Oh. And Marsala with white beans. Dry Marsala.

[42:57]

Marsala is a kind of wine, yes. With white beans? Yeah. And the second intended question would be, if you cook these beans, you might not want to call them soup, it would be more bean than soup, but you could still use the wine? Yeah. I mean, I make bean soup with a lot of beans because that's how I like it. But, you know, and with lentil soup, red wine. I don't know if you remember when Eric came back from France, He made a lentil soup with red wine, which was, your brains fall out. It was so good. That was the wine? It was red wine, and he also used a lot of lentils. It wasn't like water with lentils in it. It was the lentil soup and wine. This is completely breakfast. We are definitely in the neighborhood of breakfast. And so, I just like it in that. As long as there's a work period after. Look at that.

[44:02]

At least, I don't, at least, I think at least ten minutes. You might say five, and the ten will do it. Pretty much. You know, it might be a trace of alcohol. I think there would be a trace of alcohol left, frankly. But I don't think it's a problem. There's alcohol in lots of things that we, like orange juice or something, there's a trace of alcohol. I'm not sure if that's true, but anyway. But you know, so there's, But it's taken care of, I think. Yeah. Did you have a question? I was curious about rice cream. Oh. You mean that cereal in the morning? That kind of thing? It's... What? Well, there's something called rice cream, but that's really basically cracked rice, which is a cereal that you just make the same way you make any other cereal. But the kind that's kind of a rice gruel kind of stuff is you cook it the night before and let it sit.

[45:11]

And then the next morning you just heat it up again and you just cook it, cook it, cook it. And if it's brown rice, if it's white rice, if it just, it could just soak over the night and it'd be all right. But in brown rice, you really should cook it for at least a few minutes the night before and then let it sit in that water and then start cooking it the next day. No, I don't. What I do is I cook it the night before. I bring it to the boil the night before with a huge amount of water. You know, not 2 to 1, but like 4 to 1 or something. And then I cook it for about 10 minutes or however long I have time and patience for. And then I just let it sit on the stove, you know, where it'll stay a little bit warm, so it won't take forever to come back up to the boil the next day. And then when I come in, the first thing I do when I walk in the door to make breakfast, I add it, but I don't add it before then.

[46:15]

And then once it's come back up to the boil, and I have preheated the oven, then I'll put it in the pots. Very soupy. And then I'll stir it occasionally, and then I'll add water, you know, as I need to. Yeah. Oh, more than that. More than that. You always have, I just have lots of water boiling, but because I don't know, rice just keeps absorbing and absorbing and absorbing liquid. It goes on, you know, but that's making it, like a pilaf kind of a thing, versus a cereal kind of a thing. But it takes a lot of water. And I don't even know how much. I know that six cups of white rice is enough for 35 people. That's what I know. 35. Yeah. Yes, I mix it in a big bowl.

[47:34]

And then you put it in different pots? I put it in hotel pans. You know those long, narrow, kind of deep pans that we have? Yeah, for the top. And if it's couscous, then I might make it more like a sauce on top of the stove and the couscous and the hotel pants in the oven. So you use the hotel pants in the oven? Yeah, I just put it in the oven. Because the thing with an oven for something like that is you don't have to worry about burning it. You don't have to keep stirring. Stirring a big pot full of gruel is really difficult. And you cannot use your hands. Do you use the bottom? Yeah, I oil them. makes it much easier to clean. Thank you for asking. I wasn't thinking about talking about that.

[48:39]

And it may take a while. You need to leave plenty of time for it to heat up. Because if the things are out of the refrigerator, I mean, here they're often not. They're just from lunch and you could just, if it's not a dairy or a tofu thing, you could just get left out. So it might be room temperature when you get to it around 4 o'clock or 3.30 or whatever. I have a question about doing recipes you don't know. I tend to, well, the last session I think it's better, unless you've really been doing it for a long time, I think it's better to have tried it at home or to do things that have, you know, either or the recipes that are already in the file that are pretty straightforward or something.

[49:45]

No, it's like, don't experiment on people that are trapped. So I want to talk about disasters, please, because we don't have a lot of time. Is that all right? Can we move on? OK. Burned food. There's a little bit of scorching. That's one thing. If you burn the bottom of the pot, You can don't stir it. Pour it off and then taste it and see how bad it is. My mother always used to scorch the pea soup, but then she said she liked it that way. And you could eat that. It wasn't that bad. But there is such a thing as really, really burned, and that's when the emergency rule pack comes in.

[50:46]

which we have to actually do, right? We keep talking about this. Anyway, or that's when you run for the ball or whatever. So there's the, if it's really burned and it's really, you know, acrid, then please don't serve it. And there must be something that, well, almost for sure there's something. cold cereal. Anyway, but often if you just pour it off without stirring it, then that will take care of it. And it may taste a little burnt, but it's OK. Add a can of corn. Add some sugar or something. Is that weird? No, it just makes people happy. Canned corn is like giving them candy. But I mean if you really burned something. No, if you really burned it, I think that's it.

[51:47]

It's very strong. If something is too salty, one thing that, potatoes really take salt. So if there's some way to put some potato in there, then that's a way to deal with it. You could always, I mean you could simply increase the volume. You can notice in the fridge, I keep coming back to canned tomatoes just because that's such a thing we use so much, but There's tomato puree, I think mostly, certainly this New York blend, and I think maybe all of it, anyway, it's tomatoes, and maybe water or something, that doesn't have salt in it. So check the label and see if there's something that you could add that would increase the volume and therefore reduce the ratio of salt. Something you could add that isn't salty. And I have a friend, Lee Riggs, who just stopped being Tenzo at Green Gulch.

[52:50]

And his answer is always vinegar and sugar, or sugar and vinegar. So it might work. I've never really tried that. But it might work. If you could balance the flavors or something and play with it that way, if it weren't too far gone. And depending on what it was, there are a lot of things that would just Completely not work, but the classic thing is to add potato. Well, you might need to cook it separately or cut it into small pieces or something. Make mashed potatoes, dump that in there. Yeah, right, just blanch it, cook it, and then add it. You could if you had them. This huge cupboard. Has there ever been, or maybe it's just bad enough to think about it. Has there ever been a total disaster where people, you know, the announcement at the beginning is that there will be no meal.

[53:55]

There's going to be chaos. No seconds on it. And Dimash. Not in my experience. But of course, at Zen Center, the thing is that in San Francisco, there's this huge larder, you know, there's all this stuff. And you're not going to the Zendo. So between the time that you figure that out, even if it's just about Serva, and the time that the first bowl actually goes into the Zendo after they do all their meal boards and all that stuff, You've got 10 or 15 minutes. And you've got a salmon bar full of hot water. You could make it some couscous and open a can of tomatoes. Toast up some curry powder. Do some. And we really are going to get some couscous and so on and pasta sauce.

[54:56]

So there'll be something. But it's, I mean, I've never had that happen, you know. I think the worst has happened maybe from the second to the second, but this was a very fun shop. And I told you about, one time I made something and it was really hot and I had to send my apologies up to the zendo and offer some salad in the middle kitchen or something after dinner, people wanted it because it was wonderful. And I didn't do it on purpose, but it was really hot. These chilies had gotten hotter as they sat. Maybe, but we found out way too late. Anyhow, and we talked, I think, I don't remember if it was in the class or not, or what was after.

[55:59]

We talked about if you need volume. I guess we talked about the deliciousness factor, so that's what we were talking about. If you're cooking and you had all this huge volume of kale prepped, and then you cook it and it disappears. That's when you start chopping up onions really fast, or you throw in a can of whatever. There are some canned vegetables over there. So, you could, onions, olives, green beans would be a little odd with Kale, I think, but you could tell the servers that they're going to have a lovely green bean salad and they're not going to get any kale. Whatever. Have you ever consulted with milk? Or meals that are just eaten, like it takes off with the burn, or if anything, sometimes that just comes up.

[57:00]

Or do you just go to them afterwards? Or is it easier? I've just gone to them afterwards. But I mean, I haven't had. We were talking a little bit about maybe too salty, too sugary, or whatever. Is it too hot, too spicy? Right. But it's something else. It's a question. Maybe it's burnt too much, or is it OK? I think that would be fine. Consult with, if he's available. I mean, he's often just, you know, doing DocSign or something. But if you have a question about it, get the tensor or get somebody who's an experienced book and check it out. DocSign with your meal? So, yeah. Sometimes if you've been tasting and tasting and tasting, you know, I mean, I've had it where I'm in the kitchen and it seems fine, or it seems not fine, and then I serve it, you know, half an hour later, and I taste it for two weeks, and I'm going to taste it for two weeks, to just find somebody who hasn't been in the kitchen tasting it.

[58:04]

Yeah. Yeah, and I don't think, I mean, I don't know that I would bother in a habit about something like that, unless, I don't know, the question would be, I mean, I know he's interested, So I need to I want to whip through this here and Anyway, so if the beans won't cook sometimes they're old and they're really tough add a lot of water and turn the fire up and then figure that you can then evaporate the water off, boil the water off. But if there's a lot of water, they'll cook faster. Whereas if there's a really kind of thick liquid, for one thing, you have to have the flame really low because otherwise you're going to burn them, but they just cook more slowly. So just dump in some boiling water. Of course, you have your boiling water ready all the time, right?

[59:06]

Anyway, so dump in some boiling water and just really cook them high heat. So if something is too sour, sugar, sort of obvious. But also sauteed sweet vegetable, like onions or peppers or carrots. Red wine will often, or sautéed garlic. Garlic is very sweet when it gets sautéed, and so that will balance something. Sometimes a little adding, actually just adding a little oil helps. Dill weed has a rich taste to it, and that can help.

[60:07]

I think dirt came with sugar. Well, that's sugar. If it's too sweet, then vinegar, lemon juice, and it might be that a little salt would balance it in some way and make it more acceptable, but that's one way. You better take a little bit out and put some salt in, taste it, and see if that helps at all. I guess white wine might help. Anyway, If it's too bitter, sugar can help. This is a place where I might use some balsamic vinegar, because balsamic vinegar is kind of, it's almost sweet. But it has a sweetness to it and a mellowness to it. And some, when you get some bad things, with some of the products, it's OK. Once I cook with my lemon peel, it's

[61:11]

Yeah. Well, it can be. The lemon peel can be very bitter. It's an interesting thing, though, because sometimes a little lemon zest, it depends also if you get the white part, then that's where the bitterness is. The yellow part's not so bitter. I was told if you like to take a lemon, linoleum, the juices in the peel is... I don't know. I don't have a problem with linoleum, and I eat whole linoleum, so it's not uncommon. I won't, but anyway. So balsamic vinegar, sugar, red wine, the sauteed veg, and dill weed might help. This is for bitter. You have to, I mean, the dill weed might be a stupid thing to put in, depending on what you make. Don't just put it, don't eat it. Use your senses and taste it. So, depth of flavor.

[62:13]

Part of the idea of those different stocks was to notice a progression towards depth of flavor. It's really hard to define it except that there's something about it that's satisfying. It feels and tastes satisfying. And it doesn't taste watery. It doesn't taste tinny. It doesn't taste thin. It's got something to it. And that usually comes from meat. And as I said, in vegetarian cooking, we need to find other ways. And so I've mentioned soy sauce, not enough to taste, but to give some depth of flavor. Wine. Ed Brown uses vinegar, but again, just a little bit. It would be like the soy sauce, just a little bit. And I would think balsamic. Well, but it has anchovies in it. So, sorry.

[63:17]

Smoked cheese is an interesting thing to use sometimes because it makes it taste like a little smoked cheese in your pea soup. It tastes like ham hocks. And oil sometimes helps, sauteed garlic. A little lemon zest can give things a fuller flavor. But not so much that it makes something bitter, but a little of that can help. Or dill, again. These are things that just make things taste fuller. And dill makes things taste rich. even though it is not. Two things that are much more obscure. One is, one time, there just happened to be a can of chipotle chilies open. You know, it has that sauce with it. And just added a little of that. And it warmed it up, the soup. It didn't taste like chili, but it just gave it another layer, I guess, of flavor.

[64:25]

And there's something called There's preserved turnips. There's Chinese things. There's something called Tianjin preserved vegetables, which is a real, real pungent cabbage. And that in an amount below what you could taste is useful here. But you might want that at home, or I don't know. Yeah, wonderful. This little crocks, these little sort of flat crocks. No, it's not so hot as kimchi, but it's very pungent. It's hard to eat it by itself. Tianjin preserved vegetable. And T-I-A-N-J-I-N. Two words. It's very obscure, but I just thought I'd mention it because I love it. Salted. Yes. It's basically salt preserved. Yeah. It's good. So, stock. It's good that it not be dirty.

[65:33]

So don't put dirty things in there. What do you mean by dirty? Well, it's really like the bottom of a carrot that can have a lot of dirt in it or some carrots have a lot of dirt or potatoes with a lot of dirt. Wash them off. You don't have to peel them and you don't have to scrub them, but wash them. And if you have any doubt, When you're done, then you can let it settle and then pour it off very gently. And don't pour off the end of it. And or pour it through a few layers of cheesecloth. So just be careful. So you're not cooking dirt, basically. So you have to be careful about how much peel you use. I mean, if you're just using peel. You know, some of that's fine. But the classic thing is to not use peels of onions, because Lillie Serene says it makes things bitter.

[66:37]

And I've never tried it, because God forbid I should be bitter. So I've never done it. But that's what they say. You shouldn't use onion peel. And potato is good if you're making a hearty stock. It definitely gives body to the stock. But you don't always want that. So put it in the wintertime or something. If you're making a winter minestrone, you might want to put a potato in the stock. And you don't need to peel it, as long as it's not really super dirty and you can't wash off the dirt. Kombu. K-O-M-B-U. It's seaweed. And it gives some depth to it. eight inches to a gallon of water, something like that. Comes in long strips. Shiitake mushrooms are wonderful for stock.

[67:43]

They're not cheap. And I think I said it's, well, depending on how much you make, but it's easier to just to simmer them separately and add the liquid to the stock, and then you have the shiitakes. I told you when I was at Tassajara for a squeeze, made like five gallons of stock. And then somebody would have to go through all these hot vegetables and pick out the shiitake. It was this kind of thing. But you know what we could do? We could do it with cheesecloth. You could do that, too. Sure. That would be good. We jumped at dry shiitake. Yeah, dry shiitake. So just, I don't know. So just some way. Either way. Or you could pick them out if you want to. All right. Well, they're expensive, and so you want them, and so on. Oh, you better reuse them. Yeah, they were going to wind up getting chopped up and put in the soup, even though by then they didn't taste, they had no flavor at all. But it's the idea. Yeah.

[68:43]

But I think it probably was because they're expensive. It's like, they're shiitake. It ain't an onion. I don't know. I never questioned it. The Greens Cookbook says not to cook vegetarian stock for more than 30 minutes or it gets bitter or something. It's not my experience. I've cooked it for longer than that. It doesn't have to cook forever because it's just not that much it's going to come out and the vegetables are going to give up their flavor within an hour. So there's no real reason to cook it longer. If you're concerned about it, and it's weak, you could always cook it for 45 minutes or an hour, strain it, and then put it back on the stove and boil it down and concentrate the flavor if it's not strong enough, rather than cooking it with the big chicken stirrer. This one, the base one that we did, it was really good. If you're just making stock to have on hand, then that's the best thing to do.

[69:48]

Just the vegetables and some kombu and some peppercorns. That was 20 cups of water, three carrots, should have been three large carrots, should have been a little more carrot in there. It was the tops of one bunch of celery, medium-sized bunch of celery. It was the stems from a good-sized bunch of Italian parsley, which means It was two large onions, not jumbo onions, but good size onions. Peeled and quartered. Not if I can help it. I mean, it's just expensive. There's nothing wrong with using it. And about, probably, it was about a foot of kombu and

[70:49]

Oh, I don't know, a tablespoon or two of peppercorns, maybe one and a half tablespoons. No, I think it was only about a tablespoon of peppercorns because they weren't perfect. And you started that this afternoon and you just cooked it for half an hour? We cooked it for about 40 minutes, maybe 35. That was the very first one, yeah. And the thing with that is then you can do anything with it because miso soup doesn't You know, you don't want bay leaf in your miso soup. You don't want garlic in your miso soup and so on. So that way it's just plain and then you flavor it however you want. If you know where you're going with it, then put the bay leaf in at the beginning. Put garlic in at the beginning or something. So, you know, if you're making minestrone or something, fine. So it just depends on whether you know or not or whether you, you know, if you're making a lot, then don't flavor it and then... But you're saying... take out the vegetables and then produce them.

[71:54]

However, whatever it takes. And then you could freeze that or store it. Right, it would be a lot easier. If you could freeze it in a smaller quantity, it would be easier to work with. Or you could make ice cubes. You could make ice cubes. I'm repeating what you say because I'm not sure that the tape is fixing it. Yes, you could make ice cubes with it. I think you could do that. You should taste them, you know, because it might be that you do better to saute some more and puree them and they'll have more flavor. Yeah, well, taste them because it may be that they really just have absolutely no flavor at all. And so you're doing something to, you're making something that doesn't have much flavor. You're sort of, in a way, it's like you're diluting the stock with that stuff.

[72:56]

You see what I'm saying? So taste them. But it could be possible. It's a good way to thicken things is to puree vegetables. OK. I think that's perfect timing. You're welcome. We're going to have a small celebration, but not until the class is over. Are we ready to chant? And then we can talk a little bit. I'll answer questions. What? Yeah. No. No ice cream. Something else. I'm not going to put it on the table.

[73:41]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ