(light music) - This program is brought to you by the members of WCNY.

Thank you.

- Nationwide, Hungry for History markers from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation highlight unique foods and traditions, including salt potatoes and Berry Dairy Days, available through grants for communities and nonprofits.

More at wgpfoundation.org/tv.

- Syracuse sits in the heart of New York State, with access to the Finger Lakes and the Adirondacks, from city vibes and great local eats, to live music and festivals that roll on year-round.

Four seasons for everyone.

- Liberty Tabletop has been crafting flatware in America for over 20 years and is dedicated to supporting our community and preserving the craft of flatware manufacturing.

Liberty Tabletop.

(light music) - Spatchcock Funk is in the house.

(upbeat music) Our house, and your house too.

You know where the party's at?

Wherever you're at.

We're gonna teach you how to throw the best parties, the best dinners, the best get-togethers.

All you need is the people you love, and we'll take care of the rest.

Spatchcock Funk, dope food, strong drinks, great stories.

(carefree music) We up in it, and we about to get up in people's business, baby.

Small business that is.

Buying local and showing mad love and respect for our people.

Small businesses are the backbone of our country, and it takes a strong backbone to run one too.

64% of new jobs in the US are created by small businesses every year, and we all about that.

You know we love to party, and the best reason to throw down is when you're celebrating and giving back to the community, especially one that gives you so much like ours.

At Spatchcock Nation, we never, ever want people to wonder how we feel about 'em.

We'd rather tell someone we love 'em 20 times a day than never tell 'em at all.

- Matt, you're up.

- All right, hold on.

See, we're a small business too.

We know how hard it is to keep the lights on, so we're putting the spotlight on a shop we love, our local tattoo parlor.

These creative cats literally put a permanent mark on their customers every day.

And every time we walk in here, we leave inspired.

It takes blood, sweat, and tears to make a small business work, and we're proud to bleed for the cause.

This is drop the needle.

♪ Waving like the ocean ♪ Waving like the ocean, waving like the ocean ♪ ♪ Waving like the ♪ Your body waving like the ocean, waving like the ocean ♪ ♪ Waving like the ocean ♪ Waving like the ♪ Your body wa wa wa wa waving every angle I want ♪ ♪ You got me wa wa wa wa waiting till the beat gonna drop ♪ ♪ Hit me ♪ Pa ra pa pa ra ♪ Pa ra ra da pa pa ra ♪ Pa ra pa pa ra ♪ Pa ra pa pa ra (optimistic music) (bubble pops) (optimistic music continues) - Spatchcock Funk repping small businesses.

That's our second favorite to a business, by the way.

The first, nunya.

Nunya business.

So we're making a drink for our friends at the tattoo shop that matches their style: eclectic, fun, different.

So this is the Ink and Tonic, y'all.

A take on a classic drink, but it brings in all the cool artistic stuff that make these people awesome.

We want them to know we think they're awesome, so each ingredient is built on that.

I'm gonna walk you through it right now.

Take a glass, we're gonna ice that up.

(ice clinking) Now, tattoos bring in a bunch of different styles, artistic flavors, things that really work beautifully across different art forms.

To respect that, we've got some floral gin here, and we're gonna use that as the alcohol ingredient here.

So I'm gonna get a little healthy.

Now, the tonic that we bring to this thing is a date-infused tonic.

So a date, if you were looking at dates when you're buying 'em, these are dried dates.

If you wanna know if a date's bad, if he's not paying attention to the server, if they're not being nice to the people in the restaurant, that's a bad date.

Don't go on bad dates, and use 'em to figure out if people are good people or not.

'Cause if they ain't, beat it.

So the date tonic, date-infused tonic, we're gonna put in there.

To make this thing an Ink and Tonic, because they be sinking ink into people's arms, legs, all over their bodies, we're gonna sink some ink into this thing.

We've made some squid ink-infused simple syrup, which is fantastic.

Now, it adds an umami spike to this thing, a new flavor profile that you don't see a lot in cocktails, and we love it.

To get it, what we did first was we took a squid and we milked this puppy to get all the good ink out of it.

Nah, just kidding.

We bought a jar of squid ink, but I'm gonna cook that thing later.

So you take a half cup of water, a half cup of sugar, mix it up.

And meanwhile, a little bit of squid ink, maybe a teaspoon or two, splash of water, so it's not too viscous.

And just go through it and get the viscosity outta there.

So we're gonna put a splash of that squid ink in here for some cool cloudiness.

Then, we're also gonna add in a little bit of grapefruit juice.

That brightens up all the flavors we just added.

Spin this puppy up.

(ice clinking) And to make it cool, we're gonna garnish it with the licorice wheel and some citrus.

That's always fun too.

Now, we got ourselves the Ink and Tonic repping our peeps.

(ice clinking) (glass clunks) (optimistic music continues) (laid-back music) (tattoo machine rattling) We about to tie one on and tie up some piggies too because we're making a Thai bacon watermelon salad.

Salads to me are kinda like meh and out there, but not this one.

This one changes the game.

The way a cool tattoo shop does, the way a good business can be an anchor business and change how a neighborhood works.

And that's pretty important.

So that's what we're doing with this thing.

We're making a dish that's a salad that can change the rest of the meal.

We're gonna start by making the dressing, the marinade, so to speak.

We've got a whole mess of creamy peanut butter, some soy sauce, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, a whole mess of garlic.

Ginger paste, you can also use ground fresh ginger.

(spoon clinks) A little bit of chili garlic sauce in there to your liking, heat-wise.

Salt and pepper.

First, we're gonna mix it up, and then we're gonna start whisking it.

So the first time I had this thing, man, my wife and I were bouncing around this dope neighborhood in Portland.

And we had like tattoo shops around there, art galleries, all sorts of cool stuff.

And man, Portland was sick.

- Maine?

- Nah, dude, Oregon, man.

But Maine is pretty dope too.

Now, after we've got this mixed up and beat up a little bit, we're gonna put in some water.

Then, we're gonna start whisking it, and that's gonna start getting it to the more of the liquidy mix we want.

(whisk scraping) We're gonna throw in some basil, a lot of basil.

That flavor is starting to come through.

You can smell the basil, and this is where things, where the rubber really hits the road on a really bad (beep) salad.

We're also gonna add in a bunch of brown sugar, and mix that up.

We've got a really awesome combination here.

We're using watermelon because watermelon is an awesome flavor.

Also, when you're getting a tattoo or you're working hard in your small business, stay hydrated.

This is a great hydration tool.

We're gonna mix that around and get that beautiful peanut flavor with the watermelon, two flavors that go really well together.

You'd be surprised, but don't be because they're both awesome, and they should party just well together.

But the kicker for this awesome dish, why it's Thaid piggies.

You got the Thai flavor, but the pigginess part of it is one of our favorite ingredients of all time, bacon.

This bacon is thickly cut.

We went to the butcher shop, which is one of my favorite things to do in the whole world.

Our local butcher shop, I love these cats.

Every time I walk in there, it's like I'm Norm from Cheers.

We're in the back.

They're showing me how to cut meat.

They're just the greatest people in the world.

It's a small business.

Butcher shops, bakeries, coffee shops, local people, that's where it's at.

So we've got these big, thick pieces of bacon that usually start out maybe a third of an inch, a real inch.

And then, we're gonna chop 'em up a little bit and in pieces to become bite-size, and we're gonna toss those into our salad.

But we might make sure, (Matt chewing) yeah, that bacon's good.

We're gonna mix it all.

So now, we've got that color all across every piece of bacon and every watermelon cube.

We got this gorgeous salad all put together.

We're gonna put it on a beautiful plate.

Look at that pink popping on that white, fantastic.

Garnish it with some crushed up peanuts.

Get me a piece of bacon, get me a bite of watermelon.

Mm, I'm getting all tied up.

(bubble pops) (laid-back music continues) (relaxed music) Whenever you're taking care of your friends in a small business, cater it to them the way they cater things to us.

Make it about their personality.

And our buddies at the tattoo shop are fun, different, and wild.

It's like a massive mashup of different styles and flavors.

The tattoos, the colors, the way they act.

So we're gonna do the same thing with another dish here.

We've got a side salad.

Our pasta course, the starch is Rasta Pasta Salad because Jamaican me crazy, baby.

So when you're caring for small business people, use quality ingredients, right?

Don't make cookies for a cookie shop.

We're not gonna give tattoos to a tattoo parlor.

We're gonna make something that goes across the board the way they do.

They take care of animal rescue, they do a bunch of things outside of it that's just really nice.

So we're gonna make sure this sauce hits different notes the way they do.

We're gonna start with some mayo, then a little bit of a sour cream, which adds more creaminess but another little layer of a velvet texture.

So the mouth feel also gets added into it.

Just a little bit of honey for some more sweetness.

A little bit of hot sauce, garlic powder.

Combination of salt and pepper.

Now comes the big ingredients.

So we've got some jerk seasoning.

Jerk seasoning is one of my favorite seasoning in the world for meat, for vegetables.

What it does is it creates an aromatic.

So a lot of times, the science behind it besides the cool flavors and it's got garlic and it's got all sorts of different things in it, but really it's an aromatic is a flavor that you almost smell more than you taste.

So each bite, it really brings that to the table, and that's what the jerk seasoning does here.

We're also adding in a little bit of browning sauce.

So browning sauce is a really cool culinary ingredient.

We don't put a lot into it, but there's something called the Maillard reaction, and we might have talked about that before or maybe not.

Whenever you're cooking meat or amino acids, that fat that caramelizes gives you that crust and that different flavor, that is the Maillard reaction.

And basically, browning sauce is the Maillard reaction in a bottle.

Now, we've got this really good, really nice, it should be smelling really fresh to you, very like Caribbean almost.

Sun shininess, a joint in your hand.

I'm gonna put in a pound of pasta.

We're using penne here 'cause I like how penne kinda coats with this type of dressing.

We're gonna toss that too.

Any pasta salad you can make someone else think, "Wow, man, the pasta salad is as good as everything else," then you're in good shape.

We also have in a white onion that we sauteed in a teeny bit of neutral oil.

And then, a barely sauteed green bell pepper.

So it still has a little crunch to it, but this gives us some color in here and kinda like, you know, when you see like all the Jamaican flavors and flags.

You see the red, green, yellow.

So we've also got some halved cherry tomatoes, (container clinks) and we've got a pretty awesome looking salad here.

But it doesn't just smell awesome and taste awesome, it looks awesome.

Just like a great tattoo, it's gotta look good.

I mean, I've never really smelled the tattoo, but there's a smell in the shop that always makes me happy.

I walk in there, I get inspired.

Let's just see how it came out.

(relaxed music continues) The jerk seasoning brings it to the next level.

Jamaican me crazy, Rasta Pasta Salad.

(easygoing music) Hey honey, time for the main event of all these fixings that we're fixing up for our peeps.

This is our Hot Honey Fried Chicken Sandwiches, y'all.

And that's important to us, man, because to me, if you're a good home cook, the real belle of it all is fried chicken.

If you can make a good fried chicken, you can really make anything else.

So this is a great way to do it.

We're gonna go through all the reasons why and how that's important.

But we chose chicken thighs.

Chicken thighs are important for fried chicken because it's that dark meat.

It's my favorite meat.

It's juicier, it's got more flavor to it, but also it's a pretty big deal for our club.

'Cause our crew, most of the people in our crew have a tattoo on one of their thighs.

It's a big meaty spot to get some ink sunk into ya, so it looks great, and our crew has all got 'em.

First, though, we're gonna make that dope, hot, honey sauce.

So we've got a jar of honey up in here that I'm gonna put over heat.

(bubble pops) (knob clicks) And honey is wild, dude.

Like I actually wanted to call this sauce Stephanie sauce after my wife because it's both hot and sweet, but we're just gonna call it hot honey for now.

Here's the deal with this baby.

We got the honey going, and honey is wild because it really never goes bad, good honey.

A bunch of dudes doing some archeology stuff, like digging up dinosaurs or monsters and dragons in Egypt and found honey in some dude's tomb.

Man, it was like 3,000 years old.

And in my mind, I picture afterwards they were frying up some dinosaur in that hot honey sauce.

So we got our honey warm.

We're gonna add in a nice handful of crushed red pepper flakes.

Then, we're gonna add in a nice, healthy amount of apple cider vinegar.

We've got a whole diced jalapeno we're gonna add in here.

And you can do this two ways depending on how hot you want it, and we like it hot.

If you wanna increase the heat, leave in the seeds and the ribs of the pepper.

And if not, take 'em out.

But we decided to leave 'em in 'cause we wanna make things hot.

We got it all simmered up.

Now, we're just gonna let it cool to room temperature, then just strain it and get ready to apply it.

A good tattoo needs a couple key things.

Needs to have a really good design and a good space in your body that fits that design.

Good fried chicken needs a good brine and a good crunch.

So this is the way to make a juicy perfect brine for any type of fried chicken.

We've got two quarts of buttermilk here.

And buttermilk makes it juicy, so when it fries, it's still gonna retain this beautiful, nice, tender bite as you just pull it with your teeth.

Then, I always put in a good, healthy amount of pickle juice, dill pickle juice.

This is my dad's pickles.

My dad makes some great pickles, so we keep it in the family.

From there, a little bit of hot sauce.

Now, these are gonna be hot anyways with the hot honey, but if you don't want the hotness or the heatness, it ain't gonna make it spicy.

It's gonna bring out the fattiness of the buttermilk.

When I was a kid, actually, I started very early learning about cooking.

I was really young, and I saw people making things with buttermilk on TV.

And I went to the fridge, and we didn't have none.

So I microwaved some butter, poured it in some milk, and it does not have the same effect.

(bubble pops) (easygoing music continues) Granulated garlic, and then salt and pepper.

And we're gonna whip this up with a whisk, but we get it evenly mixed in here, and we're gonna let this sit for a minimum of three hours, but we almost always go overnight.

So these beautiful thighs slide right in like a pair of stockings.

You know how they just fit, right?

So they go in there.

We're gonna let 'em sit overnight.

And now, let's make the dredge.

Here comes the two in the one-two punch.

You're making fried chicken, the dredge that provides the crunchiness is super important.

This is the version we make for sandwiches, and I'll tell you the difference between that one versus whole pieces of chicken.

But the base, we're gonna have equal parts all-purpose flour and cornstarch.

When we mix it all up, it creates almost what's called a shatter effect.

So the batter, when we fry it, becomes really crisp and brittle.

That allows a big crunch and a light feeling, so it's light and crunchy at the same time, that's critical.

The other big part of it too is baking powder.

So not baking soda, I've made that mistake.

Baking powder, as it fries, is gonna release carbon dioxide like I'm exhaling (breathes) and it comes out.

That's gonna create a bit of a bubbly, textured feel.

So you're getting a thicker crunch on the batter itself, so that's why we use that.

If I was doing whole pieces of chicken, I cut back on the starch a little bit and a little bit on the baking powder.

I'd still use some.

Got some granulated garlic.

We have some smoked paprika that we're gonna use in here because we want a little smoky flavor in this.

Then, salt and pepper.

So we season our, that's our seasoned dredge with the seasonings in this dredge that we're gonna drop into.

All right, this is ready.

So now, we're gonna dip some chicken in, babe.

I put some of these in last night, so the next step is to take 'em, put 'em on a wire rack, and let 'em drain a little bit.

You can cut these babies in half if you want, but we like these big, honking sandwiches.

So while this is draining a little bit on our rack, we're gonna turn our brine into a batter.

We've got three whole eggs.

We're gonna put it in here, and then whisk it up.

This gives us more fluffiness and a little bit more of a thicker batter to get a really thick crunch on there.

I'm gonna shake it a little bit into the dredge.

Nice, thick in the dredge.

Back in the batter, and back in the dredge one more time.

Do that with all of 'em.

(oil crackling) Time to build a bird, y'all.

Hot Honey Fried Chicken.

We got a potato roll.

Love it with fried chicken sandwiches.

I made a little garlic lemon mayo, so just some fresh lemon juice, crushed up garlic.

Mix it together.

I like that with a good piece of fried chicken.

So I'm gonna put that on the top.

Then, for us, some people like pickles, for this sandwich, we like to put a couple of banana peppers on here.

A little bit of a sharpness that just stings the right way, you know?

On the bottom, we've got some purple and green cabbage slaw.

Just a little sour cream, little mayo, little Prosecco vinegar, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, little bit of honey.

There we go.

Now comes the big part of it.

We're gonna get one of these beautiful pieces of fried chicken that we just took off the fryer.

Look at that big, beautiful, golden brown piece of fried chicken.

I like my thighs covered in tattoos or covered in batter and fried, and that's where we're at.

But we ain't done yet.

Here comes that hot honey.

Strained it, and I'm gonna take a spoon and drizzle it real sweet like all over the top.

Ugh, now, this sandwich, like when we threw a party, we had people, we had 200 people there, 40 people got tattoos because people love being around people marking things up and marking things down.

I'm gonna mark this thing an A-plus, I bet.

(sandwich crunching) (bubble pops) Mm.

Crunchy, sweet, hot, the textures, everything.

It's like a great group of people, man.

Bringing great stuff together.

This is a sandwich.

(easygoing music continues) (chill music) ♪ Yeah, normally now, it's the kinda thing I do on my own ♪ ♪ It's over ♪ Sorta my thing, yo ♪ I'm a loner (singer sings in foreign language) (tattoo machine rattling) - All right, dude, how you feeling?

You want to take a break, take a leak, go outside?

- I think I'm good, man.

- All right, cool.

- This is coming up sharp.

- Cool.

Thank you.

- I like it.

(tattoo machine rattling continues) You know, taking a break makes me think about a time I was on a bit of a tattoo and drinking bender.

- I've done those before, yeah.

- I figured you had.

- Yeah.

- We're in New Orleans and we had been there for a few days.

I got a tattoo one of the days there.

The next day, we're cruising down Frenchmen Street.

- Okay, I can't really, I can kinda picture, I have this picture in my mind of like what New Orleans looks like, but I just imagine it's all the same.

Just kinda like hectic and party and- - Yes.

- Busy, dirty streets.

- Yes.

Dirty streets, busy, hectic parties.

Everything that I look forward to in life, you know what I mean?

- Yeah.

- Well, we're there hanging out, and on each corner are bands.

We got a dude in one of those like carts where he pulls you around in.

It was like 50 bucks to go like a block.

It was awesome.

- Like a rickshaw.

- That wasn't his name.

Hey!

(tattoo artist chuckling) So this party's raging.

We're having a great time dipping into these bars, and we stopped into this one bar.

Actually, this is how crazy this street is.

We walk in and you remember the band, Blues Traveler?

- I mean, I'm not familiar with them per se, but I know who they are.

- All right, so the lead singer of that is the house musician there.

Like he's playing every day for like a month.

- Okay.

- So we're dipping through in and out of places, and there's lines for every restroom.

Or the sea of people in there is too big to even get to the bathroom.

- Yeah.

- Now, the more we're hanging out, the more we're drinking, and the more we probably need to use the bathroom.

Which is one of those things that you kinda gotta make sure you've got access to what you gotta do.

(tattoo machine rattling continues) Well, we figure out we've gotta make a change here.

So we walk up to a tattoo shop that I got a tattoo from a couple years prior to that.

- It's probably your best bet for finding an actual clean bathroom in the area.

- That's what I was thinking because tattoo shops are always clean if it's a good place.

- Usually, yeah.

- Usually, right?

Very sterile people are in really good spirits usually in there.

It's well lit, so this is the perfect place.

We walk in there, and the shop girl is like, "Can I help you?"

And I don't recognize her, of course.

- She doesn't recognize you then?

- Nope.

- Yeah.

- I say, "Hey, we gotta use your restrooms."

She's like, "Paying customers only."

Now, I had a tattoo from there.

- You paid once before.

- I did pay once before.

So back in it, right?

And I'm like, "Look, I got this tattoo right here."

And she's like, "You coulda got that anywhere."

And I'm like, "Okay, here we go."

- Doesn't believe you.

- So we decide the best thing to do here is to get our rear ends up in some chairs.

And the artists there were all super cool, and we're talking to them and they offered us a beer while we're there, which was cool, which actually, though, was not what we needed at the time.

Not to thin the blood or to help with the bathroom situation.

- Yeah.

- You know what I'm talking about?

- I do.

- It's like that time, though, like when you gotta use the bathroom, but you want another beer?

One of those.

One of those moral dilemmas I face regularly.

- Yeah, take a beer.

- Yeah, you gotta take the beer.

You can always find another bathroom.

- Yeah.

- Or so you think.

So we get done with these tattoos, and I look up.

And Stephanie's done first, and I look up by the front of the shop, and she's there having a beer talking to somebody.

But she's got like the I-gotta-go-potty dance going, like leaning back and forth on her feet.

And I'm like, "What is going on here?"

So I get done, I walk up and I'm like, "All right, give me the keys to the restroom."

And she's like, "Sorry, it's out of order."

- Oh, she duped ya.

- She did dupe us.

And then, we got duped into basically peeing in the alley that we were trying to avoid peeing in the entire time.

- Yeah, that's kinda your last option and kinda your only option.

- And that's why I don't wear flip flops up there anymore.

But that's also why I wore a diaper today.

- Good idea.

Yeah, you might be onto something with the diaper at the tattoo appointment.

(tattoo machine rattling continues) All right, so what'd you guys end up getting?

- I ended up getting this crown right here.

- Okay.

- Which I pulled right off the sheet.

Like we had to go so fast.

I'm like, "Gimme that one."

- Yeah.

- She's like, you want color or shading?

I'm like, "No black as fast as possible."

- Smart.

- It worked out, though, and it taught me a couple things.

One of which is just how to prepare for getting a tattoo, which is why I wore a diaper today.

- Oh, good thinking.

To each his own, though.

- Buy local and be local, baby.

Support small businesses.

Even if you ain't buying, stop in, say hello, and check on your people.

When you give a gift from a small business, you're actually giving a gift twice, so make it count.

Our goal in life is to make others feel valued and respected.

That's why we cook.

That's why we throw parties.

That's even why we make this show.

So get out there and buy local wherever you are.

Now, I'm about to go back and tip a few with these cats, so mind your business.

(chill music continues) - Hungry for History markers from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation shares stories behind regional dishes and local food festivals, including Smith Island Cake and Spiedie Fest, available through grants for municipalities and nonprofits.

wgpfoundation.org/tv.

- Syracuse sits in the heart of New York State, with access to the Finger Lakes and the Adirondacks.

From city vibes and great local eats to live music and festivals that roll on year-round.

Four seasons for everyone.

- Liberty Tabletop has been crafting flatware in America for over 20 years, and is dedicated to supporting our community and preserving the craft of flatware manufacturing.

Liberty Tabletop.

(bright music)