On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the contestant is chef and New York Times food columnist J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, whose first book The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science made the New York Times bestseller list and won the 2016 James Beard Award for best General Cooking cookbook. His conversation with guest host Tom Papa isn’t as substantive as one might like, but it’s fun and very personable. This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts just before the 21:15 mark.
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'Tis the season -- for watermelon, that is. And because I love watermelon, we're going to have an extravaganza of three videos on cutting the suckers. I posted this originally in 2023, so it's time to bring it back. (None of these are exactly the way I cut them, since I tend to buy the smaller, round, seedless "personal" watermelons. But the last two videos are pretty close.) First though, we'll start with one of the those "50 People Try to..." videos from Epicurious.com. Not shockingly, what these people are flailingly trying to do is cut a watermelon. The fun of the video aside, this is the best instruction at the end for how to cut a watermelon in wedges. This next video is short, only about a minute, and comes from The Racheal Ray Show. It's close to how I've been cutting my watermelons, though with a couple of slight differences. The first is that they're using a bigger watermelon that I use, but it's still basically round, like mine. The other is that her Senior Culinary Producer is showing how to cut spears, and I like cubes. So, I just easily slice the rinds off the ends and then easily cut the spears in to cubes. Finally, this third video is a new way I've learned, and definitely weird on the surface, but I've been trying lately with reasonable success. I'm not sure if it's faster or better than my "lattice" version above, but it may be, and it's fun. It comes from Alton Brown. This is for a regular watermelon, but works just as well with one of my round fellows. And it uses...a cheese slicer! (Hey, I told you it was weird.) However, after the video, I have an update about this from when I first wrote about it And then I turn each wheel into cubes by making cross-lattice cuts. I haven't mastered a smooth move with the cheese slicer, but I'm getting better. And if I leave too much watermelon on the rind -- that's fine, I just snack on it while continuing with the cutting. My update is that, although I like this method because it's sort of fun (and works), my skillset isn't at the level of Alton Brown, and I haven't yet mastered the ability to get nice, smooth edges. And what I discovered as a workaround is that I could still use this basic method but instead just use a basic paring knife. It's perhaps a touch slower (and not as fun), but worked really well. That said, if you want to try the last method and use a cheese slicer, but don't have one, this is the model I got here from Amazon. It's currently being sold for $10, which is 55% off its regular price -- and even down $2 from what I wrote about this last time. It has 4.3 stars out of 5, and I like it because the screws on the side make it easy to remove the guide bar (which is necessary to take off, in order to use for slicing off the watermelon rinds.) This is an interview that Variety podcaster Michael Schneider did with Seth Meyers back in April, though it only got posted last week. It comes on the heels of Meyers' show celebrating its 10th anniversary and getting renewed by NBC for four more years. At first, Schneider thought he'd do the interview in the spirit of Meyers' "Day Drinking" segment, but opting instead for a "Day Eating" gambit instead instead. And honestly, interesting and fun as the 45-minute conversation is, that's one of the two reasons I'm posting this. That first reason is the host invited in Dan Michaels and Tod Hiller, boyhood friends and the owners of the Los Angeles branch of Gino's East, a very popular, small Chicago pizza chain. A place I love and eat at (or take out) often. The other reason is that five of the six people involved with this are all graduates of the beloved Northwestern University -- Meyers, podcast host Schneider, co-owner Michaels, and the two (unseen) young staffers running the camera and audio. Somehow, Hiller slipped through the cracks. The cover a range of fun topics (including on his background in Chicago), sample a lot of pizza and other menu items, and Meyers gives his Top Ten Pizza List of anything related to pizza. One clarification. At one point, the hosts as Dan Michaels how he ended up bring Gino's East to Los Angeles. And he gives his answer about "we" while looking at Seth Meyers, who nods in agreement. So, it looks like the "we" involved are those two. It's not, it's the off-camera Tod Hiller (who is generally off-camera for most of the interview.) It's another "Naked Call-In" extravaganza as hosts Phil Rosenthal and David Wild answer listener questions and, as they say, “give the deep, thought provoking kind of answers you're looking for! Or maybe it's a little less serious and they discuss things like Steely Dan, the laws of attraction and positive people's effects on the world, Phil's upcoming tour (with a very exciting stop in Chicago), and the good and bad architecture of big cities.”
And for the record, no, I did not write that editorial comment about a "very exciting stop in Chicago"!! That was actually written in the show's description! So there. From Milwaukee, on this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is Kristen Kish, who won the 10th season of Top Chef – and was so popular that a couple years later, when one of the hosts left, the show just brought her back as the replacement. And the season was filmed in – Milwaukee. Her conversation with host Peter Sagal is all about the show, and it’s lively and fun.
This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts around the 18:45 mark. Because HBO changed their posting schedule for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, I forget that it now goes online on Thursdays, so I forgot to post it then. I'll do my best to get back on schedule, but for now here's the Main Story from last week. And it's excellent. It's something I've long been aware of, but not the depth of the problem. I only thought it was a sort of usury-type issue with food delivery services like GrubHub and Postmates, but it is far more pervasive and deceptive. The report tells it well with get detail and a lot of humor. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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