Hey, it's Francis here from The Splendid Table.

We call ourselves the show for curious cooks and eaters, and you know, sometimes we're a little bit too curious, and the conversations go on longer than we can really fit in the show.

But we don't want you to miss out on good stuff.

So here's a bonus extended discussion from this week's episode.

Samin Nosrat is author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.

And, you know, we had such a good time talking about acid that we went long.

And Samin ended up talking about a favorite dish of both of ours, Linguini with Clams.

And how she makes it with this technique of layering in the

wine and the lemon and all these different acidic things to end up with just a killer

version.

So, Simey, talk to me about using acid and the sort of different techniques for using acid.

I think, you know, the finishing move, squeeze a lemon, you know,

on your plate of fish and chips or whatever. Like, that's a very obvious thing. You know,

shaking the malt vinegar onto your fries, you know, that's a pretty British thing, but like,

that's something that we sort of instinctively get ketchup in your fries. ketchup, obviously,

is sort of tart. So finishing with acid is pretty common,

but you have this theory in the book about cooking acids versus garnishing acids, which are the

finishing acids. So tell me about that and the difference between the two.

Sure. Yeah. I think cooking acids is kind of the secret thing that most people don't necessarily think of that does make a huge difference. And certainly in foods like very long cooked foods, braises and stews and anything that's just going to be simmering for a really long time and gets brown and rich over time, those things

will always skew towards sweet, right? Browning is sweetness and very flavorful. So if we're not

careful to work in acid early on, then those things can become too sweet. So I like to think of it

as you're layering all these different acids in

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