Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Scarborough, and together with Bruce, my husband, we have written 37 cookbooks.

Bruce has written a couple knitting books.

I've written a memoir, I don't know, we're just publishing all the time.

But this is our podcast about our biggest passion food.

Mm-hmm.

And cooking the thing that drives our.

Forward as always, we've got a one minute cooking tip.

We're gonna talk about the weirdest things we've ever eaten, and we wanna know what is the weirdest thing you've ever eaten in your life.

And not to be gross out, but just what is the weirdest thing you dared to try in your life?

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

So let's get started.

Our one minute cooking tip.

Watch out for salt in store-bought raw poultry.

Yeah.

I, some of

it is already brine.

Brine, meaning it's been an assault solution.

Yep, yep.

I think a lot of people don't know this.

Yep.

And you know, when you buy kosher meat, it's always gonna be a little salty.

Like kosher birds are always brine.

It's part of the kosher ring process, but not a little.

Yeah.

It's heavily salty.

It's salty.

But if you go to the supermarket and you see a chicken that's.

Packed there.

It's a roaster or it's a fryer, or you see packages of chicken breasts.

Yep.

You might see a little line on that package that says May contain up to 10% of a solution.

Yeah.

That means they have injected that chicken with a salt and other electrolytes solution to keep it juicier when it's cooked and also to increase its weight.

So you're paying for that solution.

You are paying for the water.

For the chicken, if you're buying mostly organic chicken, you're not gonna have this injection problem.

But just standard, uh, chicken, even the chicken you might buy in big packs at the big box stores.

Yeah.

Um, a lot of it has been injected and it is already salty.

Just be careful about over salting that food once you cook it up.

Okay.

Before we get.

On to the weirdest thing we've ever eaten or each of us has ever eaten, and all the discussions of that.

Let me say that it would be great if you could subscribe to this podcast and even better if you could give it a rating on whatever platform you're on.

Can we ask for five stars?

And if you write a review that is.

Absolutely spectacular.

Like nice podcast.

Thanks for doing that because we are unsupported and that is the way that, in fact, you can support us.

Alright, we're gonna move on to the weirdest question we've ever asked on this podcast, which is, what's the weirdest thing you ever ate?

Hmm.

Okay.

The weirdest thing I ever ate.

There are so many weird things I need, I know we've got

a list already, so just so you know, there's a list to go down.

Okay.

When I was.

In high school, I worked at a kosher deli on the Upper East side of New York.

Mm-hmm.

It's one block north of Bloomingdale's.

All right.

On third Avenue between 60th and 61st Street.

And I had to do a lot of things there that I had never done, like taste things like.

Pja.

Okay.

Now let me say that I know who Cha is pja, but most people listening to this podcast, unless they are from a ettl in Belarus, will not know what Pja is.

Jollied Cal's feet.

There you go.

Now, here's the thing about it.

It wasn't so weird because I had eaten jelly.

Pig's feet in Chinatown, in Chinese restaurants.

Oh, wow.

So, wow.

So it was just changing animals.

Right.

It's the same

thing.

There's something though that's so overwhelming about pcha.

There's something about it.

I, I have never ever worked up the courage to touch it and, and I eat a lot of things.

As you'll hear.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

But I have never in fact, uh, worked up the courage to touch it because it's so monumental.

Well, you just cook the feet until they literally just turn to jelly.

Mm-hmm.

And they're very strong.

You know, I think it's the land animal version of Lu Fisk.

Oh.

Well, no.

Okay.

No, you're not soaking the cabs feed in lie and all that.

I ha By the way, I have had lus in my life.

Now, explain what that is.

Oh, well, LUS is a Scandinavian delicacy in which you take fish filets and you soak them in lie to preserve them, and you dry them and soak them in lie, and this preserves them forever.

And then you lie, we'll kill you.

And so you've gotta get the lie out of it.

And so you do a multiple.

Bath, rinsing, soaking problem to get it out and then you cook it.

And I have been to Lud Fisk Suppers at Scandinavian churches in the upper Midwest when I was getting my PhD at Madison, Wisconsin.

And basically you get a plate of what can only be called warm fish.

Jello.

Yeah.

Tell Jelly it gets

a gelatin quality to it with mashed potatoes and mashed rutabagas and white bread and butter poured all over it.

It is the, how can you have eaten that and not eat pecha?

It is the ultimate white people food.

It is just total white people.

I mean, salt burns and so you wouldn't dare eat salt with it because it's too flavorful.

Well, peon needs a lot of salt, I suppose.

So that was, that was probably the weirdest thing I ate.

And it's funny 'cause my grandmother.

Made Pja, but I wouldn't eat it when she made it and she made tongue and I wouldn't eat it when she made it.

Oh God, I love tongue and she made brains and I wouldn't eat it when she made it.

So it was really weird that I chose to eat the pja when I worked at MITs.

So yes, that was the name.

It was MITs Deli.

Okay.

Uh, well, I guess, um, since we brought up brains, I'll talk about my experience with brains.

I've had several experiences in my life, but one time, oh, you have a big brain.

No, not really.

But, uh, one time these were, uh, gustatory brains.

So one time we went up to a place in.

Rural, rural, rural Quebec.

I mean, this is not Quebec City.

This is Montreal.

This is the middle of nowhere Quebec.

And it was a very, very lovely, luxurious hotel just on a lake.

And seriously the middle of nowhere.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And they had a lovely restaurant.

And we would go up there and I'll tell you, we would go in the winter 'cause it's the only time we could have.

Afford to go to this hotel because it was so expensive in the summer.

But of course they were open all winter long anyway, and we'd go up and get a room and have a couple really nice meals.

So one night we went in the dining room and, uh, what was his name?

Stef Stefan.

Stefan was the Marere d And Stefan informed us that the special of the night was several Dono.

Lamb brain, he was very

proud of it.

'cause they don't get them often right?

And he thought we would really love to have he right as

gourmet as we are.

He knew that one of us would

really

love to have him.

Okay?

So I was like, you know what?

I'm in for penny in for pound.

I'm gonna do this because this is the special and he's proud of it and I'm here and you know, this is a delicacy in many parts of the world.

So here I go.

Explain what came at you.

I order it.

And what comes out is, I mean, this is a very nice restaurant, but essentially I'm making this more downscale than it actually was.

But what comes out is a plate with lettuce on it and three cold brains.

And they were exactly in the shape of a lamb's brain.

I mean, these were not, they're

not big

braised, they were not sliced, they were not diced.

Nothing could happen to them.

They were, well, they've been poached and poached, poached whole, right.

And then they were cold with mayonnaise.

All those little squiggles that brains had, there was a ventricles.

Were there a pot

of mayonnaise in the middle of the plate with three brains around it?

I'll give you credit.

You got through a whole brain.

I did.

I got you a brain.

And a little bit of a second before I was like, I can't, I just can't.

I can't do this anymore.

I did it.

I drank all the wine.

I got this down as much as I can get it down, and then I got to leave it alone.

I, I actually grew up, uh, Bruce says his grandmother made brains.

I grew up in a German immigrant family where brains were common, and I had them as a kid, but I hadn't had them again as an adult.

And if you've never had brains, they have an extraordinarily unique and identifying flavor.

Mm-hmm.

It is not like liver.

It's not like organ meat.

It has a very.

Basically, there's absolutely not one sweet note to it, and it has of course, as you know, a very disturbing texture.

It's funny, the texture is what turns me off, but yet I also like sweet breads, you know, which is, it's different.

The thymus gland, it's

different.

Sweet breads are softer than brains.

Brains are a little.

Firm.

I know it's the texture of sweet breads and sweetbreads are a little sweet also.

They're different.

Oh, they're delicious.

And so I, I guess they could be on the list of weird things, but I don't see sweet breads as weird.

We, we had sweet breads in Madrid when we were there.

We, two years ago, we went to this Israeli restaurant, um, in Madrid.

They, this.

This family owned an Argentinian, uh, ranch.

Right.

And uh, what do you call that?

And

Estan.

Yeah, estan.

Yeah.

Estancia

eia.

And they brought all the meat up from South America to Spain and they grilled wood, wood grill, smoked those sweet breads.

Oh, that was one of, I thought you were gonna tell another

Madrid story.

Oh, okay.

This is a Madrid dish, which, uh, didn't seem weird to me, but seems weird to everybody.

I show the pictures too.

So we went to a restaurant that specialized in innards, in ville, in oval, and we had a tasting menu.

And so of course, one course was a plate of a bunch of little duck hearts and they were in a sauce and that was lovely.

Lots of tripe.

And then there was a little tripe thing, but there was a side dish.

Side dish.

The buffet that you can, not a side dish.

Well, it was on the sides.

Menu, right?

Yeah.

You can order it extra.

You can order it extra on the side,

right?

And it was called Pig Head, and what you got was a very small baby pig head that had been confid, meaning slow cooked in oil to the meat is falling off, but it's not totally falling off.

Then it was coated in crumbs and deep fried.

That's true.

Had had a deep fried fake head, deep fried comb, feeded pig head, and it was baby piglet head.

It was one of the most unusual things ever served to me in a restaurant, but.

Boy, was it good.

So

I I, so in all this talking about innards, I'll tell you a story about me and innards, and it's not childhood, it's adult.

So we have a friend who lives up here in New England near us, and they keep chickens.

And of course they've got bru, roosters, and they need to always dispatch the roosters because you can't have.

A ton of roosters.

They'll fight and kill each other and all that stuff, so you do kill them.

Chickens are nasty.

They, well roosters are particularly disturbing birds at times.

Nasty birds.

And anyway, um, he had dispatched to roosters and, uh, you may know that I have another side of my life, which is literary teaching, and I had been teaching an eight week course on the short stories of Flannery O'Connor in the library in their town.

So on the way home one day from one of those courses.

He said, stop by me, my house.

I dispatched a couple roosters and we can sit around the table in his kitchen and eat the innards.

So I did.

Yeah, you're not getting the lovely meat, you're just getting the innards.

At about four o'clock I stopped at their house.

Um, his wife did not take part in any of this, but he and I sat at the kitchen table.

We drank a really nice bottle of red wine over the course of like two hours while he fried up.

Yes, the testicles, the lungs, the spleens, the livers, the brains.

The Cox Combs.

Cox Combs.

Good.

I like that.

But that's not an ind, that's an outward, all the kidneys, that's an

ind.

We fried it all up one by one and we would try each piece and then drink more wine and talk and they, so I suppose that is one of those hallmark moments.

I'm not opposed to in cells.

So here's my, uh, thing about gross out.

Um, innards actually don't gross me out.

Mm-hmm.

Ful doesn't gross me out, as you can tell.

What really, really grosses me out is fermented Roddy vegetable matter.

And while I love kimchi, if you listen to this podcast, you know how much I love kimchi on burgers.

And while I love sauerkraut German immigrant family, after all, I love all that stuff.

Sometimes Bruce uses preserved and fermented Chinese vegetables in stir fries, and it passes a line for me.

You have that reaction when I put too many different kinds of fermented things in.

Yes, and it gets so confusing.

Last week my mom was visiting and I made a siwan style braised brisket, and so what made it Siwan style?

I used.

Dojang, the fermented broad bean chili paste in it.

I also used fermented urging tatau chilies in it, and that probably was enough fermented things for Mark.

Um, but then I also put some other fermented soy saucy paste into it.

Mm-hmm.

And then I opened up two packages.

Mm-hmm.

Pickled fermented mustard tubers.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And I dumped those in.

There's something

about, there's too many fermented vegetables that, again, I love sauerkraut and sauerkraut, as my grandmother would say.

I love sauerkraut.

I love kimchi.

I think all of that is brilliant.

Our book called Canning has all kinds of small batch Kim cheese in it, and Sauerkrauts, I love them.

There's this, uh, um, uh, celery root, uh, sauerkraut that's in the book that I think is just.

Brilliant cabbage and cel, uh, celery root mixed together.

I love all of that stuff.

It's the question of when it starts to, I'm gonna be gross.

I'm sorry.

This is a food podcast and I'm gross.

But it's when it starts to smell like your garbage can and I just can't handle it, it starts to smell like a compost pile.

And

I will admit when I made that brisket, I had opened.

The packages of the fermented mustard tubs and they were in a bowl next to everything else and there was a smell coming off the counter and I, the sulfur smell and I kind of associated that with the onions and I think it was the mustard tubers.

It was too far.

Ferment.

I should have left.

I couldn't eat it.

I should left it.

It just got.

Too Roddy, and so I, so you can hear, I have no problem with eating like Leopold Bloom in U in James Joyce's Ulysses.

I eat with relish, the inner organs of beasts and fouls, but it's vegetable matter.

When it starts to go too far.

I love vegetables, I love fresh vegetables, I love fermented vegetables, but there's just this way it can cross a line with me and I start to back up from

it.

And it's really interesting too, because one of your favorite cheeses is a POS I love.

And you always say to me, a POS is like a cheese.

You leave until it's liquified, you get rid of it, and the liquid there is what's left in the bottom of your garbage can.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It tastes like, like the

cheese tastes like the liquid at the bottom of your garbage can.

Yeah,

it does.

My, my, my friend Allison refers to how you eat a pos, you leave it on the counter all day until it festers and then you eat it, but you like that and it smells like garbage.

I love a pos, but it smells like garbage.

I think that that goes with, uh, red wine.

I think what pos goes beautifully with a really inky, dark red wine.

My problem with the vegetable matter is that it is not only.

Fermented, but it also includes this sour component.

And it's that, it's that cross between the fermented savory and the sour rye start to back up from it.

Mm-hmm.

And I can't handle it anymore.

It, it, i, it crosses a boundary for

me.

That makes sense.

I wanna go back to my grandmother's Shabbat kitchen for a second.

'cause there's something she would make every now and then.

Which Shabbat?

Not everyone on this podcast.

Never.

Friday

nights Sha Jewish Shabbat.

It's your Sabbath.

It's okay.

There you go.

And she would often make L and stew.

Oh, if it sounds like lungs it is.

It's just L and stew.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

Mm-hmm.

You couldn't have given me.

Anything to make me eat it as a child.

However, I love

lungs.

Once Mark and I went with an Asian friend of ours, a Chinese friend to Chinatown in Flushing in Queens.

Yep.

And we went to one of those underground food malls.

Yep.

And we found a stall selling.

Chinese lamb, lung in chili oil cold.

And it was cold.

Cold lamb lung in chili oil.

I tasted it and I loved it, and it's the texture.

It was like eating what killed me.

It's like gummy candy.

So we

went with a friend, a Chinese friend to this mall, and the Chinese friend would not touch mm-hmm.

The cold lung in chili oil and we ate it.

Mm-hmm.

So there you go.

Yeah.

But she was unusual.

I couldn't serve her a whole lobster.

She wouldn't take it apart.

She was a little squeamish

maybe so.

But I think that this as part of a cultural matrix.

Mm.

Um, that's made, uh, I guess a lot of my gross out foods, if when people hear them are all about innards as I say.

And, uh, there's other things that, um, I, I, I, it's not that they're gross out for me.

I've learned to like them, for example.

Um, and I suppose there's a lot of people this way.

I used to be completely cilantro averse mm-hmm.

And not be able to handle any cilantro.

Now I'm okay with it.

Mm-hmm.

And now.

I'm fine with it.

I eat it on guacamole.

I eat it in Mexican food.

I don't, I I eat it in Thai food.

I have no problem with cilantro anymore.

Yeah.

But you never had that sensation that it tasted like soap?

Yes, I did.

Oh, you

do?

Yes, I did.

I still do.

You have that genetic thing so it tastes like soap?

I do.

I thought you just didn't like it.

Oh, you think it tastes like soap?

Yeah, but it's because that's a genetic thing.

I might, but it's okay.

I'm okay with you.

You're okay to, to, for me to grate soap on top of your tacos?

Yeah.

Whatever.

I'm, I'm top.

Just don't put any preserved vegetable root on there, or at least too many of them.

I think keep it, keep it more in the realm of vegetable, not.

Fermented sour vegetable.

Yeah.

There is one thing still in a Chinese restaurant that I have not had.

We've seen it a number of times.

In fact, the first time we saw it was, uh, when we still lived in New York and that place across the street from us, grand Sesh went international, started a.

Opening up those Chinese menus that used to go only to the Chinese people and they started giving them to white people too.

And one of the things they were very famous at this restaurant for was their sea cucumber, which is not a vegetable.

So it's not a salad.

It's a little slug like animal that lives in not

a little.

It's a big

slug lie

animal, basically.

And then you buy them dried, so they look like a bag of turds and you have to soak 'em and they clean them out.

Now you can go to an Asian fish market and get them fresh, and then they look like life turds.

But I've never had one.

And what I eat one at this point, sure, I'd probably eat one, but they're just called sea cucumbers.

So look 'em up there.

Uh, yeah.

And sea squirts.

There's less sea squirts in Korean cooking and in coastal Chinese cooking, I've never.

Scene, sea squirts on a menu?

Um, I probably would try it.

Uh, 'cause I don't, again, I'm not averse to most living things.

I, uh, I eat with relish the inner organs of Beast and Fells.

So Mark

and I once went out for Dim Sum in San Francisco.

And we ran across something we had never run across on a menu.

So it's not even something we hadn't tried.

We had never seen this item listed on a menu and it was called shutters.

And we Yeah, like, like

the shutters on your house.

Mm-hmm.

So we asked the woman what it was, and she didn't speak much English at all.

No.

And she just.

Put her fingers together to make this somewhat overly shape and put it at her midsection.

A little low bike below her belly button.

And she kept saying, shut her, shut her, shut her.

Well it turns out they didn't have any that day, so we didn't get to eat them.

Um, and we ended up getting, uh, some, I don't remember tripe.

I think we ended up with tripe 'cause she told us it was a similar texture.

And it turned out that, you know, shutters are the cow's part where the baby cow comes out.

I think we could say that word on this podcast.

It's cow

vagina.

It is shutters are vaginas.

And I didn't know that was an old, it's a butcher turn, a culinary term.

I didn't

know that.

And so I looked at the menu and I was like, ah, what our shutters.

And she held it up to her lower abdomen in her hands.

Like, what is that?

I don't know what it is that I'm supposed to be.

Your belly button.

So, uh, yeah, we didn't try that.

Uh, that was beyond us.

That would've been the

strangest thing.

Uh,

yeah.

And I'm sure that stuff has gotta be braised for like 5,000 years.

Oh, I would think

so.

You know, and this isn't a strange food, but you've overcome your aversion to cilantro.

I am not getting over my aversion.

To root beer and to licorice that is not, and they're related, strange.

And they know.

It's strange to me that anyone would eat them because they think they taste so terrible.

My God.

Love root

beer.

Oh, I love root beer and I love licorice.

I, oh my gosh.

And I love birch beer.

I love all of that stuff that sasper.

So in fact, one year I went and made a root beer syrup.

So I bought all of the.

Parts, the ginseng and the, uh, sapar root and all the various pieces that make upper root beer.

And I made a syrup and I, we gave that away as a Christmas gift to people.

So you poured a little glass and added, uh, seltzer to it.

And by the way, that recipe's in cold canning there, it's, it made it into cold canning.

Mm-hmm.

'cause it is something you can make and save back is root beer syrup.

It's

one of the most.

Delicious and I'm gonna, I want to end with my most delicious and unexpected thing was served for me dessert in Kahan.

Back when Mark and I were writing for Wine Spectator, we did an article on what it's like to be in Kahan without the film festival did.

So we were at LA Palm Door having dinner and.

I had eaten so much in that dinner.

We had such crazy things to eat and I was so full and I didn't want a heavy dessert.

May, may I just say this is back in the days when magazines had generous expense accounts.

Mm.

Someone else paid for that dinner at the front door.

Yes.

Generous expense accounts.

And

so, no.

The way they said, let me, let's, trust me, let me bring you something that's very special.

It's only of the moment, and they brought over.

What can only be called a cauldron of the tiniest, when I say tiny, these were f deis wild strawberries.

They were so tiny.

They were, uh, like a quarter inch.

They were at the, at the most, they were very tiny, and he spooned, and these are so precious and so expensive.

And he spooned out a spoonful onto my bowl, and then he set the cauldron down and told me to help myself.

And it was.

Outrageous.

It was the most unexpected, but yet one of the most delicious things I'd ever

had.

Uh, at that same restaurant, um, I had something that I found delicious and

that I never thought existed and that I had pheasant fo gras.

Mm-hmm.

So pheasants had been force fed mm-hmm.

Until their livers got giant and bloated and sick and fatty and delicious.

All that stuff, and delicious.

And then they had taken the pheasant fo gra these livers and, um, chopped them up and wrapped them in call fat.

Mm-hmm.

Which is the fat around the kidneys of a pig.

And they put it in C fat and then they serve that with the pheasant breast.

And it was, was in, that was an insane, it was pretty good set of organs going on that plate.

It was pretty good.

Yeah, it was really good.

Okay.

So those are some of the weirdest things we've ever eaten.

We would love to know.

Yeah.

The weirdest things that you've ever eaten.

Yeah, we do go to our Facebook group cooking with Bruce and Mark and you could share pictures if you have it or just stories of some of the weird things you've eaten.

'cause we wanna know what you're eating

here.

I'm cooking with Bruce and Mark.

Okay.

Up next, the last part of this podcast, as always, what's making us happy?

And food this week.

And I'm gonna start.

Okay, I get to go first.

Okay.

Uh, so it's that chicken stew.

Remember we talked about watch the salt content of chicken?

Mm-hmm.

So I made a huge chicken stew.

Bruce's mother was here with us for about two and a half weeks.

She's moved from the west coast back to the east coast and she was staying with us for about two and a half weeks before she gets settled.

And one night I made a giant pot of chicken stew.

It was so good.

Butternut squash, yellow beets.

Mm-hmm.

And something, there was a third root in there.

Mm-hmm.

Butternut squash, yellow beets, and.

I don't know what you put in there.

Did you put

celery react?

I think you put celery react.

Yes.

Celery React.

Celery root.

Celery.

It was good.

And I had just picked those yellow beets at a friend's garden and that was delicious.

And it was super, super comforting.

Fall food.

Yeah, something else from that friend's garden is what's making me happy this week.

And that is Italian prune plums because this friend has an orchard in her garden and I was just there this morning and I picked about 40.

Pounds of Italian P prune plums and I've been eating them and I am going to make jam.

You be so

regular, everything is gonna be so working like clock lot, my god.

Well anyway, yes indeed.

I love Italian Pune plums.

I think they're so great and it's hard to find them at the store where they're not too hard and sour.

So it's great to see them on the trees and actually get 'em that way.

Well, that's the podcast for this week.

We really appreciate your making us part of your podcast world.

Thanks for doing that, and thanks for being on this journey with us

and thanks for checking us out everywhere we live.

I already mentioned Facebook, but go to TikTok and check out our TikTok channel Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

There are a ton of videos there.

You get to see us cooking in our kitchen, cooking for each other, just having a lot of fun with food, which is what we love to do here on cooking at Briton Market.