Dinner with the band Episode “Black Olive Cobbler” Sam: Alright I am Sam Mason and I am here very today, I am very excited today. Today for these guys we are doing an olive cobbler with almond ice cream, which is. I am excited about it, I don’t know if you guys are. Kim: I am excited. Matt: I am terrified as well. Sam: That’s good as well. Now there is an olive story for you guys as well. Matt: Yeah, when we first got together and I hated olives, but you made enough olives that um… Kim: I wore you down, forced it on you. Matt: But she would put them in everything we eat. And I guess its just one of those things; I guess you warm up to. But I never had it in a dessert, sort of. Sam: Well then today we can make you hate olives again. So it will work out. This is kind of way to confee olives to make them sweet to where they kind of mimic a cherry. They are sweetened enough to where they kind of have that cherry flavor. But here is how we are going to start this, pit these. I am going to have you guys pit these. Have you ever pitted a cherry before? These are olives. Matt: I have never pitted a cherry or an olive. Sam: Oh then this is going to get dangerous. It’s simple; it’s just this little contraption. Kim: What would you call this contraption? Sam: It’s a pitter. Matt: Alright good name. Sam: And then it just comes sliding right out, its kind of an intrusive device. Matt: Wait is that how it is done when you just buy caned olives? Sam: Yeah they have large machines that do it though. Kim: There is a dude there… Matt: I always wondered how they do that. Sam: Yeah there is this guy Edward… Kim: I think I broke it already. Sam: Oh my god, if she pits cherries like she drums we are all in trouble. Sam: You made a little mushroom; I want them all to look like this. Kim: That is so I can eat the edges. Sam: Oh my god, aim it out that way. Matt: Alright let’s see what kind of rage we can get on this. Do it, do it. No don’t point it right at it. Sam: That’s alright. Matt: Wow. Kim: This is how we do, what’s this? Confee? Sam: Confee, yeah it’s just… Kim: Am I going to slow for you? Sam: No, no I have nothing to do with my hands. It’s just a term; it’s not usually used for fruits. It’s something that is cooked in its own juices. But this obviously we are going to cook in sugar, water and port. Matt: Wait well then how does this term fit it at all, if it doesn’t get cooked in its juice at all? Sam: Well it has become a bastardized term. Kim: Don’t get this on film. Sam: So we are going to cut these in half. Kim: I am going to shoot it out again. Matt: Well it’s a good thing I wore my safety goggles today. Sam: I don’t know if you guys, well I am sure you guys know this. But I got to see you guys play like 900 times at south by. There is something you guys do to the crowd, can you explain that? Kim: It’s called we pay them before hand. Sam: I thought you were piping something into the air or something. Matt: I think being honest when you play is really important. And I think a lot of bands put on their poker face. There like too cool for school face. I don’t mind seeing a band that plays through like, being angered or anything but as long as there honest. If you are looking totally bored, the crowds going to get totally bored., but Kim smiles nonstop, no matter what… Sam: She looks like she is sitting under the Christmas tree with brand new set of drawers. Here is what we are going to go for in this we are actually going to boil these real quick because they are kind of salty. Kim: Salty is not good for it? Sam: Well you know we are going to be fighting the sugar. So what we are going to do is we are going to be bringing some water up to a boil. Here we go we have our pitted olives, here we go we are actually going to drop these in the pot of boiling water. Going to let it sit here for a second, and then we are going to dump these right in the strainer. Kim: This is just getting the salt and the oil off of them? Matt: Yeah, just to rinse the oil and get the salt off. And what we are going to do now is actually, that was probably more for the oil than the salt. So we are just going to do this first, for a couple of seconds. Then we are going to let those drain. Then take this pot, and then we are going to add four cups of sugar. Then we are going to add a small amount of water, to make it like wet sand. Not too much. I mean the more you add the longer this is going to take. Kim: That looks good. Sam: Alright so the sugar. We are just going, going to turn this on high. Alright so as soon as this turns yellow around the edges, we are going to add the port and the water. We have some other jobs for you to do. On the top of this cobbler we are going to add the Streusel. You know that crumbly kind of topping? Matt: Yeah I love that. Sam: I love that stuff, that stuff is good on anything, hotdogs. Half cup of flower and a half cup of sugar. We have a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon and then we have butter. Now here show this, this gets kind of sloppy. Kim: Am I, Am I going in? Matt: You’re going in. Sam: So what’s going to happen here is your going to take this soft butter, and you’re going to throw it in little pea sizes. And at the same time you’re going to mix it in like that. Matt: I am not very good at this yet. Kim: Pea sizes Matt, pea sizes. Matt: Is this bigger than a pea size? Kim: Who eats a pea like that? Matt: What are we talking about, the green pea? Kim: Am I doing this right? Sam: Yeah because we want it to end up coming together. So obviously we can talk about your, the video for Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There are a lot of yeas in that. What does an idea for something like that come? Matt: We were playing at a bar and there was someone who comes around when the bars closing at like 1:00 in the morning with pizza and sells it by the slice. And our friends were buying it and they were throwing it at us, and feeding it to us as we were trying to play. I feel bad for the next person that had to use that mic. But yet we did that. Then they threw ice and pint glasses. I thought I broke my elbow. We were leaving like; we totally got to make a video like that. Sam: Kind of just get it clumped up as much as you can so you have kind of big chunks. You know the chunkier the better. We are going to set this aside for second. We are going to need for this dish two orange zest. Which you really just want the zest which is the outside. Matt: Wait so the outside is going in? Sam: The outside is going in. Matt: Ah that’s the part we always throw away. Who would have known it was the crucial part. Sam: But you don’t want the pith, which is that stuff. Matt: This is all going against everything I ever believed, olives being a sweet dish, and orange peels instead of orange insides. Sam: Yeah that’s were all the flavor. That’s were all the oils are. Do you see the color on this guys, it’s kind of got that yellow color. That means it’s hot. Kim: It kind of smells like cotton candy. Matt: It really does. Sam: We are going to gently whisk in this cold water, which is going to be quiet aggressive. We do it gently because otherwise it would seize up and you would end up with this big block of sugar. So we are also going to add two cups of port wine. So boom we have orange, orange, orange. Back on the stove, bring it to a boil; we are going to add our olives. Yeah, they have been washed and all ready to go. And I am going to drip a little on the floor because that’s what we do here. And we are going to let these simmer for about half an hour. Matt: Man that looks good. Sam: Then we will assemble the cobbler. Alright so our thirty minutes is up, we are going to turn this off. And we are going to take this and that and do this. Alright so these are going to strain for just a bit. Then we are going back in the. Now we should probably pour out these orange. Matt: I was going to say you don’t eat them? Sam: Well I mean they are probably delicious. Matt: Really? Sam: I am just surprising the hell out of you today. Matt: Oh my god. Sam: There we have the olives. Alright this is a cup of poaching liquid. We are going to just add it like that. Then we have a cup of sugar. Kim: There is a lot of sugar in this. Matt: Good thing I am trying to gain weight, and unsuccessfully too. Sam: Four tea spoons of cornstarch, it’s going to thicken that bad boy up. Alright so this is going to go back in that pan. What’s going to happen now we are going to cook it to thicken all this liquid. And kind of make what would normally be a cherry pie filling. It doesn’t take long to thicken this because the cornstarch is pretty effective. I seem to recall a story that entailed food poisoning. Is this an embarrassing story? Kim: Not for me. Matt: It was actually the first time Kim and I communicated. What was that like five years ago? She had some obsession with letters and postcards and stuff like that. And she had only met me like once when she asked me to send her a postcard. And I was in Portland, and I went to food not bombs, where they dig all the food out of the trash. And I got totally, totally sick. I felt like I had taken this gunshot to the gut. It was the worst pain I have ever been in, and good old food did it to me. Sam: Not good old food. Matt: No, no, no it was food. But yeah I wrote a letter to Kim with all the horrifying details of being on the bathroom floor of a burger king trying to suck in the cold from the tiles. Because I felt like I was on fire. Kim: But in the letter he explained how he stripped down to his underwear and was lying on the floor in the burger kind bathroom. Matt: I had, people would walk in and see me and think I am some drug addict and just walk back out. But that, for some reason I didn’t know Kim but I wrote her all the details of that, because it was that day. Kim: You knew what type of girl I was. Matt: Yeah, yeah and that was our first correspondence. Sam: Do you still have the note? Kim: Yep. Sam: Is that framed in the bathroom? Kim: That’s actually a good idea. Sam: I would have that framed ad put it right in the bathroom. Matt: Yes this is a cooking show and I am talking about… Aren’t you supposed to not talk about this during dinner? Sam: We do everything different around here. Matt: Ok, cool. Sam: So we are just trying to get this to tighten up a little bit. Even though its going got go in the oven and its going to tighten u in the oven. But you know that’s our filling. Pretend that’s cherries. Kim: It really looks like it. Sam: It is it’s a sexy kind of mixture. Matt: It does smell good. Sam: You sound so surprised still, like… Matt: I doubt it, I’m telling you. Sam: We are going to pour it in here. Boom, alright and then we have that topping that you guys made. Just kind of cover it like this. Then we have an oven, three hundred and fifty degrees for about thirty five to forty five minutes, like so and that’s it. Kim: That’s where the magic happens. Sam: Yeah, the magic happens in that stove. Oh cobblers ready, it’s hot. Hot, hot. Alright so that is finite, it is a crazy way to eat olives. Matt: You would not expect that that is olives. Sam: It is blazing hot, alright that is it that is the black olive cobbler, for Matt and Kim.