Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Skarborough and together with Bruce, we have written three

dozen cookbooks, are working on the three dozen and first, dish, dish,

dish, dish, whatever that is cookbook.

We'll tell you more about that down the road.

This is our food and cooking podcast in which we get to talk about

what has been our passion for over two decades, food and cooking.

So in this episode of our podcast, we've got our one minute cooking podcast.

cooking tip.

As he's always, we're going to go into the kitchen and I'm going to make some Korean

vegetable pancakes, a thing that I have become absolutely in love with over time.

And we're going to tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

So let's get started

our one minute cooking tip.

Today we're taking a page from East Indian cuisine.

That is, toast your whole spices if you can, whether they're peppercorns, cumin

seeds, coriander seeds, the whole spices.

When you toast them, they have more flavor because they release their oils.

Oil when they're warm.

Okay.

Now I'm going to be David on Schitt's Creek and say, what

in the world do you mean toast?

So I'm going to put them in my toaster.

Oh, wow.

So is that what do when I toast them?

Okay.

Well, how do I toast?

This is a, uh, chefs assume terminology and writers do not.

So what do you mean toast though?

Take all of the dried spices your recipe calls for and put them in a dry skillet.

No oil.

Really, I prefer it on a stir.

Go ahead.

And you put it on a medium low flame and you're going to shake

those around and stir those around probably for less than two minutes.

Oh yeah.

Just until you smell them.

Once they're fragrant, their oils have been released and they

will be much more flavorful.

When you cook with them.

And while we're still here, let me just add one more bit to this.

And that is, when you open bottles of seeds, like cumin seeds or

coriander seeds or mustard seeds or anything, uh, do take a smell.

Because if it smells funky or musty, they've gone off.

And seeds do go off relatively quickly because they're full of natural oils.

So, be careful.

And if they've gone off, mmm, it's time to buy new ones.

Don't use them in your cooking.

Mm

mm, not only have they gone off, I have opened large jars of coriander seeds

that I have bought at a local Indian market, and there's been no smell.

And I thought, well, if I toast them and I tried it, nothing.

So I got a bunch of duds.

So you want to make sure there is some smell.

They've probably been stored a long time in their package and

have lost anything that they have.

This is just the unfortunate thing about spices.

They're not for everyone.

ever things.

And I know as cookbook writers, we're always faced with this.

Oh, you're making me buy so many spices for recipes.

And I always think, yeah, but spices are not eternal projects like they

were for my great aunt who kept around the paprika as a coloring agent.

They're not like that.

They should be in fact swapped out.

If your spices have been around for over a year, maybe two years,

consider changing out what you've got.

Okay.

Frightening.

I know a lot of people hear that and go, that's a lot of money.

You

want

your food to taste good.

It is.

If you're going to use it.

Well, then use the best.

Okay, before we get to the next segment, which is headed to the kitchen to

make vegetable pancakes, let me say it would be great if you could rate

this podcast or could subscribe to it.

That would be spectacular.

And if you could write a review, even nice podcast that

does wonders for our audience.

Analytics.

I know that's not your problem.

That's our problem, but we are unsupported.

We have chosen not to seek out sponsors so that we can do whatever we want and don't

feel like we're shilling for anybody.

We've done enough of that in our life, in other phases of our life

for the U S potato board and for Instapot, we've done enough shilling.

Paid for some nice vacations.

It did.

So we're not chilling in this podcast.

So if you could rate it and even write a review, that would be great.

Okay.

We're off to the kitchen to make vegetable pancakes.

Mark has made these for me for dinner.

So.

so many times.

And in fact, he made them as an appetizer to have with drinks around the coffee

table with friends a few weeks ago.

They remind me of traditional scallion pancakes, but he makes them

with so much more than a scallion.

Yeah,

these are kind of a riff off traditional Korean skillet pancakes with vegetables,

but I riffed this recipe pretty hard and made it something very different.

And I think that It's a really nice, uh, easy meal, easy dinner, uh, or it can be

even a snack with guests before dinner.

So, here's what we're going to start with the vegetables.

So, right now, I'm shredding a large zucchini through a box grater.

And you're using the large holes of that box grater.

Yeah.

Box graters have four sides.

And they have lots of holes.

If you have graters that are individual, not Put together

like a box, use the large one.

And if you are the kind of person who wants to use your food processor

with the shredding blade, go ahead.

Yes, exactly.

Now, let me tell you again, about this shredding, this zucchini,

which I'm finishing up with here.

Um, let me say that if you want to get really, really fancy and pitch perfect

aesthetics, then what you want to do is turn this zucchini into matchsticks.

Make long slices.

A long, the zucchini thin slices, lay these out, then cut them into long

matchsticks and then cut down those matchsticks into smaller pieces.

You can do that and it's certainly pitch perfect, but you don't have to.

You can shred it.

But you

do have to do one thing to the zucchini.

That is squeeze out the water because zucchini is one of those

vegetables that holds the So much moisture, like mushrooms.

So, after you grate it, and this is what I'm doing now, I'm picking up a

handful, and I'm squeezing out water, and this water is this sort of greenish

water, is coming out through my hands.

Make sure you do this over the sink.

Ha, ha, ha.

We'll tell you that one in a second.

And we're going to get this water because this water is going to

then come out otherwise in the pancakes and make them soggy.

So I'm getting them nice and dry.

Now, why do you say do it in the sink?

Well, before I do that, let me say, um, I'm going to start here doing the

same thing with the Becks grater on, on, uh, on a large carrot, and I'm

going to start, uh, shredding it up.

Why do we say it?

Okay.

So long time cookbook author, Barbara Kafka claimed that she got.

Uh, mail from, probably snail mail, because this is back in the day.

Snail mail from a reader of one of her recipes who said that they drained

the pasta and it went all over the counter and the floor and she realized

that she had to write the recipe that said drain the pasta in a cup.

colander set in the sink.

And I have to tell you that I have followed that in every

book we've ever written.

I add in a colander set in the sink and every editor and copy editor

says, why do you have to add that?

And I think, because Barbara Kafka told me too long time ago.

We also say in our recipes, to grease the inside of a baking.

Yeah, I know.

We once had someone say to us, well, I greased it and then I can't hold

it anymore because it's greasy.

Right, and believe it or not, we wrote a candy book a million years ago and

we discovered that you have to say, clip the candy thermometer to the

inside of the pan, not the outside.

I know that sounds crazy, but it's just things that you face.

And it's like going into the toasting and do I use a toaster?

There are things that happen in cooking and in food that become kind of standard.

How do you work with a candy?

thermometer.

And a lot of people don't know, like David on Schitt's Creek, how

do I fold in that broken cheese?

People don't know.

And if you don't know, using the shorthand doesn't help.

Okay.

So it's just really important to know here that we've got to squeeze out the water

from the zucchini and do it over the sink.

So the water goes down.

And the

carrots are done.

And now I have a small onion that I have cut.

Peeled and cut in half and the cut side is down on my cutting board.

And now I am using my chef knife to cut very thin slices, which I will break apart

into these beautiful little half moons.

Let me just add that you can substitute scallions here, about three medium

scallions, and you can, uh, trim them, trim off the little rooty ends and

trim off some of the waggly green tops.

And then slice them lengthwise into tiny little strips and then

slice those in thirds or halves.

You can do that with a scallion too.

Let me say that I recently saw Rick Bayless, the legendary chef on TikTok,

making a huge stink about yellow and white onions and how yellow

onions are not worth it and they're ridiculous and they're horrible.

And are forbidden in Mexican cooking.

Forbidden, and I don't know what he's saying.

Anyway, you know what?

Use a yellow or a white.

Shoot, use a red onion here.

I don't care.

Use a shallot if you want.

I don't care.

You just need something that kind of has an onion Something made

so that we have something to eat.

So quit it.

So what are you doing with these mushrooms?

So I've got shiitake mushrooms, um, or to use the term from the British

comedian, Catherine Tate, uh, I have shit, ache mushrooms, but you don't want.

Food with that word in it, but okay.

Okay.

Anyway, I've got shiitake mushrooms and, uh, what you, if you don't know, you

have to take the stems off of these.

The stems are very fibrous and they won't get tender in something like this.

So you take the stems off, you can save them back for soup.

I don't know who does, but you can save them back for no waste and then boil

them in a soup and that kind of thing.

But I've got the caps and I'm going to slice these just as

thin and I've already done it.

And so now I'm moving on to a medium jalapeno.

And what I'm doing here is I've stemmed it, and then I'm standing

it up on that cut side of the stemmed, formerly stemmed part.

Like a rocket ship.

Yep.

And now I'm going to just slice down around the jalapeno, and that way

I'm going to slice Off the inner core, I'm slicing the green, quote

unquote, flesh off the inner core.

If you want to keep the seeds, you can.

We just decided in this particular dish, we didn't want it to be that hot.

If we want to add heat, we'll add it to our dipping sauce.

So there

it is, my jalapeno.

all in matchsticks.

Now, let me just say, you don't have to be copying this down.

Uh, this recipe will appear on our website.

It will appear with this podcast on our website.

It'll go out in our newsletter, which you're welcome to subscribe

to, which is on our website.

You can find this in a lot of different places and we'll post this recipe itself.

Underneath a video that goes with this recipe on Facebook group, uh,

Cooking with Bruce and Mark, as well as on TikTok and Instagram.

So you can find this recipe in lots of different places.

Okay, now we got all these vegetables mixed together and now

we're going to make the batter.

I have a large glass bowl and in that bowl I have put one cup of all purpose flour.

For those of you who weigh your ingredients, that's 125 grams.

Into that, I am putting one cup of water.

a quarter cup of cornstarch and what is that?

That's 28 grams.

And let me just say that, in traditional Korean pancakes this would

probably be rice flour at this point.

I use cornstarch because A it's easier to source in North America than rice

flour mostly and B because I think it goes better with gives a little bit of

a crunchy rather than a sticky texture.

It does.

And then a teaspoon of salt.

And I'm just whisking that to get them well incorporated.

And while I whisk, that mark is going to pour in one cup or 240 mLs of water.

Right.

One cup or 240 mLs of water.

Now, you can go crazy here and you can use.

unsweetened oat milk, unsweetened almond milk, you can use low fat or skim milk.

I think water does just fine because really what we want the vegetable to do

here is that the vegetables show through and we want fewer competing flavors.

You notice I didn't put any spices in here because we really want

these vegetables to show through.

Okay.

So what you'll notice is there's no egg and that this is the difference

between these Korean vegetable pancakes and the Japanese version

of these pancakes, which almost.

Always have eggs in them.

So there's no eggs.

But I have this batter that it actually looks like pancake batter.

It does.

And we're going to pour this over the vegetables and then we're going to

stir it all together in that big bowl.

And make kind of a vegetable y batter.

And now, Bruce has got a nonstick pan.

skillet set over medium heat,

10 inch nonstick skillet.

Okay.

A 10 inch nonstick.

So, so what is that?

About, uh, 24 centimeters, something like that, I think, right?

Somewhere along in there.

And we're going to put a little thin slick of a neutral flavored

oil, like canola oil, vegetable, corn oil, name it, safflower oil.

I don't care.

Just a neutral flavored oil.

Hmm.

I don't know, maybe two tablespoons.

So maybe 30, 30 milliliters.

30 liters, listen to me,

30 milliliters of oil in it.

And it doesn't take long for this to get hot.

You'll see the oil start to shimmer a bit, and then we are going to dump this

luscious vegetable coated batter in.

And what I'm doing is I'm spreading it out.

I'm using my large spatula to make sure it's flat and it's even.

It goes all the way to the edges of the pan.

This is really key.

I mean, don't let it mound in the center, and it won't move around

like pancake, it won't automatically spread out like pancake batter.

No, no, no.

Because there's too many vegetables in it.

So, you have

to push it down.

You have to do that.

Now, we're going to let this go about six minutes a side.

And let me

say, before we get there, let me just say that the first time I made this,

the mistake was being too impatient.

So, this really does need to set.

And it really does need to get a little brown.

So, boom, 6 minutes seems right.

5, 6, 7 minutes.

You can start lifting it up on the edges at about the 4 to 5

minute mark to see where you are.

But basically, don't be impatient with this.

Just let it go.

The first time I made this, you know, I'm the writer and Bruce is the chef.

And Bruce was standing over me and I kept saying, I want to flip it.

And he kept saying, don't, don't, don't, don't.

Don't flip it.

It's not ready.

It's not ready.

It'll still look wet.

It's not like a pancake.

It won't get, you know, dried out on top when you're ready to flip it.

It'll still look fairly wet on top.

What you want to do is just lift up corners with a rubber spatula

or a silicone spatula to see what's going on under there to

see if it's getting golden brown.

And then, when you flip it, you have your choice.

You can take the courage of your convictions and just flip it right

in the pan like Julia Child taught us all to do back in the 70s.

I would advise not doing that, but go ahead.

Or what I sometimes do is I will grab a large flat plate or a flat, not a

curved or convex or concave plate.

pot lid.

I will put it over that pan, flip them together and then slide it back in.

Right.

Okay.

So if you want to practice flipping in a pan, let me say that.

Don't try here.

You're just going to have a pancake all over your stove.

You are going to.

So we're going to come back when this thing is done and we're going to try it.

Okay, so it's done on both sides.

We flipped it, and we got it golden brown on both sides, and it's cooked through.

Again, we're not looking for pancake texture.

It's not got no leavening in it, so it's not going to get airy inside.

Instead, what we want is the vegetables to be tender and the outside to be golden

brown, and then we've slipped it onto a cutting board and left it there for

a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and Bruce has then cut it into pieces.

into pie shaped wedges.

And what dipping sauce did you make today

for it?

A bottle of peanut dipping sauce, an Asian peanut dipping sauce.

But there are many different dipping

sauces you can use, right?

You can.

In fact, I want to talk about a sauce that for that dinner party

that we had when Mark made it.

I did a sauce for it that was really interesting.

It was sort of this pseudo vegan cream sauce.

I took raw cashews and I soaked them overnight and I pureed them in the

blender with a little silken tofu and I had some nutritional yeast.

And some squeezed, dry, pickled sushi ginger.

And a little garlic powder.

Uh huh.

Just a little garlic powder.

This beautiful, gingery cream sauce.

But today, we just have bottled peanut sauce.

If you don't know, this is a side point, but I have been doing,

I the writer, have been doing more cooking around here lately.

And I am doing like this.

I am cooking vegan.

And when it's left to me, if you listen to the podcast, you know that I have

been cooking more and more vegan food.

And I have discovered that the secret.

to a creamless cream sauce or cream sauce that tastes really rich but has

no cream is that combination of soaked, drained, raw cashews, silken tofu, a

little smoked paprika, a little garlic powder, and a healthy dump of butter.

of nutritional yeast.

And I swear you blend that together in a in a neutral blood or a blender

and it tastes like a cream sauce.

And

you could flavor it in any number of ways.

And we did it with pickled ginger last night.

So I'm going to try this because this I'm hungry and this really looks good.

Okay.

There's a lot.

It's a lot of vegetables.

It's a lot of, uh, stuff in here.

It's nothing inside is crunchy.

I like that.

The outside is crunchy.

The vegetables are tender.

They got a little steamy in there.

Oh, this peanut sauce is good.

Well, no, that's not.

We didn't make

it.

Yeah.

These are really great.

Um, lunches.

In fact, if you want to cheat on this, of course, you know, you can

use any vegetables and you can go.

by the matchstick carrots and celery and zucchini and all that at the supermarket.

And then you can cheat your way right through this.

We kind of did it from scratch, but there's ways to do this.

That are even easier than what we're doing.

I just like the mushroom and jalapeno combination in it.

The jalapenos aren't terribly hot.

I don't know if you know this, but jalapeno varietals have been.

Brad and Brad and Brad and Brad over the years until they've

gotten milder and milder and milder and milder in our supermarkets.

And now jalapenos bear little resemblance to years ago when they were really hot.

Um, if you grow your own, you know, you can still grow really hot ones,

but, uh, uh, a lot of the jalapenos are pretty mild in the supermarkets these

days.

I also want to say that this dish.

It is so good as a meal and once in a while when we have it for

dinner, we fry a duck egg and we put a fried duck egg on top.

Oh, it's so yummy.

It is very yummy with a duck egg on the portion.

So that's the recipe.

That's my strange vegetable pancake.

It kind of takes part of a Korean recipe.

It kind of remorphs it for a North American supermarket.

It changes up the vegetables a great deal.

Deal.

It changes up the technique a little bit all to get an easy vegan entree or

snack out in front of those you love.

Hey, if you like this podcast, let me say that we do have a newsletter.

You can find it on our website, cooking with Bruce and Mark.

You can sign up there and receive our about twice a month newsletter.

That comes out with recipes like this one on it.

Okay.

On to what's making us happy in food this week.

What's making me happy is what the house smells like right

now, which is mushroom ketchup.

Oh,

it is what is not

making me happy.

Now, A lot of people may never have heard of mushroom ketchup.

It's one of the original condiments.

This is like, you know, oh my gosh.

18th century stuff.

I, I, I came upstairs from working this morning and, uh, came up

for lunch and I open the door.

I'm downstairs.

Uh, we have a walkout basement and my office is downstairs in the, uh,

part of the basement with a door to the backyard and all that stuff.

And, you know, I've been sitting down there working and I came upstairs

and opened the door to the upstairs.

It smells so good.

And he said, Oh God, what stinks?

Oh, it smells so good.

And he said, No, it smells great.

So I'm going to take his word for it.

Basically,

it's kind of like a steak saucy Worcestershire kind of, yeah, think

about like I made, basically I made steak sauce with vinegar and some Demerara

sugar and mushrooms and it's really good.

And it's going to be in the new book that we're working on.

So it's one of

those

things.

So what's made me happy in food this week is something that happens to us

every month in a while and it's something that happened to us just recently

and that is we're part of a club.

It is an all men's club.

I know this sounds really gross in the modern era, but it is an all

men's club and it is and dare I say this, the association of sporting

shooters held on local estates.

And if you spell out the first, I'm not going to say it.

But if you spell out the first letters of Association of Sporting Shooters,

held on local estates, you'll know what the actual name of the club is.

And basically, one guy who is the, uh, head chief of that

variety, he has it in his barn.

We sit around and drink crazy red wine.

Last night when we were there, there were centimillions and there were

Chateauneuf du Papes and we sit around and drink these incredible wines in

glasses with masking tape on them.

So

you know you're,

whose is yours?

And you're not given knives because you're supposed to pick up the food and not.

Okay, pick

it up.

That was a, we had a venison neck.

Yes.

We had a haunch of venison.

We had a ox, a tail, the whole tail off a cow.

Which just got passed around the room and everybody ate off of it.

Yes.

Okay.

It's like the most insane weirdness.

It's some 1980s throwback of men are from Mars, women are from Venus or something.

But, uh, we go, and I want to tell you that we're the only gay couple.

We're also

the youngest ones there.

No, there's

one younger than us.

But, um, we're the only gay couple that's ever been a part of this club.

And I have to tell you, this is probably more than I should say, but being a

gay couple, when we joined or were invited to join the club years ago, we

We kind of changed the dynamics because it was an old bunch of old straight

guys and no spouses and no spouses.

And suddenly I was there, for example, with my spouse.

So

was I.

Yeah, I know.

So people were there with their spouses, Bruce and me, and it changed the dynamic.

And you know, Hey, long live change and long live the ability

to change and good for those guys that they're very set in their ways.

I mean, the group is so weird.

It includes fun.

guys.

It includes trust fund babies, a bunch of retired doctors.

There's a retired priest in the group.

Uh, father comes and he comes every time and now he's retired from the ministry and

he is actually the priest for a convent of three nuns in his retirement was for.

He just buried one.

He just buried one.

He keeps saying he sits there at the table.

I can't do his, his Irish accent, but he sits there at the table saying,

I got the women waiting for me.

I'm going home to more women than you are.

What he

kept saying?

He did.

Very strange.

But we ate tons of venison that had been shot by the head

of the club, and drank lots.

A really dark, heavy, beautiful red wine, and it was much fun.

They did pass around peas, but peas were just so What was the point?

I don't know.

And that was like, after we'd eaten everything else.

And also, how do you eat peas?

They're not even a spoon.

So what are you supposed to do with the peas, except pick them up one by one?

It's just a very odd thing.

thing, but I'm very happy to know that people can change and even straight

white boy clubs can eventually change, perhaps to include others

beyond them and serve delicious food.

So that's our podcast for this week.

Thanks for being a part of it.

We know that there are many podcasts in this landscape and we certainly appreciate

your being with us on this journey.

And every week we tell you what's making us happy in food.

So tell us what's making you happy in food this week at our Facebook

group, cooking with Bruce and Mark, we look forward to reading your comments

and to having you back for another episode of Cooking with Bruce and Mark.