Hey everyone, it's Dan here.
And since the very, very early days of The Sporkful right up until today, the show's changed and evolved a lot.
But one thing that has been consistent is that every so often we open up the phone lines and take your calls.
Maybe it's sort of like a throwback, because I grew up listening to radio like sports talk radio or news talk radio.
And I love a good call in segment.
So I love taking calls.
We've been doing it, like I said, for a very long time.
And these episodes never get old because, like a lot of these debates, are evergreen, classic debates and things that we need to resolve, whether it's relationships or food feuds or whatever it may be.
So today we're going to reheat not one but two classic episodes where I take your calls.
In the first half of this reheat you're going to hear two friends who are not just debating, they are formally competing over the best way to make enchiladas.
Then in the second half we'll have another episode.
We're reheating, all about cheese-related call-in questions.
This features another pair of food-obsessed pals who've been arguing literally for years about whether mozzarella or cheddar would make for a better desert island meal cheese.
We tackle the big questions here on The Sporkful, I think is what I'm driving at.
So you're going to love these two call-in shows.
And remember, if there's an episode you want us to reheat, let me know.
We take requests.
Drop me a line at hello at sporkful.com.
Thanks so much and enjoy.
WNYC, this is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman.
I'm taking your calls today.
Let's get to the phones.
Hi, who's this?
Hi, Dan.
It's Jane from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
I'm calling because we have quite the debate in our friend group.
I am a native Texan, and I have always eaten my enchiladas in the rolled format.
However, my friend Ricky is is all about the flat enchiladas.
She swears by them, and she's a native New Mexican.
So we're wondering if you'd be able to kind of settle this debate.
Ricky, are you on the line too?
Yes.
Okay, so we have Jane and Ricky, and Jane says enchiladas should be rolled and Ricky, you make them flat, almost more like a lasagna.
Is that right?
Sure, yeah.
So first of all, I have to admit, I am not... an expert on the regional variations of enchiladas.
So like, Ricky, you're from New Mexico, is that the way everyone does it in New Mexico?
You get rolled and flat in New Mexico.
So it's not like you're the only person who does this?
Not even close.
But as a native Texan, I have never seen a flat enchilada.
And tell me about the first time that you guys realized you had this different approach to enchiladas.
One night, Ricky brought over some hatch chilies from New Mexico.
And my roommate and I were talking about how we were going to make some enchiladas the next day with these hatch chilies.
And so we said, oh, yeah, we're going to make some nice enchiladas and roll them up.
And then Ricky was like, No way.
You've got to make them flat.
And you guys are there, you're in Chapel Hill, you're at UNC grad school?
Yes, we're both in grad school.
What are you getting your degrees in?
I'm getting mine in neurobiology.
And I'm getting mine in epidemiology.
Okay, so rolled enchilada Jane is neurobiology?
Yes.
So Jane, at the moment that you first heard Ricky describe flat enchiladas, what happened in your brain?
Anger.
Well, I should say that I also study chronic pain disorders.
So I started, those neural pathways that are associated with pain started lighting up, because I just can't imagine eating any enchilada anyway, except eating it rolled.
So it hurt you.
It actually hurt you.
Yeah, it physically and mentally just, it hurt me.
And Ricky, you're studying to be an epidemiologist.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sort of means that you like trace the paths that different diseases can take.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's actually a pretty good take on it.
You're sort of like a disease detective.
So put on your detective hat, look at this, you know.
Look at this situation and tell me what.
What do you think is this?
What do you think is going on here?
Well, I think she's just ignorant to the fact that flat is better.
And so she.
So I think um, you know, not having tried it before is definitely a huge factor that plays into this game.
And Jane, what can your neurobiological expertise teach me about the degree to which our brains are open to new ideas or new experiences as we age?
You know, the mind is a plastic, it's a plastic thing.
So you're able to experience new things and learn new things.
But, of course, as you get older, those neural pathways that are open for learning become they become less and less prominent in the brain.
And so perhaps that is why, as a granted, I am only 26, but as a 26 year old, I am less likely to learn to like flat enchiladas than say, if I were only a teenager or a young child.
That was more impressionable.
All right.
So, so we have a lot of ways to look at this, this issue.
First thing I'll say is, like I I'm not going to take a position on like, which is more.
Quote unquote, authentic.
I will say that I personally have only ever had rolled enchiladas having grown up in the Northeast.
But I'm less concerned with which is more quote unquote authentic.
I'm more concerned with which is better.
Because sometimes you know, tradition can be a wonderful thing.
To uphold the tradition and do things the way it's always been done.
But other times tradition can be a crutch.
It can be a barrier to progress.
Ricky, I consider the flat enchilada to be new to me.
So I want you to make the case to me.
Why is a flat enchilada lasagna style approach to making enchiladas better than rolled enchiladas?
Well, the big thing here is really the ease of making flat enchiladas versus rolled enchiladas.
But I think my opinion rolled enchiladas you don't do anything to the tortilla before you put the filling in, but in flat you can fry the tortilla before and it makes it a little bit crispier even before you put it in the oven.
And also, let's be honest, cheese is one of the most important parts of the enchilada and using the flat approach you can put more cheese and your ratio is just a lot better.
Jane, what's your response to that?
I think that she brings some good points to the table.
But, you know, Dan, you always talk about bite variety on your show.
And one thing that I find with the flat enchiladas is that you don't get that bite variety, because each bite that you take is going to basically be composed of the same things.
And And.
When you eat a rolled enchilada, what you can get is this variation in your bites as you move along the enchilada.
So that first initial bite on the end is going to be more tortilla.
It might have more sauce on the side that you scoop up with your fork.
But as you move in, then you get more and more filling.
You might get some more cheese as you move into the enchilada.
All right, I think that I have something I want to propose to you guys.
Jane, when you talked about the rolled enchiladas, I liked your point about bite variety.
I agree that bite variety, rolled enchiladas, is a good thing.
Ricky, when you talked about your flat enchiladas, I liked the point you made about frying the tortillas to add texture and crunch.
You know on the Sporkful here, I love crunch.
And I do think that, to me, sometimes that is...
Something that sometimes turns me off of enchiladas is that they're kind of like monotextural.
Yep.
I think you guys should work on a hybrid.
Oh.
Make the rolled enchiladas in a double-decker formation with a layer of fried tortillas in the middle.
Oh, my God.
You know, we are having an enchilada night tonight, and we're battling out between flat and rolled.
And so maybe we can do this hybrid variety that you propose, Dan, and then tell you about it.
Are your friends all amped up for this battle?
Are a lot of people coming over?
Yes.
It is a contentious debate with our friends.
All right.
Jane and Ricky in Chapel Hill, I want to hear from you again.
I want to find out how it went.
I want to find out who won between the two.
And then I want to find out how the hybrid went over with the crowd.
All right, we can do that.
Cool.
Thanks guys.
Have fun.
Thank you.
Hello.
Hey Jane, it's Dan.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
How about yourself, Dan?
Good, good.
I wanted to check up on the enchilada experiment.
Can you get Ricky on the phone?
Can you have her pick up?
Yeah.
Ricky.
Hello?
Hey, Ricky.
Hey.
Hey, it's Dan.
So I know you guys had your enchilada party.
Tell me what happened.
Everybody came over.
We got some opinions.
We got some good points.
And then the night devolved into an evening where we played some beer pong on the kitchen table.
So it was overall a great night.
Nice, nice.
And I know that you sent us some clips.
You talked to some of your friends and recorded their reactions to the enchiladas.
Let's hear a little bit of that.
I'm sort of a messy eater.
So with the rolled, I had a distinct starting and end point.
And so I did not look like a slob.
I had some level of sophistication in front of a large group of people.
So from my point of view, I preferred the rolled, but I can't complain about being fed enchiladas.
Each type of preparation had its strengths.
I particularly liked the moistness, if you will, of the rolled enchiladas.
But The texture of the tortilla with the oven and kind of the chewiness it gets a little crispy on the flat ones was also a very strong contender.
So at the end of the day, I would eat them both again.
Ultimately, I went with the rolled one because I felt like there was more flavor and more moisture in the middle of it.
You know, it kind of blew me away.
But I learned that there was some cheating going on with the rolled ones.
I heard there was sour cream in the rolled ones.
So what was the consensus among your friends on the enchiladas?
Was there a clear winner?
As Ricky will point out, I used sour cream in the actual roll of the enchiladas.
So that was a whole other element that was not included in the flat enchiladas.
So we think that the sour cream might have skewed things a little bit, but in addition the ratio of meat to tortilla was higher in the rolled
And do you think that was a function of the form of rolled versus flat, or were you just sneaking in a little extra goodness into your rolled enchiladas?
Probably a little bit of both, but I really think that just the actual form of the enchilada as a rolled entity, you're going to just have more meat to tortilla ratio.
But I mean, Ricky, you make the flat ones.
I mean, couldn't you have a one-inch thick layer of filling and then just one thin layer of tortilla?
Couldn't the ratios be whatever you want?
Absolutely.
I think that, again, is a positive for flat tortillas.
Your ratio can be whatever you want.
But I actually really enjoyed the sour cream in hers and I thought it was delicious and I had never used that before in flat enchiladas.
And I will actually take that and put that into mine, whether it's rolled or flat, and use sour cream in the future.
And, Ricky, do you feel like you got a fair shake in this competition with your flat enchiladas?
I did.
I mean, they were both delicious.
Yeah, they were both really good.
Everybody left, like, fat and happy, you know?
And did you try the hybrid that I had proposed?
All right, so...
So we made a hybrid at the very end, combining this flat with the rolled.
And it was delicious.
The one thing that I would say is that it's just huge when you make it like that.
So you're like really going, when you make that, you're going to be going in for a big meal.
You have to really commit.
You have to commit.
Well, is there an issue with commitment to enchiladas here, ladies?
No, that is far from the issue.
This is the second time you're calling into this show about enchiladas.
If anyone is committed to enchiladas, I think it should be you.
That's true, that's true.
We had just eaten our enchiladas before, too.
So I think that by the end of it, we were just like, whoa, this is a lot of food.
So I'm the one really who didn't get the fair shake in the competition, because you put out my concept last, after everyone was already full.
This is true.
This is true, Dan.
So maybe you'll have to come down and we can all make hybrid enchiladas once again.
I have to say, though I think also perhaps maybe I wasn't clear in describing my vision for the hybrid, but I was not suggesting that you make flat enchiladas, rather that you make rolled enchiladas, but that you make two layers, like a bottom layer of rolled and then a top layer.
And in between those two layers you just put the crispy fried corn tortillas that you said are one of the pros of the flat.
So it's like a layer of just flat crunch in the middle between the two layers of the rolled.
So what I'm envisioning isn't so ridiculously huge.
It feels to me like you took one lasagna and put it on top of another lasagna.
Yeah, maybe we did.
We might have done that.
We got a lot of beers.
Right.
So not only did you make my creation last, but you also made it while your judgment was impaired.
And our friend's judgment.
Dan, I would just like to say that our judgment was enhanced.
I see.
Okay.
Fair enough.
So it sounds like we don't have a really clear winner.
Do you both still think that your enchiladas are better than the others?
This is Jane saying, I think that they both have their place in this world.
And I think this is Ricky and I think if I had to decide based solely on last week, Jane probably would have won with the sour cream.
But I feel like if I had a chance to redeem myself, I could.
As with the last time that we spoke, I am now starving for enchiladas.
Every time I talk to you guys, I come away just desperately wanting enchiladas.
So I'm going to go eat some enchiladas now.
Okay, please do.
Jane and Ricky in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, enjoy your enchiladas.
Thanks, Dan.
Thanks, Dan.
Welcome back to The Sporkful.
I'm Dan Pashman.
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This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman. and I am still fighting this annoying cold, as you can probably hear.
I actually feel a lot better than I sound, but this cold is just attacking my vocal cords, which fortunately I don't really need for my job, so it's no big deal.
Today on the show, I'm taking your cheese-related calls, so here's the first one.
Hey, this is Adam from L.A.
This is Jonathan from LA.
I wrote into the Sporkful because my friend Jonathan and I have a longstanding debate for about six years about a world in which there was only one type of cheese left, which is horrifying.
And to me, the answer is, of course, mozzarella is the one type of cheese we would want.
And we started this debate at a party without realizing, you know, our differences, and And we were talking about it for so long that we looked around eventually and realized that everybody else had walked away.
And Jonathan and I, as I said, six years.
So we've sort of chewed through this.
The only thing that we really agree on is when anybody else has a different type of cheese, like brie or taleggio that that's ridiculous.
Yeah, that's a terrible idea.
I'll explain his cheddar stance, and then I'll explain my mozzarella stance.
Okay, so in this horrific, dystopian future in which cheese is like Highlander, there can be only one.
Right.
Jonathan, you believe that if there can be only one cheese, it should be cheddar.
Yes, absolutely.
Quite simply, it has more flavor than mozzarella.
It comes down to flavor.
And if you've only got one cheese left to have, as Bobby Flay says, I'm all about balance.
But Bobby Flay didn't say and wouldn't say, enjoy this cheddar pizza.
And that, to me, is what it comes down to.
With mozzarella, you have a lifetime of pizza.
You have a lifetime of Italian food.
You can have a caprese salad if you're going to be a little bit healthier that day.
Mexican food with the right seasonings can still be passable with mozzarella.
Cheddar just doesn't work with everything.
It's like Hugh Grant.
It does one thing really well.
But if you don't want that one thing, it's not going to help you.
Jonathan, response?
Okay.
Yeah.
This is always a funny conundrum that he brings up, because this is what I refer to as his pizza argument or his lasagna argument.
So you know, and while I admit yeah, of course, generally speaking, mozzarella is the main topping on a pizza.
There is something at most pizza places that when you go down and you sit down and you eat your slice of pizza, there's something else on the table there.
Most places have this, and usually one of those things is Parmesan.
Now, why would there be an overly salty cheese on the table of a pizza parlor?
And that's because of the lack of flavor there is in mozzarella.
So it's quite common to see people adding extra flavor to something that has mozzarella.
Jonathan actually makes my point for me.
It's that mozzarella can take on flavor.
Cheddar is what it is and always will be, which is fine if that's exactly what you want.
But keep in mind, this is a world without any other type of cheese.
And is that really the one flavor you want dominating everything else?
It's a horrifying world to me.
And yet mozzarella is the only cheese that needs another cheese to help it.
Can you tell this is a six-year-long debate?
At least you guys don't take it personally.
So I got some questions here.
OK, sure.
First off Jonathan, when you say cheddar, are you talking like?
Is it assumed, in this dystopian future, that that means all types of cheddar, or is it only one level of sharpness, one level of agedness?
That includes your baby mozzarella, your buffalo mozzarella, your burrata, your smoked mozzarella.
Okay, and let me intervene here.
Okay, you guys, because I think that you are dancing around the fundamental question without addressing it.
Really what you're debating, or where you truly disagree, is not actually which cheese is best.
Really, where you disagree is in the purpose that you want cheese to serve in this dystopian future.
So we have Adam saying look, it's not going to be perfect, but mozzarella can fill the cheese gap in a lot of different places.
You can season it up.
It can plug the hole, even if it's not always perfect, even if it's a little mild in flavor.
Jonathan, what you're saying is that's not what you would want in this dystopian future.
You have a whole different approach.
You want the flavor.
And you'd rather have one strong flavored cheese over and over again, even at the risk of tiring of it and of not being able to use it as often, than to have milder flavored cheese all the time.
I don't know if I would agree with the made about it not being able to be used as often.
I'm sorry jonathan, it's tough to argue adam's basic point that that mozzarella is more of an all-purpose cheese.
It because it's milder in flavor.
It is milder in flavor than cheddar and therefore it can.
It can, it's more adaptable and it's less likely to clash.
You know that's the funny thing here is that Adam says that the mildness of mozzarella is its strength in this future and Jonathan, you say that the mildness of mozzarella is its weakness and that the strong flavors of cheddar is its strength.
And so you don't disagree on the pros and cons of these two cheeses.
You disagree on what you want cheese to do in a dystopian future in which there's only one.
Yeah, I could agree with that, yeah.
I think that's...
Okay, now this is what we call progress.
After six years, there is progress here, okay?
So now let's talk about the real issue.
I feel like in a lab, somewhere somebody has the right amount of spices and the right cooking technique.
I think you could make a mozzarella that tastes like cheddar.
If you really needed it, I don't think you could make a cheddar that tastes like anything else.
Why would you?
The problem is that it's harder to find really good fresh mozzarella than it is to find good cheddar.
You got to go to some kind of old world market where there's an old Italian man who speaks no English in the back, like standing over a cauldron with a giant wooden spoon.
And he hobbles out of the back and he dumps the cauldron into the vat of mozzarella balls.
And they're still warm.
And they've been fined by the Board of Health numerous times because they don't refrigerate the cheese before selling it, because that's what makes it more delicious.
See, and I can imagine in this dystopian future, those guys are just all over the place.
That feels right to me.
If you're going to be dystopian, I want a lot of guys, you know, in this little room with a cauldron and nothing else, just dealing mozzarella.
That, to me, feels right.
All right, well...
I have to say for my personal taste, I like mozzarella better than cheddar every day of the week.
I'm not a big cheddar fan.
I personally agree with you, Adam, that mozzarella is more flexible.
You can use it more different ways.
You can season it up.
I could see myself eating mozzarella cheese multiple times a week for a long time without getting tired of it.
I can't imagine that being the case with cheddar cheese for me personally.
But I do think that to some extent, this argument comes down to a matter of taste.
And as the wise men have said for many years, and as we say here, on the Sporkful degustibus non est disputandum.
In matters of taste, there can be no dispute.
So I hope that you two will put down your cheese knives and let there be peace between you and accept each other for your differences.
I think we can do that.
I think that All right, Adam and Jonathan in LA, we'll put this question up on our website as well, because I want to hear from more of you out there.
We'll put up a poll at Sporkfulcom and ask people what cheese they would like in a dystopian one-cheese future.
Thanks so much for your call, guys.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you.
Now back to the phones.
Hi, this is Erica Stone.
I'm calling from Highland Park, Illinois.
Okay Erica, what can I do for you?
Curious at what point a grilled cheese becomes a melt, or like what the distinction is between the two of them?
Because you can have a grilled cheese with bacon, you know, that has some meat on it.
But I'm wondering, like you know, because there are all these grilled cheese restaurants and they have a bunch of stuff on it, but still call it a grilled cheese.
And I keep looking at these and thinking, well, that sounds like a melt to me.
So I wanted to know, yeah, what you thought about that whole business.
It's a great question.
And actually it's funny because in the very first ever episode of The Sporkful, which is now no longer publicly available, it's been put into deep freeze, archived.
But episode one was about grilled cheese, and I addressed this exact issue.
At what point does it stop being a grilled cheese?
Do you have an opinion on this, Erica?
What do you see as the dividing lines?
Well, I think, as I've discussed this with friends it sounds like once you add cold cuts onto it, then it becomes a melt.
So you're saying when you add meat, it becomes a sandwich.
It becomes some other kind of sandwich.
Not necessarily, because if you put bacon on a grilled cheese, that's still a grilled cheese.
What about bacon and tomato?
Yeah, I think that's still a grilled cheese.
Those are like canonical grilled cheese tops.
But when you start adding on turkey or ham or burger, then it becomes the melt.
I think if you also have more than two toppings, maybe.
If I want to get Socratic about this and start questioning your underlying assumptions.
You're saying bacon is okay, but ham is not.
A slice of ham is not any thicker, typically, than a slice of bacon.
It comes from the same animal, chicken.
So why should a slice of ham in a grilled cheese turn it into something else, but not a slice of bacon?
Yeah, I don't know.
I guess it's more of a feeling than a cognitive thing.
Right.
Because you have a name for the ham.
It's a ham and cheese.
Or, I mean, you have a turkey melt.
But, you know, when you...
Or at a diner, you know, it's a grilled cheese with bacon and tomato.
Because I'm inclined to agree with you, but we need to think this through, Erica.
We can't just be issuing verdicts willy-nilly.
Sure.
I want to work through an intellectual, a defensible position.
I think that maybe the difference is that bacon is more often an accompaniment.
Now it's a powerful accompaniment, full of flavor, full of porky, fatty goodness, but it's not often the featured attraction.
Even in a BLT.
I know that it's the meat, but I would argue that a BLT is more like about a cohesive whole.
That's a good point.
It is an ensemble sandwich.
But how often are you really going to pile bacon on a sandwich and make that the sandwich?
It's usually more that the bacon is an accompaniment.
And so that's why I feel like it's different.
Even though it might not be different in quantity from a slice of ham or turkey, it's different in the purpose that it serves.
I'm trying to think of other sandwiches.
How much do you need to add to a grilled cheese before it's not a grilled cheese anymore?
What if you were to add tomato and eggplant?
Is that still a grilled cheese?
I think so.
What about tomato and roasted red pepper and eggplant and basil?
Yeah, now that's starting to sound like a vegetable sandwich with cheese.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm kind of with you on the cap also, the cap of two.
You cannot add more than two things.
You can have bread, cheese, and up to two things inside.
And they have to be accompaniments, not featured attractions.
So what about something...
We've talked about ham.
We've talked about bacon, like prosciutto.
Well, that's a great question.
Because it's still a salty pork.
But would you call that a grilled cheese if it had cheese prosciutto, tomato?
I guess what I would say is it's something like if I'm going to eat prosciutto, I want to taste the prosciutto.
You know, like prosciutto is something that I'm like, ooh, prosciutto, yummy.
I get excited about it.
And I believe that, while it can be used as an accompaniment and I wouldn't say that it's wrong I feel like more often it should be the star.
Okay.
What do you think?
So I guess now I'm coming to your side of it, where it's all about the function of the other ingredients.
But yeah, no, I think I'm satisfied by this answer.
Okay.
Like great Supreme Court justices, Erica, you and I sometimes have to make the tough calls.
That it's a grilled cheese when I see it.
Yeah, that's right.
We can't always define it, but you know it when you see it.
I love it.
All right.
Thanks, Erica.
Appreciate the call.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me on.
Well, this was a lot of fun.
I always love taking your calls.
This show is a production of WNYC and The Sporkful.
It's produced by Anne, Sandy, and me.
We get help from Tim Ruggieri.
Special thanks to Paula Schumann.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
This is Sybil Spaulding, and I am calling from Nashville, Tennessee.
Eat more, eat better.
Don't forget to eat more better.
This reheat was produced by Gianna Palmer.
The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O'Hara.
Our engineer is Jared O'Connell.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app?
Yes, the SiriusXM app.
It has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era.
Plus live sports coverage.
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And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXMcom slash Sporkful.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
