Rachel Maddow Fixed The Pina Colada (Reheat)

Piña coladas are way better in theory than in practice. Take it from MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. "The tragedy of the pina colada is that it was never wholesome."

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  As we turn to fall and the weather starts to cool down, I think of things like crunching leaves. I think of sharing from the sidelines of a soccer game, walking the dog in the woods. And when I think of doing all those things, I'm usually wearing something from LL Bean. Whether it's my puffer vest, my puffer coat, my scarf, whatever you're doing outside this year, you probably need something from LL Bean, whether it's their boots, their Scotch plaid flannel, their rugged field coat, or more. Grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider. As someone who has been lucky enough to go to Napa Valley, I can tell you, it's everything people say it is. Beautiful scenery, quaint, beautiful towns, and phenomenal food and

• 0:44Dan Pashman?

  drink everywhere you go. I don't even know that much about wine, but I know that every glass of wine I had in Napa Valley was excellent. I mean, there's no bad glass of wine and no bad meal. Choose between hundreds of wineries, tasting rooms, and chef-led restaurants from a low-key lunch on a vineyard terrace to a full tasting menu paired by the winemaker. Plan your trip at visitnapavalley.com.

• 1:16Dan Pashman?

  Hey, Dan here, and we are reaching deep into the archives for a classic Sporkful episode for today's reheat. This one was requested by a listener named Sandy in Michigan, who writes, "One episode that I've mentioned to more than a few people is Rachel Maddow fixed the pina colada. Like Dan, I also want to know when I can eat the cocktail garnish." That's something we cover in this episode. So perhaps this reheat could use a little revisit. You got it, Sandy. And I had the opportunity to work with Rachel Maddow when I was a producer. This was my first real job in radio. I was a producer on the now-defunct Progressive Talk Radio Network, Air America. Rachel wasn't on TV yet. And then, over the time that I was at Air America, her career took off. And so when I started this Sporkful, I was like, all right, I gotta get a couple celebrities on my show to try to get some

• 2:01Dan Pashman?

  listeners. The only two celebrities that I knew or that I would respond to my emails were Marc Maron, whose show that I had produced at Air America, and Rachel Maddow, I'd worked with. So very early on, I called in a favor and Rachel was kind enough and gracious enough to spend quite a lot of time with me for this recording because I realized about halfway through that my battery had died and I wasn't recording. And she, we started from the beginning again. She's the best. This episode also includes my old friend, Mark Garrison, who is my co-host in the very early days of the show. Of course, remember there's an episode of The Sporkful you want us to pull out of the deep freezer. Be like Sandy in Michigan. Drop me a line to hello at sporkful.com. Tell me your first name, location, what episode you want to hear and why. Thanks so much and enjoy Rachel Maddow and the pina colada.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  If I was on death row and they let your last meal be liquor, which they don't, I think the pina colada would actually be one of those things that would be up there for a last meal. That said, I never drink them in real life because in real life, I'm not having my last meal and I have to live with the consequences of drinking a pina colada. It would be good right before an execution because then I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have to worry about the headache, let alone the stomach ache.

• 3:16Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, you know, it's true. Pina coladas are way better in theory than in practice. Today on The Sporkful, I sit down with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and she tells us how she has fixed the pina colada. Yes, it's true. She fixed it with her very own recipe. Plus, we'll nerd out on cocktails big time. Which shape of lime garnish is better? Wedge or wheel? And what's the best way to eat the cherry that comes with your Manhattan?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  But see, you're sort of digging through your drink with a toothpick, trying to get that maraschino cherry out of the bottom, fishing it up through the drink, swallowing it and then finding this, putting the stem somewhere and then finishing off the garnish list drink.

• 3:52Dan Pashman?

  It sounds pretty gross, the way you describe it. That's all coming up. Stick around.

• 4:06Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Rachel Maddow is one of the best-known TV news people in America. She hosts The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as you probably know. She's also really into cocktails. In fact, she does a segment on her show sometimes called Cocktail Moment, where she shares a drink recipe that somehow relates to the news. Last year, during the election, she went on Jimmy Fallon and made a drink called The Millionaire in honor of Donald Trump.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Okay, so this is the bitter part.

• 4:38Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, and what is it, your little tiny little measuring cup thing?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm measuring three quarters of an ounce of lime juice, which is a lot of lime juice, and if you have an ulcer, it'll make you barf blood.

• 4:47Dan Pashman?

  If I was a-

• 4:47Speaker 01

  It's terrible.

• 4:50Dan Pashman?

  Rachel and I actually worked together years ago at a place called Air America Radio. It was a progressive talk radio network with Al Franken and Janine Garofalo and Marc Maron. It was my first real job in radio, and no one knew who she was. And we both had to come in at like 3:00 in the morning, and I helped produce her newscasts, which was a ton of fun, other than the 3:00 AM part. Anyway, when The Sporkful launched seven years ago, I knew I had to have Rachel on to talk cocktails. I began by asking Rachel about the garnishes that come with cocktails. First question: How and when do you eat the olives in a martini or the cherry in a Manhattan?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  I think I'm going to be able to short-circuit this entire discussion.

• 5:28Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  You're never supposed to eat the garnish.

• 5:30Dan Pashman?

  Arrgh!

• 5:31Speaker 01

  The garnish is not a snack. The garnish is there to modify the liquor that is in the glass. It is not there to provide you a tasty treat to go along with your drink. The drink is the treat.

• 5:43Dan Pashman?

  So then, I think the use of the word garnish here is wrong. Because to me, a garnish is something that is on the side. It's just there to make it look pretty. If it is in the drink, then it's part of the drink. It's not a garnish.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  You're not supposed to eat that little carved radish that comes on the thing that you just ordered at Applebee's. They carved it three days ago, and it's been on six different plates. You're also really not supposed to eat the thing that's not liquor in your drink. Sorry, I know, it's very upsetting.

• 6:06Dan Pashman?

  I would say that if you're going to eat your olive or your cherry or whatever, then it should be between- The one third of the way through the drink mark and the two thirds of the way through the drink mark.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  But that means you've got to be fishing in there with your fingers.

• 6:18Dan Pashman?

  A straw, a straw can do it. Yeah, a straw or a stirrer, you know, you can poke it out, you can get it out of there.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  It's impossible to do it with elegance, though, isn't it? Admit it.

• 6:27Dan Pashman?

  Oh, I didn't know that elegance was one of the criteria, right? If elegance was part of the issue here, that went out the window a long time ago, right?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  I'm gonna tie my hands behind my back and just oatbag nosedive into this thing.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Okay, actually, a side question on that. I find I like the Manhattan better without the cherry, at least the maraschino kind of cherry they usually have behind the bar, unless, however, you have like a proper brandy soaked cherry, that's pretty good.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  But even if it's a fancy cherry like that and it's been sitting out in a plastic tray on the bar all night, like, really? Do you want to, like, would you eat something else from a restaurant that had been sitting out in the customer area, like, warm, in its own juices, festering?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  You've never been tempted by an olive, something in a drink, to try? Like, what if someone put like a calamata olive in a martini?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  That would be gross. It would have sullied the gin to a degree that I wouldn't have enjoyed the martini in the first place. I don't, I don't think I would do it. I mean, here's the thing, is that I do most of my, my cocktail drinking at home on the weekends, I have a bar at home and I make drinks, and so if I am having martinis with olives, although I'm more of a lemon twist person myself, but if I'm doing that and I want the olive, I've got olives, because I use them to make the drink, and I will make myself a little dish of olives and have it on the side. If you want snacks, get snacks.

• 7:44Dan Pashman?

  Now, what about, Rachel, the best practices for using citrus garnishes?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Citrus garnishes are a wonderful thing. What you're trying to do with a citrus garnish is express the oil from the piece of citrus onto the surface of the drink. So you don't need any of the pith, any of the pulpy part, right? You don't need any fruit, certainly, but you also don't need a very thick portion of the rind, you just want that outside part that's got the sort of oily pores on it. So really what you ought to do with the citrus garnish, like, I, for example, like a lemon twist with my, with my martini, is that you want a very thinly sliced piece of lemon rind, you spritz it, spritz the oil out of that piece of rind onto the surface of the drink, and then throw it away. You don't even need to put it in the drink. It offers, there's very little additional yum that you get out of having the expressed garnish sitting in the drink, what you want is the oil.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  And so what is your technique for making these twists? I know there is a tool that you can buy that makes it a little bit easier, but I've always been kind of embarrassed by the really ugly looking twists that I'm barely able to get off of a lemon.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Well, if you have a, if you have a sharp paring knife.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  I do, and it doesn't work.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  It doesn't.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  I see the little tool that bartenders use to make those really perfect twists.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, that's called a channel knife. But you know, that's an interesting thing though, that when the kind of twist you can make, it sort of looks like a, it cuts like a notch into the fruit. So you get this very thick, perfectly constructed, can be very long curly Q kind of twist. Very pretty, not very functional in terms of adding citrus oil to the drink. I mean, what actually works the best, if you're not good with a paring knife, is a potato peeler. Take a potato peeler to the outside of a lemon. It'll cut a very thin, if it's sharp, it'll cut a very thin swath off the outside of the lemon. It'll leave, you know, you'll leave, you'll leave a white streak on the lemon where you've cut it off. You won't see fruit or anything. It's very thin. And then just, you just want to spray it on it.

• 9:31Dan Pashman?

  So the way you do it, Rachel, the citrus never actually touches the liquid.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:35Dan Pashman?

  See, like I like a gin and tonic with lime and I want a lot of lime flavor in my gin and tonic.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  You're talking about the actual juice from the flesh of the, of the lime.

• 9:43Dan Pashman?

  Right, yeah.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Oh, I would put, I put, I put a bunch of lime in my gin and tonic, but I wouldn't, you'd never use like a lime twist.

• 9:48Dan Pashman?

  Right, right. You wouldn't use a twist, exactly. If you're gonna use the wedge, I want a wedge where I can squeeze the wedge and get the juice out into my drink. I got a big problem then with the semicircle.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:00Dan Pashman?

  I want that wedge, I want the triangular wedge, because the semicircle, you know, when you squeeze it, it just kind of like crumbles and falls apart in your hand and not that much juice comes out.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Or a wheel is even worse.

• 10:09Dan Pashman?

  Yep.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Oh, the wheel.

• 10:11Dan Pashman?

  Why? Why? I mean, why would you ever want it in that shape?

• 10:14Speaker 01

  And you know, and that's an important thing to think about with citrus garnishes. Not twists, but rather having a wedge or a wheel or a wedge or a half wedge in the drink. Ideally, if the bartender knows what they're doing, or if you know what you were doing while you were making your drink. The wedge of citrus, the piece of citrus is not there to allow you to recalibrate the drink because it was mixed poorly. The drink is mixed properly and the fruit is there to be a pleasing visual experience. So if you need to be squeezing more citrus into your drink because it's too sweet, that just means the drink was made wrong.

• 10:47Dan Pashman?

  So then is a wedge a garnish?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  A wedge is a garnish.

• 10:51Dan Pashman?

  But I'm counting on that wedge.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Don't.

• 10:53Dan Pashman?

  For my...

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Ask the bartender to put more lime juice in your gin and tonic. Dan, I know, I'm blowing your mind. Look at you. You look hurt.

• 11:01Dan Pashman?

  But I like having control. I like knowing that I'm gonna finish the drink and it's gonna be the way I want. I'm gonna squeeze the juice in and then I'm gonna push that lime all the way down to the bottom of the drink.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  So you have always got your paws in your drink. This is what we're learning about you.

• 11:14Dan Pashman?

  Clearly aesthetics are not my concern.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  But also, like, do you wash your hands every time before you have a drink?

• 11:21Dan Pashman?

  Well, I'm pretty sanitary.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  If you are counting on digging around in your drink to fork the garnish out when you are only one-third of the way into the drink and you are counting on pawing your garnish, squeezing it in, and then shoving it down underneath the eyes, and in between each of these things, you are paying the bartender and shaking your friend's hand and getting change and all this stuff. I mean, you're Typhoid Mary, dude.

• 11:44Dan Pashman?

  You mean, other people don't drink with their hands?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  I mean, liquor is antiseptic, but unless you are drinking 151 all day, nothing is antiseptic enough to make up for your muddy paw drinking habits, Dan. Leave the drink alone.

• 12:03Dan Pashman?

  I don't know. The other week, we had researcher Charles Spence on the show. He talked about how much touch is part of the eating experience, how much of taste comes from what we feel with our hands. Yeah, I know, he didn't specifically talk about putting your hands in your drink, but I'm gonna assume he'd be on board with my approach. Anyway, the conversation with Rachel turned from drinks to bartenders. We talked about the many issues bartenders have to deal with, and then we got to a less obvious one: martinis. Now, a true martini is made with gin, but nowadays, a lot of people who order martinis expect vodka. So if you're a bartender, someone asks for a martini, what do you do?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  In an ideal world, everybody would know that a martini was made with gin and that would be the default and you'd have to ask for a vodka martini.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  It used to be that way. It used to be that way. James Bond and marketing, Stoli, all that changed everything.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yes, and so, and now you're in a situation where people are more likely than not expecting vodka rather than gin. But, you know, you can, as a bar, just decide you're going to make the wrong thing and call it a martini every day and thereby horrify everybody who knows how to drink and scare them away from your bar. Or you can ask. And I think you can ask in a way that is personable and not insulting. Did you want to, that with, I'm, you wanted that with vodka? Or you wanted that with gin?

• 13:19Speaker 02

  There were also really great hand motions with this. Doesn't come across on audio, but yeah, so it's not just the voice.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  But you do it with the inflection and you do it with eye contact and kindness and all of those things. I mean, being a bartender is a subtle, difficult humanitarian task.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  There's psychology involved, yeah.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you are, why do people drink? People drink at bars very rarely because they feel like they have to. Once you're an adult, there isn't a peer pressure situation that gets you into having a drink in a bar, especially now in the 2000s. If you are in a bar and you are feeling peer pressured into being there in order to like make right with your coworkers, nobody's going to be upset if you get a ginger ale. Nobody's going to judge you for that.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  So we are in a situation as adults in the 2000s where if you are ordering a drink in a bar, it is for something in your life. It is to do something for your day, to do something for your state of mind, to do something, to pass the time in a way that is unlike almost anything else you'll do in your day. And so the bartender has a responsibility, the bar manager in some cases, to make sure that that time is stepping away from the rest of your day, unlike anything else that you experience in the day, and is a stress reliever rather than a, than an addition to the stress in your daily life. And that's a, that's a big responsibility. I don't even feel cynical about it at all, even with bad bartenders and bad drinkers around me. I feel a very earnest sense of responsibility about what it is to be a bartender.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Right. You know, actually, if you were preparing for this, I was, I was curious, do you drink more when the left is doing well or poorly?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  For me, drinking is not about happiness.

• 14:53Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  For me, drinking is about, um, is about time. It's about having time to spend and wanting to spend it in a way that involves, um, that involves alcohol. So, yeah, it's not a, I tend to be a very happy drunk.

• 15:06Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  I don't, um, at this point in my life, I don't drink to get drunk.

• 15:09Dan Pashman?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  There was definitely a time in my life when I did that, but I don't do that. That is sometimes a side effect of drinking.

• 15:14Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Uh, but it's not the goal. Um, if I do get tipsy, I tend to be a person who experiences slight euphoria and happiness about it. And so that's neat, but that's no more of, that's no more a reward, um, for a happy circumstance in life than it is a relief from an unhappy circumstance in life.

• 15:39Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, more with Rachel Maddow. She'll reveal the secret ingredient of the Maddow colada. It's like a pina colada, but way better. And I'll ask her to name one food that's not improved by the addition of either melted cheese or chocolate syrup. Hear the answer when we come back. Stick around.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  Time to cook up some advertisements.

• 16:18Dan Pashman?

  As we turn to fall and the weather starts to cool down, I think of things like crunching leaves. I think of sharing from the sidelines of a soccer game, walking the dog in the woods. And when I think of doing all those things, I'm usually wearing something from LL Bean. Whether it's my puffer vest, my puffer coat, my scarf, whatever you're doing outside this year, you probably need something from LL Bean, whether it's their boots, their Scotch plaid flannel, their rugged field coat, or more. Grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider. Start the day strong with Quaker protein products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker protein products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals.

• 17:04Dan Pashman?

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• 17:18Dan Pashman?

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• 17:53Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. A lot of times people want to ask me like, oh, what are you cooking? What restaurants are you going to? They ask Emma and Andres and the whole Sporkful team the same questions. Well, it turns out, we provide a listener service to you that includes that information. It's our newsletter. We don't send it out all the time. We're not going to spam you. We're just going to send you useful information, recipes, restaurant information, links to articles that we're reading, shows that we're watching, and guess what else? You'll be automatically entered into giveaways for cookbooks featured on the show, as long as you live in the US or Canada. That's also where I'll email you to tell you about like, special sales happening on this Folini website, buy discounts on pasta and stuff. So, there are a lot of benefits, and you can sign up right now while you're listening. Head on over to sporkful.com/newsletter

• 18:35Dan Pashman?

  to sign up today. Again, that's sporkful.com/newsletter. Thanks. Now, back to this week's reheat.

• 18:44Dan Pashman?

  Before Rachel Maddow and I met up, I emailed her to ask her what cocktail issues in particular she wanted to discuss. And she wrote back with one line, "The tragedy of the pina colada." Now, as I said before, I was lucky enough to work with Rachel early in our careers. And let me tell you something, no matter what room Rachel is in, she is the smartest and also the most prepared person there. You come into a meeting, you think you found a great story or a great guest for the show to cover, Rachel already knows all about it. So, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that she did research before coming on the Sporkful. She had notes on the history of the pina colada.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  1957 is the date that is commonly assigned to the origin of the pina colada. And as with all drinking history, drinking history was written down by drunk people. And so it's all a little fuzzy, but this is what generally, this is generally what it is. And so it was invented in Puerto Rico and in 1949, so eight years before the pina colada is invented. Coco Lopez is invented. Coco Lopez you can still get, it's still called Coco Lopez. It's the same brand. It is, it is what we think of as cream of coconut and it is the base for the pina colada. The problem is that when we think about bad chemical drinks that make you feel bad and that give you a stomach ache and make you fat and sort of rob you of your brain cells and have made you feel like you've eaten Twinkies sort of thing.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  We think about having redesigned for modern ease or transportation or storage purposes, drinks that were once wholesome. The tragedy of the pina colada is that the pina colada was never wholesome. The pina colada in 1957, from the very start, was built on something horrible, which is Coco Lopez. Coco Lopez, cream of coconut. I grabbed the can. Starts off okay. Coconut, sugar, water, polysorbate 60, sorbitan monesterate, propylene glycol alginate.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Polysorbate 60 is actually among the better polysorbates. Now, I feel like between like 37 and 45, that were kind of the high points of polysorbates.

• 20:43Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, you get to 60, it really starts to fall off.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Well, if you get to 60, woo. So the pina colada was invented from the first place to be a chemical slurry. Unlike other drinks that have been made into awful things in modern times.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Like the daiquiri.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Like the daiquiri.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  The real daiquiri is a fine drink, but you will get horrible versions of it most places.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And so with the daiquiri now, you're likely to get it out of a slurpee machine. And it's made with some, some chemical stew that makes this, makes, makes Coco Lopez sound like mother's milk. And I mean, but you can reverse it or reverse engineer daiquiri to what it originally was, which is rum, lime, sugar. End of story. And it is a wonderful, wonderful drink. There's no way to do that with the pina colada. When you bring it back to brass tacks, it is as gross as it is today.

• 21:27Dan Pashman?

  What if you were to just take fresh pineapple juice? Coconut milk and rum and just mix those things together and put it on the rocks.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Thank you, Dan Bashman. I have re-engineered the pina colada.

• 21:40Dan Pashman?

  Wow.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:41Dan Pashman?

  This is huge.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Yes. Because the thing that you get from cream of coconut that you don't get from just using coconut is that you get this unctuous, in a good way, rich, positive mouth feel, deep-flavored coconut sweetness. And you can't get that just from using natural coconut milk.

• 22:00Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Or natural coconut juice.

• 22:02Dan Pashman?

  Okay, okay.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  So you have to use unsweetened coconut milk, leavened with, this is the crazy part, orgyot.

• 22:10Dan Pashman?

  That's the almond syrup, right?

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Almond syrup, which is-

• 22:13Dan Pashman?

  Is that not the secret ingredient to a Mai Tai?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  It is the secret ingredient to a Mai Tai. It is a classic cocktail ingredient and you can get like organic, not gross, versions of it. There's a French one that you can get on Amazon, which is just like, there's no preservatives in it or anything. So it's essentially like an almond syrup, mix that with organic, unsweetened coconut milk. The original pina colada recipe, as far as I understand, used Myers rum, which is a very dark, but sort of acrid rum. When you're using this replacement for Coco Lopez, you need something a little more subtle, so I recommend using like an eight-year rum instead of the Myers, which is very, very dark. But you make those little tweaks. You trade away the chemical slurry of the Coco Lopez, which is original-

• 22:53Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  And instead add your hippie-ass unsweetened coconut milk mixed with almond syrup. But it, it works.

• 23:00Dan Pashman?

  That is great. Do we have permission, Rachel, to promote your recipe?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 23:03Dan Pashman?

  Good, because you see, this Sporkful is supposed to be a clearinghouse, a gathering place, where people come together and learn about new and better ways to eat. Where new innovations in food and drink can be shared.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  That's very high-minded.

• 23:15Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, in fact, someday we're gonna form Sporkful University. Our motto is ruminate, masticate, promulgate.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, my, my idea was that once I got fired from cable news, that I would try to seek my millions as an entrepreneur. So I, I had, I, this had been my business plan for life, but I've decided that you guys could probably do better with it.

• 23:36Dan Pashman?

  But you know, if things for you take a turn for the worse, you know, you, you call us, we'll talk.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  All right. I could license it back from you.

• 23:42Dan Pashman?

  Yes, we'll work together. It'll be like one of those behind-the-music things, you know, like where you sign your life away, like on a cocktail napkin, and then it turns out you need the money later on. But we own you.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  And then you guys are like, living in Memphis in some big mansion, and I'm homeless outside banging on the gate. I know how this goes.

• 23:58Dan Pashman?

  I gotta say, since this interview was recorded, I have made Rachel's pina colada many times and it is so good. It has all the pineapple coconut flavor. It has that sweet syrupy mouth feel without the grossness and without all that slush. It's just served on the rocks and it's strong. Two of these and you are well on your way, let me tell you. If you're looking for that organic French orgeat almond syrup she mentioned, the brand is Tessair. And more pina colada madness for you because our pal, Daniel Gritzer from Serious Eats, he's got a new piece going up about pina coladas. And he says one of the reasons why it's hard to make a great pina colada is because ideally you'd use fresh pineapple juice. But fresh pineapple juice can be all over the map in sweetness and in flavor.

• 24:43Dan Pashman?

  So getting consistency in your recipe can be really hard. Daniel recommends combining some fresh juice with some store bought juice. And he uses lime juice too, which I think is genius. Get a little tart in there. Check out Daniel's pina colada piece on Serious Eats. Anyway, coming up, Mark and I get to the bottom of Rachel's personal food preferences. That's after the break. Stick around.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  It's time to open up a can of advertisements.

• 25:17Dan Pashman?

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• 26:02Dan Pashman?

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• 26:46Dan Pashman?

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• 27:19Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back. Let's get back to Rachel Maddow. Now, in the early days of this pork food, we used to give our guests a questionnaire in the style of the Proust questionnaire. You know, the one James Lipton used to give on Inside the Actors Studio? But we refashioned it to be about food. So would Rachel be up to the task? Are you ready?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  All right, I'm ready.

• 27:46Dan Pashman?

  Rachel, what is your favorite food?

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Um, that's like asking, what is your favorite song?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Um, I would, I would say, um, pumpkin pie.

• 27:59Dan Pashman?

  What is your least favorite food?

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Red bell peppers.

• 28:06Dan Pashman?

  Cooked or raw?

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:10Dan Pashman?

  What dish do you cook best? Or we could say, what cocktail do you prepare best? Or both?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I am not a, I am not a cook. I have a hard time combining ingredients with heat. The thing that I make the best, um, is, uh, I actually think that I, that, uh, given the proper, uh, tools, ingredients and time, I'd make a world-class martini.

• 28:31Dan Pashman?

  Excellent. And with the lemon twist is your preference, right?

• 28:33Speaker 01

  With a lemon twist and orange bitters.

• 28:35Dan Pashman?

  Oh, orange bitters, okay.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. One dash of orange bitters.

• 28:38Dan Pashman?

  What dish do you wish you could cook?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Oh. Um. My mom makes bread every Christmas time, which is, um, an oatmeal molasses bread. And it is the thing that I associate with, uh, I, I'm not, I'm not a fan of Christmas, but the fact that my mom makes that bread at Christmas time makes me like the entire season. It compensates for everything else that is bad about Christmas. And she's given me the recipe five or 10 times. I've tried to make it a million different times. It not only doesn't even come out as good as my mom's Christmas bread, it doesn't even come out as bread. I don't know what it is that she does, but she has-

• 29:16Dan Pashman?

  Poly 60.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  It's a poly sorbait 60 it could be. Coco Lopez, baby, yeah.

• 29:21Dan Pashman?

  You know, this is something that I've been pondering for years. What is one food that is not improved by the addition of either melted cheese or chocolate syrup?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Um, white rice is not improved by the addition of chocolate syrup, nor by melted cheese.

• 29:35Dan Pashman?

  Really? You never have any cheese on rice?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  No, I, yeah, it's not, it's not a good move.

• 29:39Dan Pashman?

  All right.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. If, if served, if served rice on a plate and there's melted cheese elsewhere on the plate, you know how, if you like melted cheese, you have a way of moving it around on the plate so that it makes its way into every forkful? If rice is one of the other things on the plate, I will not do that with the cheese.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Okay, what alcoholic beverage did you drink too much of as a teenager, thus rendering the beverage undrinkable for you for the rest of your life?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Oh, get back on the horse, people. There is no such thing as an undrinkable beverage that is undrinkable because of a prior bad experience. There are all sorts of undrinkable, bad alcoholic beverages, but they have nothing to do with your wussy childhood teenage experience. Get back on the horse, please.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Good answer.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Buck up.

• 30:22Dan Pashman?

  All right, what is a food that you loved as a child that you hate now?

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Um, I used to drink, um, the brine out of black olive, uh, canned black olives when I was a kid.

• 30:33Dan Pashman?

  Oh, my God.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Okay, speaking of brine in jars, what do you think of the growing promotion of the pickleback, which is a shot with a pickle juice chaser?

• 30:43Speaker 01

  I, um, am not opposed to the idea in principle. I have never tried one, nor am I intrigued.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  I think that's also the right answer.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Okay, what is a food that you hated as a child that you love now?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Oh, nuts. I hated all nuts as a child, all nuts.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Was this an allergy or anything?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  No, it was, I had convinced myself as a kid that eating nuts would give me splinters in my mouth. Cause I thought they were like wood. And so I was not only, I not only didn't like nuts, I was afraid of them. I thought they would cause me injury.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Do you remember the moment when you discovered you were wrong about the woodiness of nuts?

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Susan, my partner Susan, makes chocolate chip cookies with nuts in them, with chopped nuts in them. And I remember telling her, yeah, I don't, I don't eat nuts in chocolate chip cookies. And then there's chocolate chip cookies there. And so, yeah, I'm eating them and it's fine and I'm not getting splinters and everything's okay.

• 31:37Dan Pashman?

  Final question, Rachel. If heaven exists, what would you like to see on the menu?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  If heaven exists, I think that we no longer have to make decisions about our food choices. We are constantly being enlightened as to what it is that we love, not through past experience, but through trust in what is to come.

• 31:57Dan Pashman?

  Kind of like with that bartender.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. Sometimes some bars are heavenly because the bartender knows what you ought to be drinking way better than what you think you ought to be drinking.

• 32:20Dan Pashman?

  That's Rachel Maddow, host of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. And if you want her pina colada recipe, it's on sporkful.com. Or get it when you sign up for our newsletter, go to sporkful.com/newsletter. This show is produced by Anne Sanney and me, Dan Charles is our editor. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Jenny Radelit. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  And this is Douglas from Memphis, Tennessee, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 33:09Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Gianna Palmer.

• 33:12Dan Pashman?

  The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 33:16Dan Pashman?

  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. Does your podcasting app have that? 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 siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Hey, that's me, Teddy Swims. You hear that? That's life. So go grab it. Grab your old friends, grab new friends, grab a white cloak. Grab flavor for everyone in your group. Grab music, laughter, and moments you'll never forget. You'll never regret it. Hey, man. Grab new friends, grab old friends, grab life by the glow, White Claw.

• 34:29Speaker 05

  Please drink responsibly. White Claw Celta Works, Chicago, Illinois.

• 34:31Dan Pashman?

  Hey, it's Dan here. Thank you so much, first of all, for tuning into this porridge every week. We really appreciate it. And I want to let you know, if you want to hear new episodes ad-free, subscribe to Sirius XM Podcasts Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit siriusxm.com/podcastsplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. Thanks.