The visuals of food prep and cooking can be kind of a mystery, so this week Christine and JJ are donning their jaunty chef's hats and stepping into the kitchen to demystify fancy flambéing, precarious pizza tossing, and curious candy making. Bon appetite!
The visuals of food prep and cooking can be kind of a mystery, so this week Christine and JJ are donning their jaunty chef's hats and stepping into the kitchen to demystify fancy flambéing, precarious pizza tossing, and curious candy making. Bon appetite!
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.
Christine Malec:Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt:And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me, where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashed out in description rich conversations.
Christine Malec:In the not too distant episode, we talked about some professions that are completely visual whose work is visual. And one of the things we talked about, which for me was under the category of the things I don't know, that I don't know, was baristas. And what happens in a Frou Frou coffee shop when they make a coffee. That was totally new information to me, I had no idea how artistic it was. And it got us thinking about cooking in general. And I guess this is a no brainer for a lot of people. But people love to watch other people cook. It's pretty mysterious to me, I despise going to a restaurant with an open kitchen, I figured that's what I'm paying for is so that I don't need to be near the food prep. But you know, some people really like it. It's a it's a cultural phenomenon. And clearly that there's more going on there than I personally realized. And so we thought we'd talk about some of the flashy visuals of what people do around cooking and food prep and particularly in in the media and the flashy, er side of things. So, JJ, maybe this is a topic that's a bit close to your heart, are we going to start with pizza because even the throwing of the pizza dough, like that's kind of a cultural cliche at this point, but I'm still a bit vague, I don't really get it.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, the pizza making is, it is a very visual thing, especially when there's there's a bit of that flash involved a little bit of the tossing of the dough. You know, just last weekend I was at a bar in Toronto that's got a pizza joint inside so there's like a there's a separate establishment inside the bar where they're making a wood oven pizza Brooklyn pizza, and and I was seated in a place where I was watching the person work the dough all night, it was one person working the dough station. So over and over and over again, not to see them roll out the dough, make it the dough, stretch the dough flipping in the air, pass it to the next person. And it was kind of hard for me to follow the conversation because into washing this dough, this dough queen, it was awesome. She was so good. Yeah, and there's like lots of different ways to work the dough. And of course, the kinds of pizza we're going to be describing today are more of the, you know, the handmade, you know, wood oven pizza, get the higher end stuff. If you go to you know, a Pizza Hut or pizza pizza or whatever, $1 Pizza in New York dollar, a slicer, that's a different kind of thing that's going to be a little bit more corporate a little bit quicker. This is more handmade kind of thing that we're going to be talking about. So you start with the dough. In you know, the dough has been made in ahead of time, it's been resting for a while. So it's just an it's a ball of dough. And so a pizza maker in a pizza shop like this is going to take a scraper, scrape that dough out of the bin, so it comes cleanly, and then and then they'll put it onto a counter and doesn't have to be a very big counter surface for a pizza maker to you know, might only be a foot or two deep even though the pizza you're making will ultimately be you know, 18 inches across. You don't need a huge counter space, lots of flour on the counter tons in a proper pizza shop. And then the first thing you do is you take that ball of dough, smack it on that prep surface and and press it flat and you press it into the dough to kind of flatten it out and spread it and you're doing this from the middle of the dough and leaving a little bit of a rim on the outside. So you're pressing and pressing and pressing and there are the dough is kind of has got a bit of sponginess to it. So you're actually at this point, you can see the fingerprints in the in the dough. You can see the impressions of the fingers in there. And after you've done that for a little while and it's spread out into a bit of a bigger circle. Now it's big enough for the palms to fit inside. And there's a bit of a technique here where you press both palms in and twist and stretch at the same time. So just a little bit, press twist, stretch, press twist stretch, and the dough is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Again, there's a there's still a rim around the outside like where the crust will eventually be. But you're pressing in with both palms twisting and stretching. Then when it gets too big it comes off of The Table, the counter the board, whatever you're working on. And then here's where there are different styles of working the dough. Because again, that the whole idea is to get a ball of dough, flat and thin and how you do it, it is up to you. So some folks take it, there's like a slap technique where you pull it off of the table, rotated in your hands, and then slap it back down, and then rotate it lifted off of the table and slap it back down. And the gravity and the slapping action makes the dough spread thinner and thinner and thinner, wider and wider and wider. And that rotating means that you're going to, it's going to spread evenly it there's actually a very similar technique for like Malaysian roti, which is uses a greased board not a flowered board. But this slapping of the dough over and over as you rotate, lift and slap it against the board means that it gets super, super, super thin. And this is this is a similar technique with pizza dough. Some people work with the dough completely off of the board completely in the air. So I've seen a technique that is like hands in front of the chest. So two hands in front of the chest, palms facing each other, and then kind of moving in independent circles away from you, and then back towards you away from you, and then back towards you your two hands, kind of you know, making similar circles but but not not fully synchronized. And then, like imagine making that action but there's a floppy disk of dough between your hands vertically. And so the hands are kind of tipping from side to side, as they make those circles. It's a very smooth gesture. And again, what that's doing is it's rotating the dough, and you're slapping it from one hand to the other and so it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I've also seen a technique that's kind of like a vertical steering wheel. So you hold the dough kind of by this cross this rim around the outside and let the dough sag under its own weight. And then you rotate it very quickly before it stretches too far and rip. And you kind of do that kind of over and over and over again. And then there's the classic the the flat disc of dough held in the air by fists. And you usually use knuckles because fingertips poke through. So you'll use knuckles or very flat palms with the fingers pressed together. And you're lifting the dough in the air as if it's you know, it's flat, but it's soggy. So it's kind of hanging over the sides, you kind of stretch and spin and then kind of just give it a little toss in the air. So you can then move your hands, put them in a different spot, stretch and spin. And this is where the toss comes from. It's that original kind of just a little bit of a toss in the air so that you can move your positioning of your hands as over and over and over again. And then the big tosses, where you do the same kind of thing either two knuckles like knuckles on both hands or knuckles in one and upon the other. And you hurl the pizza, like just the dough straight into the air is spins and spins and spins and then you catch it with your knuckles and the back of your hands and your wrists. And the stretching of the dough is happening as the pizza is spinning in the air. And then the landing on the on the wrists and hands the back of the hands. That's how the dough gets spread as it goes bigger and bigger and bigger. And so you take a ball of dough that was like you know the size of a softball. And now you've got a very thin pizza dough that is you know, almost two feet across. It really stretched out thin.
Christine Malec:I'm a big fan of Indira which is Ethiopian, this delicious, spongy, soft unleavened bread. And when you get it in an Ethiopian restaurant, it's enormous. It's a blanket size of of bread. Do you know how that's done?
JJ Hunt:I don't I've had it and enjoyed it. In fact, I think you and I have had it together. But I've never seen it made I think it's I think it is a liquid batter that's poured in a spiral shape. Like it's poured in a spiral pattern from the outside to the inside on a flat griddle. And and then cooked on one side but not the other. I think that's how it's done. But that's based mostly on the patterning that I've seen in the cooked thing.
Christine Malec:Oh my gosh, I had no idea!
JJ Hunt:I don't know for sure how it's made.
Christine Malec:It's enormous.
JJ Hunt:It's huge.
Christine Malec:Yeah, when you order is sometimes, if you get it to go for example, it's folded up like a quilt. Yeah, exactly. Yeah yeah. It's, it's huge. I have a friend who in his, you know, middle age, he decided to take up cooking and he didn't really know where to start. And he said, I'm gonna start with cooking in a walk. And I said, Oh, that's interesting. Why? He said, it just looks cool. Oops, it looks really manly, you know, it's really fast and aggressive and it's really hot, like the temperature is really hot and you're moving quickly and it just looks like a manly where to place to start. And so it just kind of went. Alright. And so maybe Can we talk a bit about wok cooking like the Chinese kind of walk Asian walk, cooking and what that looks like.
JJ Hunt:Ya, it is I mean, it's pretty dramatic. You know, when you're cooking with a walk at home, your stove is, if you put it on its highest gas setting, it's gonna get reasonably hot. And you can still you know, the big round walk with the specialty tools. It's fun to cook with. But yeah, I can, I can see why your friend would be like watching restaurant. chefs cook in a walk or street food being cooked in a walk, that's when it gets really dramatic. So those walks are huge. So at home, you might have a walk that is eight to 16 inches across right eight to 16 inches in diameter, like like a Captain America shield shape, but a little bit deeper. So maybe 16 inches across, maybe five inches deep. But a street vendor is going to have a walk that might be two or three feet across or bigger. And they might be six or eight to 12 Like really huge walks. And these are seasoned heavy duty steel. So they usually look quite blackened on the bottom and quite glossy on the inside. Look, they always look just a little bit greasy. That's that's their kind of nonstick. You know, surfaces that seasoned steel, generally rounded on the bottom. The ones at home, they'll have one long pan handle. But the really big ones they have too small handles on the side which are more like you know, the handles on a dresser drawer or something like that. So you can pick these walks up with two hands and carry them you couldn't possibly do it with one handle. And then you got Yeah, the different tools to use the walk. There's the walk spatula, again, steel, it's usually got a wide shovel like head with a slightly rounded front end so that it fits the contours of the walk. People also use big ladles, they're very common tool that you know, and there's a very, there's a lot of fast action when cooking with a walk because it's all about cooking with extreme heat. So the walks in you know, street restaurants or in commercial kitchens, they're sitting on, like jet engines of fire. I mean, just, if you've ever like been in front of one of these things you'll hear the sound is like this, like when do you roaring sound, that's the sound of a big gas flow. And so the flames shoot up the sides in the back of the walk truly like jet engines. It's no exaggeration, big, powerful roaring gas flames. And so you have to keep the food in the walk moving very, very quickly by shaking the walk back and forth by doing live with the walk by moving your your spatula or your ladle excuse constantly stirring the walks. Yeah, it's really really fast. Really, really high energy. Big, amazing hot flames that are like not just licking the sides of the walk, shooting out the sides from underneath. Truly.
Christine Malec:You've mentioned street food a couple of times, and I know you've traveled a lot. Can you can you tell us some description stories about some of the most spectacular street cooking instances you've seen?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, I mean, I eat at street stalls whenever I travel. If there's a street stall and there's a lineup I'm far more confident in the kitchen and the food than if you go into a restaurant, you don't know what's going on, you know, in the kitchen. I love street food. And so when we were just before going traveling to Southeast Asia with with the family in the in the weeks leading up to it, we're getting kind of excited, and we'd been watching some TV shows and on street food on cooking on food in different countries. And we saw this amazing chef named Jay phi, who is this tiny woman in her 70s Who's a was a street food chef in Bangkok, who then opened a little restaurant that's just a like a stall kind of restaurant, a hole in the wall. And she was the first street food chef ever to receive a Michelin star like it just like the highest standard of cooking from the street food chef. And so we loved watching this woman cook it was awesome. And then a couple weeks later, we get to Bangkok and we discover totally by coincidence that our hotel was right beside her restaurant.
Christine Malec:Whaaaat?!
JJ Hunt:Yeah, it was awesome. We're like "I think that's her!" And so you could go
Christine Malec:Oh my god. early in the morning and throughout the day and watch her cook and she's amazing, tiny woman in her 70s And she wears a black apron layers of gloves, a black tooth and ski goggles, because she's cooking in a row of blackened stone steel. And terracotta stands with these intense burners inside of them. And she's got a series of walks. And it's the the heat is so hot on her. She's got these goggles on, and she's got fans pointing at her, because the flames roar on the outside of her walks. And she makes crab omelets and dry tom yum. And there's always a crowd around her. And in the people, the crowd has to stand back, not just because she's a star and needs her space. But because of the heat. It's incredibly hot, near these walks. So j phi is doing her thing and Instagram are so they're taking pictures. It was awesome. Just fantastic. Videos are super popular cooking shows and tick tock and YouTube. And honestly, I get kind of grumpy because when I want a recipe, I don't want the person's life history or their flipping technique. I want the recipe. And so to me, they're a bit of a thorn in my side, but I know they're really popular. So what makes a popular cooking video? What's the draw?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, so this it's really changed. I mean, there's a lot of this stuff like what you're talking about this the, you know, the neverending story about how grandma used to do it...
Christine Malec:Ha ha ha! When I was three years old, I had my first taste of coconut. I don't care give me the recipe!
JJ Hunt:How many cups! Just tell me how many cups!
Christine Malec:Just tell me.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, that's a pretty kind of bloggie phenomenon. Like a lot of the bloggers do that. And some of the video makers do that as well, where they just talk and talk and talk. But then there's the other extreme as well, where things have gotten really condensed, like when I was a kid, when we were kids and watching cooking shows when you're home sick from school, you would like I quite liked those. But they would do add dish over the course of a half an hour like literally a single here's how you make this one pasta dish and they would take 22 minutes to make the whole dish.
Christine Malec:Yeah! Oh, that's not how it's done anymore? That's not the way they do it these days? Ha ha ha!
JJ Hunt:On tick tock, you'll get dishes, you'll get whole meals that are presented in tick tock videos in 15 seconds. It's really super, super, super fast. So you'll get like a tick talker might take just clips like one second even half second clips of very visually rich or beautiful moments in the cooking process. Put it all together and maybe narrate it, maybe not narrate it, maybe just have On screen text give little bits of instruction, maybe they'll just pop in with jokes or with funny voices or whatever it is. And honestly you can get a whole recipe in a tick tock video. In 15 seconds. It's wild. I watched one because I'm not on tick tock. I did go on watch some compilation videos on YouTube about this. And there's one tick talker in this one video. So he did lasagna, he made lasagna and presented the video in 40 seconds. And this was homemade lasagna, homemade sauce, homemade pasta, everything and filmed each step and and then put only a tiny little 1/3 of a second clip. So I counted I slowed it down and then counted the number. In 40 seconds. This guy used 97 different shots. Everything chopping can opening stirring, sizzling. And what he did was he used not only the the visual of all of those things, but a little tiny second of the audio as well. And they timed it so that the chopping can opening stirring, sizzling, created a rhythm created a soundtrack so that it was really cool. So it had that beat for chopping and stirring and then it would have moments where he would like let the sizzling go on for like a really long, one and a half seconds and then go back to like Chop Chop, chop, chop, chop. Oh my god perfectly timed. And then 40 seconds later, you see buddy eating his gorgeous looking lasagna made entirely from scratch.
Christine Malec:In videos that are popular origin cooking shows what constitutes skill, what not just the flashy, you know, he made his pizza dough spin 15 times without touching it. But what constitutes genuine, holy, that's an accomplished chef.
JJ Hunt:That's interesting. So there are a few things that like home chefs do too. I don't know if it's if it really makes them skilled or accomplished but it's an indicates a way to show people that not only are you cooking efficiently, but like you know what you're doing. One is good knife skills, if you've got solid knife skills that just gives the impression that you know what you're doing. And so maybe it's about cutting an onion by using just the tip of the knife in one direction, and then turning the onion and using the whole knife in a rocking action so that you are dicing, without, you know, cutting individual little pieces of onion, maybe it's something like that, or it's holding whatever you're cutting with your knuckles, so that you can rock your knife very, very quickly, very close to the knuckles, and you're not worried about chopping off a fingertip. So there's some knife work that can really look impressive. And like I said, give the impression you know what you're doing. The other thing is the toss. If you've got like a saucepan, or a walk or any kind of cooking vessel that is relatively shallow and has curved sides, so not a straight sided pot, one of the best ways and it is genuinely a good way to mix is by tossing what's in the pan. And it's a very specific technique. So you essentially you're holding the pan by the handle, and you tip it away from you, so that the food slides away from you. But then before it slides out of the pan, you flick your wrist back, so that the opposite side of the pan that the far end of the pan flips the food back toward you. And then you catch it in the pan on the side that's closest to your hand. And so I'm not trying to sit home just very quick. It's actually once you get the hang of it. Yeah, pretty easy. It's just all it's about that muscle memory, you have to know how much flick to get and you can toss anything from like noodles from spaghetti to you can you can fold an omelet like that just by flicking it halfway so that the omelet starts to slide out and then slides back on itself. If you've got good pan flicking skills, again, it just, it makes it look like like you know, I've seen some cooks who like practice that but you know, don't know how to boil water, just so it looks like they know what they're doing. Yeah, it's effective.
Christine Malec:Can we run through a flambé? It's I don't know if this qualifies as flambé. But my very favorite thing in this category is Saganaki. So when you're in a Greek restaurant, and they bring out the slab of cheese, and then something happens with I guess it's alcohol on a blowtorch or whatever, but what's going on there and how does the cheese not get burnt to a cinder?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, good question. So I mean, the flambé I think was one of those things that was done a lot in formal French service for a while, so you'd go to a restaurant and they would do table sides, food prep, or table side plating, things like that. And then in lots of different cultures, you've got the in Greek restaurants you have shots that are on fire, you have the like the flaming cheese, and there's different ways to do it. But often again, it's it's a saucepan something kind of shallow, with a slightly rounded side not straight sided pan. And then usually there's a gas burner involved and you know, you're making your food your chop, you chop up your your fruit and you throw it in the pan, a little bit of sugar, a little bit of water, whatever it is to kind of start to make some kind of candying or some some kind of syrup. And then you throw in a shot of alcohol. Usually a like wine and beer doesn't work you need something with more alcohol so you use like a rum or a brandy, a liquor of some kind. And, again, that same tipping action that you that you were that you used before in the flipping, you tip away from you so that the liquid that's in the pan kind of goes toward the far edge and you hold that over your burner so that the flames that are licking up the side of the of the saucepan, just touch the the alcohol in the pan so you can do blow torchy kind of things like to make a creme caramelle you get a little tiny blowtorch and you blow towards the top. But I think for most flambés, if you have a gas burner portable or in the kitchen or whatever you tip it, the flame from the burner goes up the side of the pan, and then the whole pan everything in the pan catches fire. But it's not it's it's not like a campfire. It's not like one of the wok cooking jets like it's not this huge thick. You know, really dense flame. It's very light. It's almost transparent. It's a very, very much translucent flame, a little bit of blue in there, a little bit of orange in there, it can go quite high, like the flames might be two feet high. But unless the lights are dimmed, it's not super visible. In fact, I've seen people burn themselves because it's like, you know, it goes on for a little while and then all of the alcohol burns off and you're just left with The whatever liquid in syrup that is in the pan, but as it's burning down, it's getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and it looks like it's gone. Visually, if it's not so dark, you can't see the flame anymore. But if you put your hand over it, you'll discover there's still some flame left in there. So some people will automatically or just, you know, by safety force of habit, they will tamp it down, they'll put a lid on it for a second or two, just to make sure the flame is completely out, and then take the lid off to to continue cooking. So that's how a lot of that happens. And the reason that things don't burn is because the out it's the alcohol that's burning, and it's burning very quickly. It doesn't last. Okay, so again, if it was the same, if it was the same amount of time that a piece of cheese was in a campfire, by by cheese. That's right, that's right. It's the alcohol that's burning super quickly. And you know, it's just evaporating it all off very, very fast burning it off fast.
Christine Malec:Let's talk about a subject close to my heart, which is candy. And honestly, I don't even have questions, you could just talk about anything I'm interested
JJ Hunt:in. Yeah, my youngest is very much a candy, a candy lover, too. In our household. I'm the cook. My wife, Lois is the baker and our youngest is up for both. But candy and baking is his passion. And so he got obsessed with watching candy, making videos. And then making hard candy. This was a thing that he really got into. And you can see why the visually the candy making is quite stunning hard candies in particular, there's they fall into this category of the of the satisfying video, there's something about the texture of candy as it's being made, the consistency and the repetition, you need to be doing things with with with this molten candy over and over and over again, in order to achieve certain colors and consistencies. And the you know, yeah, it's really interesting. So at its simplest, you boil sugar and water and stir it, stir it, stir it, stir it until it's smooth and silky, the consistency eventually gets to the point where like the consistency of warm honey. And then you pour that onto a flat probably stainless steel surface. Like a big stainless steel table, if you're a professional, you're using a cooling table. So it's a big stainless steel table, but it's cooled from below. So that helps you know cool your can your molten candy much more quickly. So very quickly, when you pour this kind of warm honey consistency. You know the substance is molten candy onto this table or take it off the heat or if the table is cooled, it becomes stiffer. And it gets it is like playing when you watch people you they're folding it over onto itself. And you know picking it up and putting it back on the table so that new parts of the of this you know Visca see blob get cooled. And to the right temperature. It is a little bit like watching people play with lava. It's molten, and it's kind of somewhere between a solid and a liquid. So it gets folded over and over it gets eventually cooled down. And then it will it will get to a consistency that the candy maker needs to build with. So it'll be a blob that will have you know finite edges, it doesn't pour like water on the table. But if you pick up a clump, it will ooze out of your hand drop back onto the blob and become one again like it's very, it's in Cy it's like a little bit soothing to watch. So then the next thing that they need to do is pour in some coloring or flavoring which they'll do kind of early on in this folding process so that you can turn the you know sugar and water into a certain flavor peppermint or coloring Enzo goes red or green or whatever. But you can also change the color by by air rating it so there are these things called candy hooks and they look like like a Meat Hook and a meat locker. Big iron hooks hanging off the wall a little bit over head height. And so what a candy maker will do is take this this cooled molten candy so it can be picked up because it's cooled enough it's not just like you know not watery, and then they throw this strip of molten candy over the hook and then it sags over the side because of the weights and you bundle it back up and you fold it over the hook again. And then it sags. And you fold it over the hook again, and it sags. And you do this over and over and over like maybe 75 times over and over. And what you're doing is as it's stretching, and, and then folding it back over itself, and then stretching and folding it back over itself. Tiny little air bubbles are getting into the candy and changing its color. So it will make the candy which might have been kind of like a crystally golden color when it was just sugar and water, maybe it becomes clean and white, but opaque. That's really interesting to watch this process. And you can change you can change how glossy it is you can change how dull it is you can change the color by doing this. There are also machines that do a version of this that especially they're used for taffy, I think you can use it for either candy or taffy. But the Taffy pulling machine is awesome. It's it's a machine that automates this concept automates this polling unfolding over and over and over again. And the way it does it with is with four bars that move around each other so that when you put the Moulton candy across it, it automatically folds and stretches folds and stretches. So this isn't exactly accurate. But it's kind of close. If you make a like a peace sign with your index and middle finger on both hands. So you got two V's index and middle finger both hands, and then put them flat in front of you pointing at each other. And then interlace your fingers without touching. So you've got index finger on one hand, index finger on the other middle finger on one hand, middle finger on the other, and then make tiny circles away from you and back toward you so that your fingertips are circling each other, but they're never quite touching. That's not dissimilar. It's not exactly right. But it's not dissimilar to the way these machines work. So then if you can imagine if you've got molten candy draped over four bars, like your fingers, as they rotate around each other, the molten candy or the Taffy will get pulled and stretched and folded over itself over and over and over again. It's totally mesmerizing, it's really soothing to watch because it's it's repetitive. But each fold and stretch is unique. Right? Every time it happens, it's a little bit thicker, a little bit thinner, that color is slowly changing. The silky smooth texture is really creamy and appetizing. It's super calming, it's really calming. And then the candy maker takes whatever molten candy has been stretched and pulled and it's got to the right color. It's the right consistency, it's glossy exactly the way they want it, they take it back to the table. And then they start layering with different colors to create different patterns. So the patterns at first look really, really blocky and crude. But the candy makers know that they're going to further roll and stretch and twist that candy so that the blocky patterns that they built in at the beginning will eventually become very delicate. So like let's take the simplest like a candy cane. So the candy maker takes to the table, a block of white and a block of red. And they create a pattern of stripes. You know, two inch by two inch stripes, maybe a foot long, one after the other, maybe some are a little bit thinner. Some are a little bit wider, but you know basically creating a striped sheet two inches thick of red and white pattern. And then they take a thick roll of white candy that's like really like the diameter of your bicep, like a big big lump of of white candy. And they put that into the middle of this sheet of striped red and white. And then they roll that into a tube so that you've got the white in the middle, the striped red and white are on the outside. And then they roll that back and forth back and forth. Kind of like did you ever like make snakes with playdough or plasticine as a kid where you just roll it in your hand and until it gets longer and thinner, longer and thinner. Yes, that's what they do with this is just back and forth, back and forth. And as that tube gets thinner and longer, they then stretch it out thinner and thinner and thinner until that big big lump is now as thick as your finger. It's really thin. And then those stripes of course they're super thin too but they're still very distinct. They're clean and distinct. They the colors haven't melted. They're still a very distinct and then they can take that they'll chop it into second shins, so you've got like, it's now as you know, thick as your finger, you chop it into what, six or eight inch section. And then they roll them in a very particular way to get a spin to get a spiral. So you know, you roll a little bit, instead of just going back and forth with parallel, they'll roll it so that one hand goes ahead the other, the other one pulls back a little bit, whatever, there's a very special technique to twist. And so now all of those parallel lines have twisted into that spirally candy cane pattern, you bend to hook shape into the top, you'll let it cool. And now you've got a candy cane. And they can do that with all kinds of things. So that's the simplest version, they can do the exact same thing, but layer in different colors. Listo as they're building this like lump that they know they're going to roll out they can layer in different colors. And then when they're rolling it and stretching it what becomes apparent is all of those colors and patterns that they've layered on inside become pictures on the end so they know when you cut off the tips of this long, you know to cut it off. On the end, you might have a picture of you know, a pattern like a bow or a hat or maybe a character's face. little panda faces cartoon characters. Yeah, these little tiny, tiny, tiny hard candies and one of these big lumps will make hundreds hundreds 1000s of these tiny little, you know, like half third of a pinky sized candies in the end, all with little designs inside.
Christine Malec:That's so cute! We love making this podcast. If you love hearing it, perhaps you'll consider supporting its creation and development by becoming a patron. We've set up a Patreon page to help cover the costs of putting the show together. You can contribute as a listener or as a sponsor to help ensure that accessible and entertaining journalism continues to reach our community. Visit patreon.com/talk Description To me that's pa t ar e o n.com/talk description to me have feedback or suggestions of what you'd like to hear about here's how to get in touch with us. Our email address is talk description to me@gmail.com. Our Facebook page is called Talk description to me. Our website is talk description to me.com and you can follow us on Twitter at talk Description.