Cooking With Cloudflare

Hello, everyone. It's five o'clock. This is Cooking with Cloudflare. I'm your host, Chaat Butsunturn, and my guest today, Justin Wong. How you doing, Justin? Hey, everyone. I'm doing real well. Great. So believe it or not, we did not plan the wardrobes, but hey, we both work at Cloudflare, so I guess it's not a surprise. Quad one. So today, I invited Justin. I met Justin, and you may recognize him if you've watched one of my other shows, which is We Are Cloudflare, where I interview different people from around the company, ask what they do. Justin is on our technical engineering team. He helps our customers. You describe what you do. Yeah. I'm a technical support engineer, and what I do is I interface with our customers, give them the Cloudflare experience, help them with their technical issues, should they run into any of them. I have to say a lot of the work that engineering has done has made it so we don't see a lot of our customers with their issues, but when they do have issues, they come to us, and we give them the best support we can. That's right. That's right. And so Justin and I originally met in the basement of 111, one of our office buildings in San Francisco, and I was intrigued because he had bagels, and it wasn't lox, though. It was smoked trout. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. Right. So we started talking food, and then lo and behold, two years later, whatever it is, I have this cooking show. I was like, this is the guy I got to have on. So here we are. What are we making today? Today, we are making something simple. I've actually been known to be a little extra when it comes to food. Most people slide into the office and just grab a quick bowl of cereal, and here I am making a fancy bagel with capers on top and little flakes of... Oatmeal. Oatmeal. Right, exactly. But I like to eat well, but today we're doing something really simple. We are making a mock version of P .F. Chang's Lettuce Chicken Wraps. Okay. So this is interesting because you had sent me one recipe, which I shopped for, and then in our pre-show debrief, we discovered that we might be looking at two different recipes here. Yeah, that was my fault. So I'm a big fan of skinny taste. My wife and I like to eat pretty cleanly. I thought this recipe was from her because the link I sent you was for that recipe. I was pretty confident. I go to look at my recipe and it's a completely different recipe than what I had sent you, and I'm thinking, uh-oh, what are we going to do now? Well, let's compare notes here. So my ingredients... I'll just read you what I got because I have a look at here. Skinless, boneless chicken thighs, ground. So I just got ground chicken, right? I just made it easy rather than have to grind it myself. Water chestnuts, shiitake mushrooms, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, rice wine, a little sugar, some pepper, garlic, and green onions. And then there's also a hoisin and chili sauce. So how similar are we looking now? Yeah, I think the ingredients are spot on. There's a few minor adjustments. I do have a pound of ground chicken, some sesame oil, some chopped mushrooms, basil, water chestnuts. So I think the core of the imitation recipe is there. I also have a sauce that's made with hoisin. Mine has some grated ginger. Don't know if yours does. Mine has... I don't have ginger. I'm going to check the fridge real quick here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have rice vinegar. You mentioned rice wine. So that might be one distinct difference. And then head of romaine or butter leaf lettuce, whatever you want to wrap it in. I'm using butter leaf lettuce today. Yeah, I have butter leaf lettuce. And look at this. Yeah! Always good to have a little ginger because, you know, if you have a cold, you can always just like slice a little bit, smash it, a little honey and lemon. You know, what's really interesting that I've learned in recent years is that what you're holding is a finger of ginger or a thumb of ginger. And what I have is a hand. But it's also similar to bananas. When you go shop at the grocery store for bananas, are you grabbing a bunch of bananas? It turns out you're actually grabbing a hand of bananas. And a bunch has multiple hands. A bunch is a huge stock of hands. Right, right, right. Okay, yeah. Fascinating. The unit of measure for ginger. I pulled the finger off because I never use a hand. Yeah, I would never use a hand of ginger. It's so much ginger. It is, right. So, okay, well, why don't we walk through your recipe? And as long as I have the ingredients, I'm just going to use them. And then if we get to a point where I don't have something, then I'll see what they say. We can compare notes. But we're on the fly. This is live television here. Really? Yeah. You know, we had discussed also maybe making our separate versions and then kind of taste testing and see whose wins. Although doing that remotely, that has its obvious challenges. Not to mention others. We'll have two different narratives simultaneously, which could be kind of tricky. So I don't think I've got the CPU to track all that. So I'm going to go with what you're doing. Do you want me to just kind of give you the five-step instruction? I'll just kind of read them out here so we have an understanding, an outline of what this is going to look like. Yeah, yeah, sure. So it looks like we're just going to start with a saucepan and heat the sesame oil. That's enough, right? Then we're going to add the chicken and saute for three minutes, mixing continuously. Cool. I'm assuming that once that is browned, then we'll add the chopped mushrooms, fresh basil, water chestnuts, continue to saute until the chicken's cooked through, eight to 10 minutes. That's pretty quick. Separately, while the chicken is cooking, prepare the sauce, which you just whisk the ingredients together. That's pretty straightforward. Very straightforward. The last step is just mixing the sauce in with the chicken and letting it thicken for a minute or two, then dumping it. Once it's done, you put it on a lettuce wrap and eat. How long is it supposed to take? It is supposed to take, from start to finish, about 25 minutes. Okay. I think we can milk it, really. Okay, let me tell you what this recipe is. This one says 50 minutes and I still thought we had time. This says, let's see here, mushrooms and hot water. Okay, so first of all, I got dried mushrooms because that's what it said in this recipe. I'm going to start boiling some water. Yeah, I should do that right away. Let's see here. I'm going to just, in hot water, the sauce. Yeah, let me just start that. I'm just using fresh button or cremini mushrooms for this recipe. It's what was available at the store and I'm sure it'll be delicious. I know shiitake would have been a little more authentic, a little more towards the flavor profile of what those were, but I like the meatiness of cremini mushrooms, so I'm just going to go with those. You can use it at P.F. Chang's, do you know? I don't. I'm going to assume shiitake's, that would make sense. Now, have you been to P.F. Chang's in a while? No, not in a while. I actually, I had been maybe once or twice in my whole entire life. Yeah, I'm trying to- Yeah, spoiled. Generally, if there's more than one of those Asian restaurants, I don't go to it. I usually go to like, you know, when it comes to Asian restaurants, I don't usually go to anything that's a franchise, right? Or a chain. Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think you being Thai and me being, my dad was born in Vietnam, I think we have a flair for Southeast Asian style cooking and even then, I don't really know. Maybe you'd want to elaborate a bit about the kind of food you ate as a kid, but I feel I was spoiled. If ever we wanted some sort of Asian meal, it was my dad who would make that at home over going out to a restaurant. Huh, so was your dad the cook or your mom? Dad was the cook, yeah, and I take after him in many ways. Yeah, my mom was the cook in my family and she's Filipino, so she was self-conscious about her Thai cooking. She could totally do it, but she usually cooks Filipino, so I grew up eating a lot of pork and stuff like lumpia and pancit sinigang. You know, all those are great. I mean, sometimes we cook fish too, but yeah, most of the cooking in my house was Filipino, probably. So, and then in this household, we do a mix of stuff. My wife's a great cook, actually, but her cooking style is a little bit more California, I guess. She's a Berkeley girl, right? Okay, so I have the water boiling for the mushrooms because I just want to soften them up. I would have just gotten fresh ones. I don't know why they say, this recipe, maybe a lot of people don't have access to fresh shiitake. Maybe that's what it is. So, let's see here. So, what this recipe says is I mix the mushrooms, water chestnuts, and chicken together along with these sauces before even sautéing it, which is kind of, that's an interesting idea. I like that. It sounds like it'll infuse all of those ingredients with that umami saltiness of the soy sauce. Right. So, but your recipe suggests we do the sauce afterwards. It does, yeah. That's just the simple way it's having me do it. Okay. All right. So, what's first? What do you think? Should we do a... I think for me, before anything even touches the stove, I like to make sure my mise en place is ready. So, I'm going to do a bit of prep. I need to chop my mushrooms. I need to get my garlic and my ginger peeled and minced. Yeah. For me, that's a first step. Okay. Do you need to do the same? No, I usually do the same too. So, I'm all set up for that. So, I will... How much garlic do you use? Just a couple of cloves? Yeah. Mine says a teaspoon. I'm going to use... I'm not a fan of garlic. I'm going to use two cloves. Two cloves. Yeah. All right. Cool. I'm also going to do the same. Yeah. That's right. So, you ever use any of these, like a garlic press or something like that? Occasionally. It depends on if I don't want to get my hands too dirty. I feel like knife skills are something that I love to work on. And so, to that end, I'm really going to try and get my mince just by hand instead of using a tool. That's me. I agree that there's a time and a place for every kitchen tool. Just like golf clubs, right? Sure. Do you play golf? I do. Yeah. I grew up playing stick golf. I don't really play much anymore. It just takes up too much time. It's too expensive. It's not good for the environment. I still love the game though. Mostly because it reminds me of time with my dad. I spent a lot of time on a golf course with him. So, yeah. Well, there's also something meditative about it, isn't there? Being out in the wilderness or on the green. Well, someone once said golf is a nice walk ruined. And there's something to that. But, yeah, I do like that aspect of being out for a walk. And the thing is golf takes so long that it kind of forces the leisure, right? It's not like doing it in a half hour and knocking it out. So, when you're playing golf, that's what you got going on. How much ginger do we need, by the way? Mine called for a teaspoon of grated ginger. Grated. Do you actually use a grater or how do you do your ginger? That's also, so it really depends on the recipe. For me today, I will probably just turn them into, I will probably peel it and then slice it thinly and then slice it again, turn them to little matchsticks and then give it a very tight mince. Okay. But I have been known to use a grater. A grater? Really, really make it like fine, pulpy, juicy ginger, if that's what the recipe calls for. I find, you know, ginger is so fibrous that sometimes a grater gets messy. Yeah, I agree completely. Yeah, it just gets in the way. It makes more of a mess than you're trying to solve for. Yeah, I end up, and also I just want to save my knuckles, right? I mean, like, right. Here I'm using the back of my knife to peel the skin off the ginger. I see you're cutting the skin off your ginger. Yeah, I'm shaving it, you know, kind of like whittling. I use a paring knife. I'd say your technique looks a bit cleaner. My sink is a total mess right now. Yeah, well, after this show, this kitchen is going to be a disaster zone. An explosion of food and sauces everywhere. Do you, how often do you guys cook in your household? You know, we try and cook every day. It's something that I enjoy. It allows us to obviously save money from going out to eat, and it's not like we're doing much of that anyway right now. We've got a lot of restaurants closed and everything. You know, it's interesting. Like, I feel like I can generally cook. It's such a better value. You can really eat well without having to spend a lot of money, you know, or if you do want to spend a lot of money, you can eat really well. Yeah, I would agree with that. Interestingly enough, we used to shop every other day for our meals, and this would involve kind of feeling. I think that the benefit of that is depending on the mood or the weather, you can really cater to how you want to eat that day. Something that we've done recently is we've really planned ahead, a week ahead, in fact, and done our shopping for the week ahead of time, and that gives us a little bit of flexibility. We can move, like, maybe Thursday's dinner up to, you know, Tuesday if we're feeling like that, but what we've noticed more than anything is it saves us so much money because we're forcing ourselves to eat the food we have instead of every day going to the store and on a whim buying that extra jar of pickles that we don't need. We already have a jar of pickles at home, but I wanted this one. You know, if I don't make it available to myself, I'm not buying it. We've found that we've saved a pretty significant amount of money just by, you know, planning ahead and sticking to that plan. Yeah, we are. My wife, as I mentioned to you, you know, offline, she gives me a hard time because apparently I can't shop the pradas. I don't know how to pick pradas very well, but I mean, I'm all over the meats and the fish, you know. I know that stuff inside and out, but the pradas, that's her category, and she does like to go, you know, sometimes she'll go on a grocery run and she'll stop at like four, three or four different spots to get all the different things. I'm like, I don't know how you do it, but you know, when you love food, sometimes that's what you do. So, FYI, I've got my dried shiitake. I'm just going to pour some hot water on it and let it soak for a while. Is that right? Yeah, I think so. Maybe about 10 minutes or so. Okay. Yeah, just until they soften up and are able to be used. Actually, one of my first meals I ever made for my wife is, before I really got into knowing what I was doing as a cook, and I remember I was watching a cooking show and someone made like a shiitake soup or something like that. I got noodles, I got dried shiitake, I made a soup, but I mean, that was pretty much it. There was like no vegetables or protein. Kind of funny. I'm coming a long way. All right, so I've got my cloves of garlic, which I have not yet cut, but they're peeled and same with this. I'm going to, when do we do that? Is that what you're doing over there? I'm, my sauce, because my sauce is added at the end, I'm just putting that together. One of the components is the ginger and the soy sauce. So now that my ginger is done, I'm adding the three tables of hoisin to a little dish here. To that, I'm going to add my ginger and the teaspoon of soy sauce, and then my sauce will be ready. I see. Okay, so I should do something similar. I've got, let's see, I'm just going to peel my, and peeling garlic is such a pain in the butt sometimes. I've got this, got this handy tool, though. You ever seen one of these? Yeah, I have. How well do they work? Pretty well. So I have in here, I just, whoops, put it in here, roll around, and look at that. Whoa, it comes out clean. It comes out clean, and then all the shavings are in there. I don't know if you can see it, but yeah, it comes, it just, I guess the rubbery texture just kind of grabs it and strips it. So that makes my job easier. I love it. No, that's great. See, that's a tool that I could have around. I've just been, you know, like crushing and then peeling with my fingers, and it seems like, I used to do the old thing, smash it, and then like peel it, but it's still sometimes tricky, but that works like a charm. So now I'm going to prepare my garlic. I'm going to use this masher because it's pretty effective in terms of like, that is a nice, you know what I like about that garlic smasher is, unlike the little folding clampy one that you showed me earlier, right, that looks a bit harder to clean. Yeah, this one. How smooth and efficient that garlic press that you're using. This one here, then I just take it like this, I shave it off, I've got my garlic, and then I have this, and I can just like cut it off. I mean, there's some in here that you can like poke out with a toothpick or a brush or whatever, but essentially, I'm going to get what I need right there, and you know, whatever is left in here, it's no biggie if I have a little residual that ends up just down the wash. And it's, I think the thing that I like the most is that it looks like it's very easy to clean. Yeah, exactly. In fact, I can put it in a dishwasher, right, so. All right, so I got the garlic, and now for the, but for this here, I guess I'll try grating it, see what happens. You could do the slicing thing, and I'll grate, and then let's, I've got, so for graters, one of the things I love about this show is talking about kitchen gear, right, so obviously, I got one of these for like cheese. Yeah, got it, that size for cheese. I use this for zesting a lot. I also have this microplane, which I like. Tiny little cheese grater. The one in his right hand, it's so cute. This thing, these things are actually repurposed from like, they use them microplaning on wood, right, but it's actually called microplane. I don't know if you can see that. I have one, but I have like the, you know, the classic series, like very small. I need that one, because this one here, it's too flexible, and so what ends up happening is I get a little bit of like ginger juice on this side, but it's not really grating it enough. Well, I need that one, because that one has more of a surface area for grating things like ginger. I don't want to get my fingers caught in this. I'd rather have something wide and, you know, with a large surface area like that, so I'll trade you. Let's see how this works here. I'm going to try grating something. I think the thing you're describing, though, is just the fact that the ginger, as you mentioned, is too fibrous. The microplane just doesn't really break it down, and so what you get is, yeah, that ginger juice on one side and the pulp on the other. Yeah, I agree, so let me see how this works here. This actually might be pretty good for this purpose. See, I get this. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's not as fine, that is. That's amazing. So you think this is doing the job, though? Yeah, all right. You're right, and then I got this little bit here. I don't want to grate my fingers down, but this is the struggle. I always try to figure out how should I, well, I've never had this recipe at P.F. Chang's. I have no idea what I'm making. It's an imitation chicken wrap. I don't know what shape the mushrooms are in or what I should cut them down to, what size, what shape, what consistency. Should I leave them chunky so that there's a little more texture? Should I make them fine so that they meld in with the diced chicken? I don't really know. What do you think here? What should we do? That's a good question. I think that I'm going to go with trying to match the consistency of ground chicken or ground pork, right? So I do think, like, right now I have got this pulpy mix of about a teaspoon of ground ginger, and that will work, actually, I think, with infusing the flavor. It's not going to be so much about the textural experience of ginger. It's going to be more about the flavor. I think you're right to go that way. I think because it's so small and fine, it's really going to disperse across all of your ingredients and deliver that ginger flavor. Right. Okay, so I've got my ginger. I've got my garlic, and let's see what these recipes are saying now. They're saying to me, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, rice wine, okay, in a bowl. I'm going to combine a bunch of other ingredients, because I'm going to try this thing where I'm going to put all of the stuff with the meat, and I'm going to try kind of, like, infusing the meat with some of the sauce before I end up cooking it, see how that works out. Yeah, I think that's not a bad idea. I think that's going to be the way to go, ultimately. We'll see how mine comes out. We'll see how yours comes out, but I have a feeling, because of that additional step, yours is going to come out a lot more flavorful. It's funny, because we're both going to have to just take each other's word for it. All right. I'll tell you what. I'll send you a wrap in the mail. There you go. Let me know how it is in a week's time. That'll be really good. There's my ground chicken, but first, I want to get the other ingredients. So, for me, for my sauce, it's saying soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, rice wine, pepper. So, let's see here. I'm going to take, wow, not that much of a soy sauce. Interesting. Just like a teaspoon or something? Yeah, it says a quarter teaspoon, which I kind of have a hard time believing. Yeah, what's the point? Why even bother? I know, right? Yeah. Then there's oyster sauce, which I rarely use. Let's see. Where's my soy sauce? Here's my beer. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. You know what? We may only have time for this. It's already 525. Preheating my pan. Let's see. Okay. I'm going to take, oh, this is one tablespoon. See, this is interesting. This recipe says one tablespoon of sodium soy sauce, and then a quarter teaspoon of other soy sauce. I don't need more soy sauce. I'm just going to do one soy sauce. Okay, a tablespoon of soy sauce. Here we go. Okay, there's one of that, and then next thing is half teaspoon oyster sauce. I can do that. Does yours recipe call for oyster sauce, too? Mine does not, and I wish it did. Maybe I'll add a teaspoon of oyster sauce to mine because I feel like it. Right. I know that's some of the beauty of these things is that we can add lib. I found that with more experience, it's easier to add lib, right? You start to understand how different flavor characteristics and profiles and textures and techniques all work together, and you can develop. Some of my recipes, I start penciling things on the sidebar, like what proportions I prefer. You mentioned that one of your go -to's is skinny taste. Yeah, that's right. One of my go-to's is fine cooking, but I'm interested in skinny taste. How did you discover it? What do you like about it? We came across it. I forget how. I guess it was something that was trending, but maybe there was a day we wanted chicken fingers or something that was a little simple, and we ended up not wanting to go deep fryer, or we wanted a healthier alternative. A lot of what we came across on their website was making simple substitutions, like using a leaner meat versus ground beef, or using healthier oils in your cooking, coconut oil instead of olive oil or fats in place of that. It turns out the recipes make really delicious food, and we just continued experimenting with all of their foods. Does your recipe, by the way, have, you said it has cooking wine or rice vinegar? What are you using? Oh, snap. Mine has rice vinegar. Let me reread this. Where does it say to add it? What is the difference between rice cooking wine and rice vinegar? My understanding of vinegar and wine is wine is made from fermented whatever, in this case rice. The starches in rice break down into simple sugars and are fermented into wine. If you let that go further, there's a bacterium that will sour the wine and turn it into vinegar. I guess the rice vinegar is the byproduct of rice wine, which is the byproduct of a rice. I'm going to go with the rice wine then. Yeah, that sounds good. It does sound good. A little tablespoon of this. I'm just throwing it all in here, see what happens. I'm going to do the same, because I do like the taste of mirin in my cooking. Yeah, I'm mixing in my, there's really not a lot of the sauce. It's just enough to flavor the pound of chicken that we got here. Yeah, I think it's just like at the very end in my recipe, it's just going to bind everything and bring it all together with a ton of flavor and umami and saltiness. Umami, I love umami. Yeah, it just seems like a pretty simple, a simple 25-minute recipe that only takes an hour to make. Here we are taking a 25 -minute recipe and stretching it out to an hour, right. That's one of the things that I have contention with, is when something says it'll take 25 minutes. I believe it does, so long as you have all your ingredients ready. The first five minutes is putting the ingredients together, and then once you have them, then you press start on the real timer. 25 minutes later, you have your meal. A 25-minute meal takes an hour. Does yours call for water chestnuts? Yes. How much? A third of a, mine calls for a third of a cup. You can see I've been very exact with my measurements. I really like the crunch of water chestnuts, and I think as a contrast to the soft mushrooms and the soft meat, it's really going to be needed, so I added extra. I see, I like that, yeah. In fact, I like water chestnuts in all kinds of things, and I always forget about them. I like them in, so my mom is Filipino, I mentioned, right, and they're actually really good in lumpia. They add a little crunch in there. I also add them sometimes to fried rice. Not often, though, because I always, again, always forget. I agree. They add a great neutral flavored textural component. I think you could substitute jicama for them out of water chestnuts. That is interesting. Jicama is like the water chestnut of South America or something like that. Yeah, I would go with that. A friend in the movie business, and he was saying, like, in the movie business, they often pitch new movies based on a known, something that's already known. So, for example, the movie, the movie Speed, right? Yeah. The way it was pitched, apparently, was like, it's like Die Hard on a bus. On a bus, yeah, I can do that. So, water chestnuts are jicama from Southeast Asia. Yes, exactly. How are we doing with time? I'm gonna start my, I've got most of my ingredients ready. Do you want me to wait for you? Let me, I might be close. Let me see what it says I'm supposed to do here. Yeah. Combine all this stuff, and then put the chicken in it with the mushrooms. Okay, so I'm gonna put my chicken in here now. I'm still slicing the, I'm still slicing, but I'm gonna already put the chicken in here, because I already got my, already have my sauces together. So, I got my chicken ground, just ground chicken, just so it's, I don't have to do a processor, you know? Yeah, did you get chicken thighs, you said? I don't even know. Let me see what it is here. It says rosy organic ground chicken. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it is, but looking at it, yeah, I don't know. That's a good question. I am personally a big fan of chicken thighs. I think they have a lot more flavor than chicken, ground chicken breasts. Agreed. But some people just don't like the dark meat. Some people don't want that, you know, maybe it's too rich, or it's too fatty for them. They're trying to be healthier. And that just leaves more, you know, ground chicken thigh for us. So, check this out. Yeah, I agree. I know. I think, I think breasts is, they can be kind of boring, honestly. You have to do something to them, like fry it, or they're good. You know, obviously, you want to use chicken breasts, I think, for chicken parm. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's an obvious, yeah, it's kind of weird to do it with breasts, certainly. But generally, I'm sorry, it's weird to do it with thighs. Yes, but generally thighs, I think, are more flavorful, tastier. Yeah, so you've already made your sauce, but I have a different sauce that I'm putting on mine, which is the hoisin and sriracha sauce that I'll add on top after. So, this was like more of a marinade sauce, I guess. And I'm chopping my, you probably can't see what I'm doing here. My cooking surface has gotten very crowded here. Yeah, you said you were using a butterleaf also, yeah? Yes. It's like they would hold all of that tasty, drippy, chicken mess together in a confined little spot. I'm excited for these little wraps. Oh, look at that. Is that one head, or is that pre-pulled? Yeah, it's one head. It's got the root on it and everything. It's one of those fancy live... Wow, look at that. ...heads of lettuce. Like you said, when you buy your own groceries, you can decide how fancy you want to get, right? Right. I'm trying to figure out, when am I supposed to add the garlic and stuff? Oh, yeah. In my recipe, it says to add it to the sauce, and the sauce is something that I'm going to dump into the chicken to finish. It garnishes. This is interesting. Place mushrooms, hot water, moves in. Combine the... Okay, combine ground chicken, softened mushrooms, water chestnuts, pull up the chicken, toss, marinate for 15 minutes. Mix the spicy sauce and move it to the side. Heat the remaining sesame oil, add garlic. Okay, so I add mine before I add the chicken. That makes sense. All right, so now I'm going to just take my chicken. I'm going to put in my... I'm going to put the... What do you call it here? This is... Yeah, my jicama, my Asian jicama. Yeah. And now I got to add... I have the... This, I'm going to drain it, and then I'm going to cut it down a little bit. Yeah. That's how I do it. It smells coming together. It is. Yeah, actually, the timing's working out. I think... There we go. My recipe calls for basil, but I want a little scallion, I think. Yeah, mine calls for scallion. That's interesting, basil. Now, what about... I always find it interesting. There's Thai basil, there's lemon basil, there's regular basil. I mean, how much does it really matter? What's your take on it? I think it does. I think the Italian or Genovese basil is very resiny, very licoricey, very strong. And I think the purple or the Thai basil is a lot more sweet, more aromatic, and less sharp on the tongue. I've tried to have Genovese basil as a topping in pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup, but it just doesn't translate the same as regular Asian, Southeast Asian Thai basil does. I think there is a difference. Yeah. It's kind of like thyme and lemon thyme, right? I mean, whoever uses lemon thyme? I've never seen that in a recipe. Honestly, I think it's like... I have some pineapple mint growing on the deck, and I don't know what I'm using it for. I think it's a novelty. It doesn't really taste like pineapple. It's just kind of ornamental, maybe. I think it's sort of... Unless someone has shown me a recipe where they use it and it's incredible, I think it's useless. Right. Okay, so I am now at the point where I think I can start putting stuff in the... In the pan? Yeah. All right. PF Chang's lettuce wrapped all day. All right. And what temperature do I want all this stuff in? I'm going medium-high. Medium-high, okay. Yeah, let's get it done. What kind of skillet do you like there? You got a 12 -inch, a 10-inch? Yeah, I've got a 12-inch Tefal nonstick. It just makes cleanup easy. Sometimes I use a regular all-clad aluminum pan because I want it to have a really hard sear. I'll use that with salmon. I'll put the skin side down once that skin's real dry and get a really nice crispy skin. When I flip it, it makes a really nice crust on the flesh. For this, I don't really look for that browning, that Maillard effect on my chicken, so I'm just going to use a nonstick and just cook it over. Okay, I'm sold. I'm going with my nonstick instead of my all-clad. All -clad's the best, right? I mean, that was one of the things about getting married is like, I finally could get all-clad, put it on the registry. Oh yeah, yeah, I swear by it. We used to use another brand that was good. It was good, but since I've had all -clad, I just have not come back. Yeah, so how much ... I'm heating my pan right now, and then are you using sesame oil in there? Yeah, I'm going to be using ... It's interesting. I usually use toasted sesame oil to finish, but that's what I have now. Yeah, so actually, maybe I need to go find my that list. I have some of that. I don't want to use toasted sesame oil. It's really strong, and to use it when you cook, it can be overwhelming. I think it's a finishing oil. I'm going to go grab my other sesame oil, the one you have, the one that's not toasted. I think that's going to be better as a cooking oil. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. I will be right back. Yeah, go ahead. I'm going to read my instructions here on what this says here. It says here, remaining sesame oil in a wok or skillet over high heat, but for me, I didn't even know how much I was supposed to put in here. Oh, well, I guess I'm just going to wing it. I'm going to wing it here, and there we go. That's good. You still want it to stick, right? It's also going to add some flavor. This is the one, right? The purple label? Purple label, that's right. Okay, good. Perfect. Okay, got my ... All right, so I guess I just put it in here now, right? Is that what we're doing, cooking it? Let's just do it. Go ahead. Oh, I have to put my ... Okay, there you go. Garlic in, there you go. Okay, cook up at least your aromatics. Oh, I hear that. Nice. Did you just put down ... You smooshed down your chicken like a patty? I know. It was weird. What I did was just quickly spread it out. What it's going to do is make it a lot easier for me to break it up in the pan than if it were in one big clump. Ah, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay, so this is like ... I smell the garlic now. It's great. I'm just going to put a little bit there. Then I'm going to get my chicken. I guess you ... See, this looks about ... Yeah, you don't want your garlic to get ... Too burnt. Look, right, exactly. I should just put it in now. Here we go. Here's my ... All right. I'm going to do something that they didn't explicitly say, and that's to season my chicken now with salt. Right. I feel sometimes when there's recipes that call for soy sauce as a seasoning, it doesn't necessarily give the same amount of sauce, especially when you're using a quarter teaspoon of soy. I don't feel like it's going to get salty enough, so I'm doing a bit of a seasoning now to make sure that penetrates into the chicken. Where is your ginger? Because I forgot. My ginger is not in my recipe, so that's why he's trying to figure out ... Oh, it's in the sauce. Should I put it in my chicken here, you think? Yeah, I mean, heck, just do it. Just do it? Okay, yeah. Spreading this out so you all can see what's happening. No wonder I couldn't find it. Where is the ginger? I forgot we added it from your recipe into this one. Right, and I took half of the ingredients from your recipe, and I added it into mine. Right. This will be interesting. Adding my garlic, my ginger. Yeah, I really like sesame oil. Yeah, I agree. It's so nutty, so rich. Do you use it as a cooking oil a lot? What's that? Do you use it as a cooking oil a lot? I don't, actually. I usually use it in a ... I don't know. I don't know if it's a cooking oil, but I usually use it not as the primary cooking oil, but more for a flavor profile. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you used a lot of coconut oil as a cooking oil? Yes, now that I have. My wife also likes grapeseed oil because it's a neutral-flavored oil with a high flash point, so you can cook at high heats with grapeseed oil or coconut. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I agree. All right, coming together. Smells good, too. So what did you use? Are you using ... What seasoning are you using in your chicken? Are you using salt? Are you using soy sauce, or what are you adding the salt flavor from? I'm just using kosher salt. Kosher salt, uh-huh. Just for now, and then once I've added the mushrooms and the water chestnuts and the basil and everything's come together, which I think is my next step here, you're already ahead of me because you have all those ingredients in your chicken. Right. I have to catch up to you now. Then it says to finish with the sauce, which has the ginger and the garlic and the soy. I don't have my sauce yet. I need to make my sauce, but my sauce doesn't call for ginger, which is interesting because your sauce ... I put my ginger in the chicken, but you put your ginger in the sauce. I might want to use more ginger in the sauce. Yeah, so this does cook pretty evenly. I don't know if people can see, but you basically are looking for the chicken to not be pink anymore. Even stir, put in there. If I did that, I'd probably end up with a bigger mess. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a pretty good pan. Justin, do you ever work in a kitchen? I've never worked in a professional kitchen, not a professional kitchen, certainly. I've definitely cut my hours here at home, but I did, as I think we might've mentioned previously, one of my former jobs was working at Whole Foods. Even from talking with other chefs who come in for their restaurants or talking with parents who are making meals for their family, you can learn a lot just by having a conversation with many different people about many different techniques. I've taken all of those conversations and turned them into a series of techniques that I use at home. Yeah. Let's see here. I think I need to make my sauce now. What's in the sauce here? It looks it's just poissons and chili sauce. Yeah. You put ginger in yours too? Yeah, that's where my ginger is going and the garlic. Oh, really? Okay. Well, I'm going to do more garlic and more ginger because I like that idea of it being in my sauce. I think this is interesting because your recipe called for you to put your garlic down first, kind of get it cooked out so that maybe the sharpness of the garlic isn't aggressive, whereas mine is being added at the end. I think that the smaller amount of cooking time that my recipe has may change the way the garlic tastes on the tongue of your recipe. Interesting. I'm hoping it has enough time to kind of cook that sharpness out, but it might be a little more aggressive maybe. Have you even had this recipe from P.F. Chang's? Do you have any reference? I've had lettuce wraps, right? I asked my wife if she found it, if she could get those little dried shrimps. Oh, yeah. Because they add like a nice little saltiness that I like. Yes, tons of flavor. I was very out of them at the grocery that she was at. So, question, so hoisin, how often do you cook with this stuff? I almost never, I had to buy it special for this recipe. Yeah, I don't cook with it a lot. I don't cook with it a lot. It's a little bit sweeter of a sauce. It is, it's like soy sauce and a bunch of sweet stuff. That's probably why I don't cook with it much. That's why I don't cook with it a lot. This one has a bunch of soy sauce, cane sugar, miso, a little bit of ginger. I think it's sort of one of those all-in -one new sauces. I don't use it a lot for cooking with. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty popular in a lot of like Cantonese-style dishes, but I don't make that style of food a lot. You know, also, I don't use much sriracha. I don't use that much, but I'm going to put some in here just to add some brand new here. When in Rome. Yeah, I think I need to open this thing here. By the way, I went by the office on Friday to pick up a monitor. Yeah. Total ghost town, and it was just sad to see the kitchen so empty. You know? I do know. I had to stop by and pick up a few things as well a few Sundays ago. It's definitely a different feeling right now. Yeah. Yeah, and it does make me a bit sad because it was so lively. It was such a nice hub for everyone to get together and share ideas, share work, share food. Now it's just... Yeah, there's a certain social aspect about work, right? I mean, yeah, you're working, but you also get human reaction and all, and it is interesting to transition to this work-from-home environment. You know, I've been talking to, I don't know if you've had much opportunity to talk to some of these new people that have joined Cloudflare since the whole COVID thing, but it's so interesting that we've got many people who've joined the company who have never been in the office, right? Yes. A lot of the members of my team also have only been onboarded remotely. They went through orientation remotely, and I think it must have been, number one, really hard for the onboarding team to pivot to this new style of being able to engage with so many new people who are probably, you know, very intimidated by the large company they're joining. Maybe they're hesitant to ask questions because they have anxiety or they have, you know, imposter syndrome. They don't want to expose their ignorance, which is, it must be really difficult to create and foster an environment that allows for new hirees to feel comfortable in joining. Yeah. So, you know, kudos to them. And also, it must be also a very strange experience, like you said, never having gone in and being physically in the office or physically saying hello to your co-workers. It is a weird world. My brother works remote for his company, which is based out of San Jose. He lives in North Carolina. So, I mean, there are a lot of people who this is their norm, I guess. For us, it feels odd because we were at HQ, you know. Yeah, and we're used to a certain standard, right? We're used to a specific kind of daily routine. I have to say, I have gained and subsequently lost weight since this whole lockdown has started because I used to, coming from the North Bay, I would take the ferry and I would ride my bike to and from the ferry and to and from the office. So, I was getting a lot of exercise every day. You know, I was thinking that I am not excited about getting on BART, but if I were to go back to the office, I think that's the way I'd want to do it, is to do the ferry, bike to the ferry. It is a beautiful commute, I must say, crossing the bay in the morning. It is spectacular and we are extremely fortunate, extremely lucky to have the opportunity. How long does it take you? It is about, door to door, it's about an hour. It takes me 15 minutes to sprint to the ferry and if I time it right, I can slide on without having to wait for too long. 30 minute ride from the Larkspur Ferry Terminal to the ferry terminal in downtown San Francisco and then all I have to do is slide the extra 10 or 15 minutes or so along the Embarcadero down to the office. Not bad, not bad. So, Justin, I'm at the point where everything's done. I just sliced up my green onions and I just, I'm going to throw them on top of the chicken. Is that what we do? Hey, I just peeled a little bit of basil and topped it on top of my chicken. I'm just wrapped up. No pun intended, these are lettuce wraps. I'm sorry, everyone. Good one. I know, I'm the worst, really. All right, okay, so now I've got this ready. I guess now it's just get ready for the wraps. Look at this, we're, we got five minutes left so we have enough time to do a couple of wraps and see how this thing turns out. Let's go. Let me, I'm just going to create a little space on my island here because I got a mess. And here's my kind of lettuce. Grab a spoon. So this is, this is my end product here. This is what this looks like. Yeah, here's, here's mine. Oh yeah, pretty much the same. And then I'll just throw some of that, that sauce on top here. Perfect. I'm going to serve one up. Cool. Me too. Let's see here. Okay, good. I think if there's anything to say immediately about this is that they're really pretty and they appear really healthy, certainly. You're having a salad, you're having a chicken salad, right? A handheld chicken salad. So here's my bowl, right? Look at that. I'm going to take some of this here. Oh, look at you, that looks amazing. Finishing it off with the sauce. All right. Ready? One, two, three, go. Mm-hmm, good. Now I want to go to P.F. Chang's and I got to order this. I'm getting a heavy influence of the garlic and the ginger, I think because I added it so late in the cooking process. Tell me about yours. Mine is, I added extra ginger into the sauce, so I'm getting that, but I love ginger. I like the, it adds a little bite, it's brighter. I feel like I probably could have used more soy sauce in mine. Maybe I didn't let it marinate long enough, but I felt like I was kind of winging it, just getting the ingredients, jamming them in there. I think this is the ultimate question, and we ask this to ourselves every time we make a meal, even regardless of what you rate it, whatever your rating system is, three out of five stars, nine out of 10 forks. The ultimate question is, would you make it again? You're right, that is the ultimate question. I think I would make it again, but I would definitely, I would try some things differently. I might add those little dried shrimps that I mentioned. I might also add something, some kind of a seed, I don't know, maybe sunflower seed maybe, just to add a little nuttiness to it. I definitely, I think I would, I think I need to season the chicken more. The sauce is great though, I think maybe they're considering the sauce to spruce up the chicken more. I'm all for that, but I'm also for the chicken having, being able to stand more on its own. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, well Justin, this has been great. I really appreciate you joining me today. Thanks for having me. I love our conversations. They're always engaged and fun. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and hopefully when this is all said and done, maybe we could break bread together or rice, whatever it is. Looking forward to it. Yeah, likewise. So well, this is Chad and Justin from Cooking with Cloudflare. Thank you for joining us today. And I don't know what the next episode is or when it will be, but I have your $5.59, so we're finishing up just in time. I guess that's it. Thanks so much. Enjoy your dinner. Same to you and everyone else who is tuning in. Right.