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The crew checks in live from Rockefeller Center and quickly veers from Patreon housekeeping into Polymarket absurdities, restaurant closures, and the grim mechanics of auctioning off a closed kitchen. Jean details liquidating equipment (including a Rationale), while Dave unloads on bureaucracy, safety grounds left floating inside a brand-new Bosch oven, and the theoretical physics of jacking oven temps via PT1000 resistance sensors—plus reversible home steam-injection hacks that don’t involve drilling holes.

Quinn talks risotto-style oats and fresh milling, and Dave breaks down grain texture, grinder damage myths, and why oats are mushy compared to rice. Listener questions round things out with astringency in drinks beyond tannins (bitters, resins, aromatics), blood-sausage preferences across styles, and how phosphoric acid can anchor a cola-like, carbonated amaro build.

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Cooking Issues opens the new year with Dave and Joe in-studio, plus Nastassia and Jack in LA and Quinn on Vancouver Island. Dave recaps a rough holiday detour: adopting a young cat that immediately got seriously sick, turning New Year’s into emergency vet care and force-feeding. Jack reports from a cross-country drive to clear out storage, including a stop at Richmond’s Gwar Bar, inspiring instant talk of a future show takeover. Dave also offers Patreon listeners first dibs on hauling away a free six-burner Wolf commercial gas range from the Lower East Side.

The crew swaps holiday cooking notes (Quinn’s turkey biryani, a red wine pork stew), then veers into gear and technique: Dave experiments with Ray-Ban Meta glasses for POV kitchen content, discusses his new Bosch oven and stone/pizza setup logic, and takes a caller question on keeping orange oil in syrup—recommending gum arabic plus xanthan while explaining why “clear” emulsions are hard. Quick hits include a shout-out to Alba in LA, a party etiquette rant about grabbing a legend’s guitar, and Dave’s non-alcoholic bitterness hacks for diet soda (wormwood/gentian infusions).

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Kevin Jeung (Noma / Noma Projects) calls in from LA to talk about Noma’s upcoming Los Angeles pop-up and what it changes when you suddenly have citrus, avocados, and California seasonality on the table. Kevin walks through how the team is doing early-stage R&D—ingredient exploration, fermentation setup, and testing techniques for hard problems like cactus slime and variable produce.

Dave detours into Denmark: Christmas market roast pork sandwiches, crackling technique, and what cut the Danes actually use (loin vs belly vs skin-on neck). They also get into Noma Projects curiosities like peach tree sap (rehydrated for a tendon-like chew), plus a few practical bar/kitchen notes: a clarified spec for the Brandy Savage cranberry cordial build, and a quick take on stabilizing acidic whipped cream (gel/fluid-gel approach vs citric acid straight into dairy). Closing beat: Kevin’s Turkey method for the Noma team—compound butter under the skin, and mayo outside for browning/crisping.

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Tune in for an all-tangent episode that's all over the map.

Dave reports on a Copenhagen-inspired Danish pork sandwich project (crispy skin, red cabbage, remoulade, cucumber salad) plus pretzel-style brioche buns. Then it’s rapid-fire listener Q&A: Fernet ice cream without wrecking the freeze (boil off alcohol), why venison oxidizes when sliced, brining curve calculators, popping sorghum, and a quick hit of Dave’s vegan foamer ratios—before the crew closes out with a full-on rant about food mills.

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Dave is back with a packed studio and longtime friend of the show Nick Coleman — olive oil educator, sensory expert, and musician behind HGH — fresh off a trip to Greece teaching at the International Olive Oil Network. They go deep on how to detect defects in olive oil by smell alone, why fruité noir works when done intentionally, olive fly maggots, pruning for quality fruit, and why every producing country swears theirs is the best.

Noma scientist and author Ariel Johnson joins mid-show, jumping straight into flavor chemistry: why plum frozen yogurt tastes like strawberries, how to reverse-engineer hogo for non-alcoholic tiki drinks, sulfur compounds in durian, chlorophyll behavior in green herb oils, and more. Saffron custard gelato, carotenoids, pressure-cooking aromatics, British potatoes — nothing is safe.

The crew also spirals into glorious tangents:

• DIY Danish pork roast & the perfect crackling sandwich

• Street food logic — what should be eaten on the move

• The underrated beauty (and stink) of ginkgo trees

• Why wrapping potatoes in foil ruins them

• Delivery fries, baguette sandwiches, and sidewalk etiquette rage

• VR garbage, museum exhibits, waiting for Godot w/ Keanu & Alex Winter

Plus olive oil tasting in-studio, Patreon callers, and a preview of upcoming episodes — including Kevin from Noma returning soon.

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For this Thanksgiving “Classics in the Field” episode, Dave is back in studio at Rockefeller Center with Kitchen Arts & Letters’ own Matt Sartwell for a long, nerdy tour through cookbooks, regional food, and holiday obsessions. John’s on mic, Joe’s on the panels, and the show kicks off with cranberry-sauce loyalties, paper-bag chicken nostalgia, and why Dave will never forgive you if he walks into your house on Thanksgiving and it doesn’t smell like turkey.

Matt announces Kitchen Arts & Letters’ new kids’ cookbook club—built around Peter Kim’s Instant Ramen Kitchen and led by Annette Tome and Pam Abrams—then dives into listener questions: the single gin book he’d take to a desert island; what to give a Spanish-cuisine nerd who actually wants context; how to hunt down Japanese parfait inspiration; and which books really capture Cape Cod and New England cooking.

From there, it’s deep cuts: Provincetown seafood and Pops Masch’s Cooking the Catch, John Thorne’s Simple Cookingand his legendary toast essay, William Woys Weaver’s Christmas desserts and class-conscious holiday history, and the under-the-radar Aria regional cookbook series. Along the way Dave rants about lavender in gin, cold fried chicken with shredded cabbage, why you should cut the back out of your turkey, and why smaller birds (and a second turkey for sandwiches) are non-negotiable.

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