First step, you’re gonna take a branzino. Sorry, Maggie, did I get you with the fish? Welcome to Mythical Kitchen where dreams become cat food. All right, so I absolutely love my cat Pippin, but I have this little problem where I keep accidentally locking him in the closet before I go to work, and then my girlfriend working from home will send me videos of him trapped in the closet scratching to get out. Roll the clip. So what I’m saying is I need to make this up to Pippin somehow. I was having a conversation with him the other day, he went, “Ah,” and I was like, “Oh my god, you want me to make you a delicious meal from scratch that you can test against your favorite Fancy Feast food just like Rhett and Link do on GMM because you’re a fan of the show and also a cat?” And he said, “Ah.” So that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna cook Pippin a delicious meal because I think his food right now, it is subpar for the fancy prince that my beautiful son is, that I’m gonna take my dish, feed it to Pippin right next to his Fancy Feast that he eats every night. And I’m gonna see if he prefers my beautiful fatherly home cooking. If he can taste the love, or if he loves his delicious liver slop. We’re gonna be breaking that down into three easy meows. You can meow the steps right there. We also have a meow in the description below. Let’s get me meowing. So this is what I’m competing against. This is my competitor today. This is Fancy Feast, ocean white fish in tuna feast. This has Pippin’s favorite. Pippin tends to love flavors from the ocean, but I’m gonna take some of his other dishes that he loves to eat, not what he actually eats. ‘Cause what he actually eats is like litter and like foil out of the recycling bin. But other than that, catnip. Pippin absolutely loves catnip. He has a little banana toy, and he takes it, and he like rubs it all over his body. And he goes like, “Ah.” So I’m gonna try and just flavor a stock with some catnip. A lot of people have probably asking, “Josh, why are you doing this?” To which I would say, “I truly don’t know.” It’s a contrived plot, but I’m pretty excited to see what happens with the cat. But also there’s a lot of things that can poison a cat. So if you Google, what can’t you feed cats? It turns out it is most things. So I am doing what I believe to be a very safe recipe based on my cursory Google searches. First step, you’re gonna take a branzino. Sorry, Maggie, did I get you with the fish? I’m trying to get a lot of fish flavor in there. Now cats eat a mostly carnivorous diet, right? Cats are carnivores, but a little bit of fiber from some grains or some greens can do them some good. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna make a barley and spinach risotto flavored with a branzino in catnip stock. ‘Cause you just think cats love novel textures, but you already knew that, right? So what’s more of a novel texture than a nice really beautiful silky barley risotto? So I’m adding some of that branzino in there. According to a Google search, if you put too much salt in a cat’s food, they’ll get kidney stones. And I don’t want that to happen to Pippin. So I’m not gonna salt anything. I’m gonna add like a couple of little granules just to give it some oomph. I’m still sprinkling in catnip. Catnip is an herb that is very similar to mint. Pippin also loves mint. When I brushed my teeth, I will be brushing it with my minty Crest toothpaste, and he comes up, and he swedges his head inside my mouth and goes, “Ah.” So that’s fun. We’re not putting any toothpaste in this. And I’m just gonna close the Instant Pot. We’re gonna pressure cook this, and then we’re gonna strain it. And then we’re gonna start working on our barley spinach risotto, for a cat. I can’t stress this enough. This is all for a cat. Okay, so there’s a few things you need to know about Pippin. One, he loves podcasts, and he’s a religious viewer of me and Nicole’s, it’s called “A Hot Dog Is A Sandwich.” And again, he’s a cat. That’s every Wednesday on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We handle the biggest ethical food debates. Like is it okay to eat cat? Cut that out. It’d be disrespectful to not eat Pippin when he dies. Here, we have our strained fish stock, a little bit of catnip in it. I’m gonna give it a taste. Golly, that’s very fishy, which is great. ‘Cause Pippin loves fishy things. He also loves Mediterranean roast chicken because every time I get Zankou Chicken, he just rips it off my plate and eats all the skin and then throws it up on the couch. What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna take some of that there stock, outta here. My plan here, Pippin seems to love bright colors. Why do I think that? Totally unclear. But I kind of assume he, can cats even see color? That’s a beautiful metaphor if they can’t. So I’m gonna make this like a nice beautiful green color because Pippin deserves this to be the color of emeralds and jewels. Hey, fun fact. Did you know that cats and humans don’t taste things the same and that there’s strong evidence to believe that cats do not taste sugar? You guys know that? Cats can’t taste no sugar. Yeah, there we go. Make it nice and green. So cats can actually tastes salt, and there is a lot of naturally occurring sodium in certain meats that they eat and whatnot. They cannot taste sweet, or at least it’s believed that they can’t. Add some of that to a pan. Get it nice and sizzling. Beautiful, beautiful. And then I just have some cooked pearl barley here, a little bit of grains. It’s good for cats, even though cats are carnivores. And apparently there’s like a big war. I fell deep into cat food TikTok. There’s some wild stuff out there, but apparently like the vegans are like mad that people aren’t feeding their cats vegan diets. And so people keep hashtagging cats are carnivores. Anyways, the point is I’m jumping right into the vegan cat food TikTok wars. That is a gorgeous color. So I’m just gonna stir this. I’m really gonna just draw some of that starch out of the barley because my plan here, my plan here, bear with me, is I want to stack all this stuff up in a ring mold to emulate the shape of the can that Pippin is used to. Because I’m trying to sort of blend his world with my world. Do a little bit of fine dining plating technique. But with the pallet for cats. Josh, they see color, but it might not be perceived the same way. You sound like a college freshmen who smoked weed for the first time. They see it, but they don’t perceive it the same, man. Pippin knows tricks. He knows sit. And that trick is where you scream sit at him. And he goes, “Ah,” and continues standing. It’s a pretty good trick. Really, a couple of months ago, we’re all like, “Guys, we need to focus on like actual cooking tips that people can use.” Then it’s like what if, hear me out, we made risotto for a cat. All right, this risotto is looking gorgeous. I’m gonna give it one last hit of liquid. Really get some of that nice catnip and fish flavor infused in there. We’re going to strain this up. It’s gonna get nice and tight. And then we get to start making our salmon and pumpkin pate infused with just a little bit of cantaloupe juice. Why cantaloupe? I don’t know. Pippin stole half a cantaloupe from me one day, and that’s what’s informing my decisions. All right, so now we were making our lovely poached salmon and butternut squash pate. Pippin seems to love the pate’d version of cat foods. He also really love salmon, and he loves pumpkins. He also loves cantaloupe. So we’re adding a little bit of cantaloupe juice. Apparently cats like cantaloupe. One, because it’s got some like pheromone bacteria in it, but two, it mimics the texture of raw flesh to them. So that’s pretty cool. So I’d be happy to let Pippin tear through the raw flesh of that, but we’re taking some salmon and we’re poaching it. In my mind, I was like we can totally do it fresh salmon tartare, but then I Googled it and it says don’t feed your cat raw fish, or it’ll die. Don’t feed your cat any raw meat, or it’ll die, to which I asked, cats just sous vide’ing their meat out in the wild? What we’re doing, we got some salmon poaching there, and then we’re gonna take a butternut squash, and I’m just gonna start hacking into it. And we get it cut in like small pieces, boil that off, and then we’re gonna flavor it with our cantaloupe right there. Also, you know, apparently cats love their food at around 98 degrees temperature because it mimics that freshly slaughtered prey. Oh. All right, I’m just gonna dice this up. Ah, it’s how I typically like to cook squash. Keep it in the skin, just pop it in the water. Again, we’re not seasoning anything because apparently sodium can give your cat kidney stones. If people online wrote about human food the way they write about cat food, they would just say everything poisons and kills you. It’d be like, “Humans can’t eat hot dogs. They got nitrates. It’s just a bunch of pig just blended up. And with it, you can’t eat that, that’s poison.” And they’re probably correct. All right, so we’ve got our salmon poaching. We got our butternut squash boiling off. I’m just gonna let this finish cooking, get it to an internal temp of about 150. Then we’re gonna dry it off, and then we’re gonna start chopping up our pate. So we have our butternut squash that’s cooked. We just kind of dried it off and cooled it down. Now we got our salmon finished poaching. Then the goal here is I’m gonna try and sort of hand chop this into a pate. Like the way that they make cat food in a giant factory, I imagine, is they’re putting it in a giant tumbler, but no, this is nice artisanal hand-chopped pate. So we gonna let our salmon sort of dry off on the paper towels there. It’s smelling all kinds of fishy in here. It normally smells fishy in this kitchen, just like in a different way, you know? I’ma take that butternut squash, and I’m just gonna sort of start chopping it. Again, we want to make this kind of rustic. So we’re gonna get some nice grains from that barley with the spinach in there. I’m just gonna run knife through this. And then I want to season this up with a little bit of cantaloupe juice. Pippin loves the smell of cantaloupes. I’m just gonna sorta like get that in there a little bit. So hopefully he notices that little bit of bacterial funk. Yeah, yeah, splash some cantaloupe juice in there. And then I’m gonna take the side of my knife. I’m just gonna kind of like mash this up a little bit. I’m gonna do the same thing with the salmon. Really try and get some like soft salmon flakes in there. I’ma scrape to the side. There you go. Beautiful. Now I’m gonna take some of the salmon, I’m gonna leave the skin on there. ‘Cause omega threes are good for cats. I don’t know. Please, for the love of God, don’t cancel me for poisoning my cat. I’m not poisoning. I’m not poisoning him. I just, you know, again, like he eats poop. Like come on, this is better than poop. Mythical Kitchen, food better than poop. New motto. I’ma take half this salmon, gonna save half for dinner. And then, ooh, that’s nice. We got a lot of that bloodline in there. And now I’m gonna start hacking this up with the skin on it. Give it a nice little once through. Trying to hack up that skin a little bit. There we go. I hope Pippin appreciates my knife skills. I don’t think Pippin can recognize me. I think like I just come home, and he knows that there’s like a warm body to inconvenience, and that’s what gets him excited. So like trying to like do work on my laptop, and he just comes, takes a nap on the laptop. And then if like if you move him at all, he just started screaming. I’m an emotional terrorist. God, I’m gonna be such a terrible parent when the time comes. I’m gonna spend like 19 hours cooking my kids little fancy bento boxes when they go to lunch. I mean, if I’m doing this for a cat. So we got this pate mashed up. It could be good. I mean, like for humans, for cats. Again, cat tastes are a lot different than humans. We don’t know exactly what does it taste. We know that they really hate bitterness because bitterness in the wild signifies poison. So cats have developed a natural instinct away from that. Sometimes you combine different foods, and you’re like, “I don’t know what that’s gonna taste like. Maybe they’ve sort of changed via the cooking process.” If you were like, “Hey, there’s cantaloupe, butternut squash and salmon. What do you think is gonna taste like?” That’s cantaloupe, butternut squash and salmon. It’s not great, but again, it could be great for cats. It looks kind of cool. Honestly, like a lot of the foods they make, they’re kind of slops like such. And so this does just look like a nice nutritious post-workout meal for me. I actually, now that I’m eating it, it’s kind of good. Now we’re onto the portion of the episode where I sous vide livers with catnip. Because it was always coming. It was just a matter of time. The theory here is that we put the livers into the sous vide bag. We drop a little bit of catnip in there. We seal it up. That’s gonna just insulate all of that delicious catnip flavor that Pippin absolutely fiends for. Then we’re gonna sous vide it to just try and get these livers perfectly cooked to about 140 degrees, get it up to that pasteurization temp. Then we’re gonna blend that with some raw egg yolks. Apparently it’s something that cats like. I learned that from cat TikTok, the most useful thing I learned from TikTok, except for like how to lead a Bolshevik revolution and do the Nae Nae, some obscure reference to communist TikTok. We’ve all ended up there, right? We all end up in communist team TikTok? Yeah, it happens. All right, I’m gonna take liver nip. Liver Nip’s my nickname in high school. We’ll flatten that out a little bit. Just suck the air out. Really infuse all those flavors into there. Ah, dang it, and son of a bit! It was just wasn’t plugged in at all. Now go, vacuum seal. We’ll, plug that in. Yeah, look at that. It’s nice. Did it seal it? Yeah, nice and. Sh. Do the thing again. And then you gotta, sous vide, broken. Go, just do it. Just go. It’s a joke of an episode anyway, just. All right, guys, so we’re getting the sous vide up to about 140 degrees. I’m just gonna take this. We’re gonna pop that in there. We’re gonna let it go for about an hour just till he’s up to temp. And then we get to start making roughly our third pate of the day. Meow. Meow. Oh, hey, welcome back to the cooking show where we’re cooking for a cat. I don’t know if I’ve told you that. What we got here? This is called a food processor. Okay, cats don’t know what it is because cats are like barely sentient beings. But what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna take these chicken livers. Smells like liver and catnip, and I’m gonna dump it along with some of the juices right in here. And then I’m gonna two raw egg yolks. Cats love fat. This is gonna be like the nice luscious fatty portion. I mentioned cats love different novel textures. And so we’re gonna try and play with that. So we’re gonna spin this up. Yeah, it’s looking pretty good. All right, we got our chicken livers all moussed up with that catnip. Just gonna take some of that catnip liver, and then just sorta make sure you’re holding this steady. Pop that on there. Yeah, and then I’m gonna bend the spoon with my mind. Okay, cool. And now I’m just gonna take this and sort of like spread this to the edges of that ring mold. That’s lovely. Okay, so now we’re essentially making like a little bit of a parfait. We got the liver bottom. Now I’m gonna do is I’m gonna take some of that salmon and butternut squash, and I’m gonna get that right on top. Love this for us. There you go. And now I’m gonna take some of that barley and spinach risotto that we made earlier, and put that there. This is a seven layer bean dip for cats. Oh, crud. Ah, Pippin is gonna dock me for that. Dang it, Pippin. I’m gonna take some fresh cantaloupe right here. Pippin loves fresh cantaloupe because it mimics the taste of prey’s raw flesh. Can confirm that it’s true. I’m just gonna shingle some nice cantaloupe rounds around the top here. You get one more little guy. There we go. Moment of truth to un-sheath the ring mold. There we have it. There is our. There is . Cat food. We made cat food. Come on. We got cat food. We got a sous vide chicken liver, egg yolk and catnip mousse. We got our butternut squash and salmon hand-chopped pate. We got just a little touch of spinach and barley risotto topped with some fresh cantaloupe. There’s catnip infused all throughout. I can’t wait to take this back to Pippin for him to try it. I think he’s really gonna be proud of me and appreciate all the efforts. And I already know what he’s gonna say. He’s gonna go, “Ah! Ah!” Pippin, you hungry, buddy? Yeah. Yeah. I made you a nice din-din. There you go. There you go. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. Pippin, before you start eating, before you started eating, all right, what we have for you today. Now you’ve immediately gone to the Fancy Feast, which I hate. This is Fancy Feast. This is fish. This is his favorite, but no, Pippin, look. Look, I made for you a nice chicken liver pate with fresh cantaloupe, your favorite, and then barley and spinach risotto and some. Oh god, he smelled it and just didn’t want it. Pippin, hold on. Can you just stop for one second? Can you stop for one second? Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Let’s give this a fair shot. Let’s give this a fair shot. Look. That’s right, try it. Chicken liver pate, it’s got catnip in it. Fresh cantaloupe. You love cantaloupe. It’s spinach and barley risotto. A nice little pumpkin and salmon pate. There you go. He likes, no, he seems to really not enjoy that. Okay, fine. Eat the Fancy Feast. Ah. Does it hurt when your own cat picks apart your dish like this and just paws the garnishes off and doesn’t even taste it? Yeah, it does, Pippin. It does hurt a little bit. Would you like it if I mashed it for you, Pippin. I’ll cut all your food into individual face. Just stop eating the Fancy Feast, for the love of God. Come on, yeah, just give it a chance . Pippin, may I at least offer you some fresh cantaloupe for dessert? Okay. Well, thank you for letting me do that at least. Pippin, is it really that bad. Let me try. No, Pippin, you just need to learn how to eat it. Pip, look at it. I think it’s good. I prefer this to the Fancy Feast. Why can’t he? Honestly, it needs some seasoning for human consumption. Pippin, you’re ungrateful, but I still love you, buddy. Okay. It’s nap time for Pippin. He just had his din-din. Pippin, thank you so much for guest starring on this episode of the Mythical Kitchen. And thank you so much for stopping by. We got new episodes for you every week. We got new episodes of our podcast out every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. Hit us up on Instagram with pictures of your Mythical pets under #DreamsBecomeFood. That’s a weird hashtag, a couple of pictures of your pets. We’ll see you next time. Pippin, say goodbye. Say goodbye, Pippin. Goodbye, Pippin. You can cook up your own feast while wearing the Mythical Kitchen apron available now at mythical.com.